A New Perspective on the EverydayJanet Switzer uses the versatile Tamron 10-24mm wide-angle lens to capture local landscapes, nature, portraits — even snippets of small-town America. |
Article By Jennifer Gidman Images by Janet Switzer |
Janet Switzer has journeyed to Nepal, Thailand, India, and Mexico, among other exotic locales, capturing the people and places in front of her lens as photographic mementos of her travels. From Asia’s Annapurna Mountains and Puerto Vallarta architecture to Punjabi billboards and Delhi train passengers, Switzer always tries to harness the cultural flavor before her through her viewfinder. |
But it’s the everyday subjects she encounters right outside her front door in Sonoma County, California, that provide just as much image-making eye candy for the roving photographer. Her Web site, The Beauty B4 Me, features what Switzer refers to as “a collection of experiences in my life” — experiences from around the globe and locally. “It’s kind of like blowing kisses of the beauty I see, just sharing what I see through the lens,” she explains. “There’s so much bad news in the world, so this is my way of sharing the good news.” |
Switzer’s love affair with the camera began when she got her first Brownie Bullet camera as a little girl and intensified when she took a trip to Nepal and India in 2006. “That was when I bought my first digital camera,” she says. “I rode a horse through the Himalayas and took a lot of pictures!” |
When Switzer got home, she framed her images, crafted a bunch of greeting cards, and had a showing at her home with friends, followed by shows at local yoga studios and restaurants. “Now I pretty much take my camera wherever it’s possible to go,” she says. “I’m artistically bent — I see things in a certain way and then I grab my camera and capture it. I got on this wreath-making kick for a while, for example, and started zooming in on the wreaths and all the little flowers you weave into them. The same thing happened with my photography overall: I started seeing everyday things from an artistic viewpoint. |
In her local travels, Switzer often makes sure she has the Tamron 10-24mm lens on her camera to view these otherwise routine artifacts from a whole new perspective. The 2.4X ultra-wide-angle lens offers the widest range in its class, rendering picture angles approximating 16mm to 37mm in the 35mm (film) or full-frame DSLR format — and giving Switzer ultimate creative freedom to use it for a variety of photographic genres. “I was blown away when I first started using this lens,” she says. “Because it’s a wide-angle lens, I was convinced I’d really only be using it for nature/landscape shots. Then I started leaving it on my camera more and more and taking pictures of people, flowers, reststops along the highway — it’s just a great all-around lens. It’s remarkably different from all my other lenses, and the clarity I get is amazing.” |
It’s Switzer’s sharp eye for color, in fact, that often makes her images stand out. “Color’s the ticket!” she says. “Color is what appears in nature and in the everyday beauty around you. Trying to capture that color is the true art of photography. It’s experiential: Every lighting situation is different, so you have to be in the moment and enjoy it.” |
That’s also where the 10-24 suits Switzer’s mission to a tee. “In all of the images I’ve shot with that lens, the colors are absolutely fantastic,” she says. “It just seems like that particular lens always captures the colors better than my other lenses. I was coming back from a camping trip on a beautiful September day up near Jenner and I stopped up on a cliff where the Russian River cascades into the Pacific Ocean,” she says. “The picture that resulted was the one I call ‘Where the River Meets the Sea.’ This was my very first shot with the 10-24 lens, and the colors you see in that image were exactly how I saw them. It was awesome.” |
Switzer also enjoys witnessing local flora through the 10-24 vantage point. “I took this lens up to Armstrong Woods and shot 1,200-year-old redwoods from their bases,” she says. “The perspective of that lens really helps you experience the magnificence of those trees.” |
The first flower shot she took with the 10-24 was even more local: in her own kitchen. “Usually when you’re shooting flowers with a macro lens, you need to have your tripod,” she says. “It was so neat just to zoom in on it with the 10-24 lens and get such a clear shot. It was in the morning, and the light coming in my kitchen window was perfect.” |
Venturing outside of her immediate surroundings to nearby reststops and fruit stands also provides plenty of photographic opportunities with the 10-24 lens. “There’s a place called the Swanton Berry Farm, right off of Highway 1,” Switzer says. “It’s just so charming there and gives off a real feel of Americana. They have chocolate-covered strawberries, shortcake, Mexican hot chocolate, and you can buy a snack and just hang out in the sitting area. It’s so quaint!” |
On a recent day when Switzer made a pit stop at the berry farm (“I used to live near there, and I really was in the mood for a strawberry!”), the weather and surroundings proved perfect for a shot of the berry farm truck and signage. “It just so happened the day I was out there, it was all blue skies and puffy white clouds — that’s my favorite type of shooting day, when there’s a lot of action up in the sky,” she says. “I usually like to shoot early in the mornings and in the evenings. But on that particular day, it was all filtered light with the sun behind the clouds with those bright blue skies, so it worked out great.” |
The 10-24 has even become a reliable companion for when Switzer shoots portraits or people shots. “That’s what I’ve found about that lens — it’s not difficult to get a great shot,” she laughs. “The lens does the work because it’s calibrated to do close-ups, nature, portraits. It’s so versatile.” |
Switzer captured her 3-year-old granddaughter promenading down the driveway of the horse ranch Switzer lives on just outside of Petaluma. “That’s the other thing about that lens I love,” she says. “That aspherical factor makes the angles look so cool. It’s like being on the outside of a bubble.” |
For more of Janet Switzer’s work, check out her Janet’s Journey With Photography Celebrating the Beauty B4 Me Web site. |