One lens & zero expectations: I rediscovered my love for photography by finally taking this one bit of advice I had been giving my students for years!

Black & white image of a road leading through a barren mountainous landscape.

I switched to one lens and zero expectations on a travel assignment. My pictures haven't been this honest in years.

I have a confession. For years, I've been telling readers and workshop attendees to shoot with a single prime lens. Learn to see at one focal length, I'd say. Use your feet, not your zoom. Understand what 35mm or 50mm actually looks like before you start accumulating glass. Sound advice, I thought. But in all honesty, I wasn't really doing it myself.

In fairness, when I started out in the 1980s, most of us had no choice. You got one lens because one lens was all you could afford – typically a 50mm (the nifty fifty). And you learned to see within that frame, to move your body rather than twist a zoom ring. You learned to anticipate where a picture was before you raised the camera to your eye. Then, over the years, the kit bag got heavier, and the seeing got lazier. I suspect I'm not alone in that.

It took Sigma Imagining to call my bluff. They asked me to shoot with their 24mm f/1.4 DG DN Art lens for a couple of months. Not a focal length I would have gravitated towards, if I'm honest. A touch too wide, I thought. But within a week or so something shifted. I stopped worrying about what I couldn't frame and started paying attention to what I could. My eye adjusted and I started using my feet.

Fujifilm GFX50R with GF45mm f/2.8, 1/125sec at f/11, ISO100 (Image credit: Benedict Brain)

After that experience, I found myself reaching for my Fujifilm GFX 50R with the GF 45mm f/2.8 (roughly a 35mm equivalent) almost exclusively. It just stayed on the camera. I liked knowing exactly where I needed to stand to realise what I was seeing, without fiddling or second-guessing.

So when Fujifilm released the GFX100RF with its fixed 35mm lens (a 28mm equivalent), it felt like something had been made specifically for the way I now work. Everything I needed in a smaller, lighter package that freed me to do what I love most: wander. The flâneur had found his groove.

Here's what nobody tells you about working with one lens. It doesn't limit your photography. It limits your indecision. And indecision, far more than any lack of equipment, is what kills most pictures before they're ever taken. So try it. One lens. Leave the bag at home and just walk until you get your eye in.