Dawid Loubser
Member
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"A Growing loneliness"
Several months after my first attempt at capturing the lonely stature of this bench, which is apparently almost never used, I returned with a more thoughtful attempt at capturing it. I know a bench is an odd subject on its own, but as it is posed on this bridge, over which Johannesburg life passes it by, the irony struck me that the small plant growing underneath it has managed to penetrate it - undisturbed, unmaintained. Its only companion. Slightly, subtly, gently at first - and now, as the ever-feeling, ever-thickening tip moves along, it has entrenched itself. Now, the only way it could be removed would be by damaging either it or the bench.
As all of this happens in plain sight, life goes on.
Technical note: Though most of the picture is intentionally out of focus, the areas of the plant and chair that are in-focus are rendered with a sharpness and clarity that I have not experienced before using Canon's 50mm f/1.2L. Somehow, the results do not reflect Canon's MTF chart for this lens, on which it would appear to be only "quite good". I find this lens to be staggeringly good, and I have never experienced such capability and creative freedom before using it. My "benchmark" lens is the Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro, but I do believe that the 50L surpasses it in some aspects. I find this image both technically and "artistically" superior (at f/1.8) than anything I could have produced at f/2.8 with the Macro. This lens is now "glued" to my camera, pried off only momentarily to fit the 16-35L! The appeal was not immediate, mind you - I found it took me about a month to get comfortable with the lens and its limitations.