i like photography. it’s something that i enjoy and it’s something that i feel i’m pretty good at. i also like it because even though taking a photo is something anyone can do, it’s how you go about doing it that makes the big difference. it’s just like web pages. anybody can make a web page, but that doesn’t mean that your web page is going to be any good.
one of the things that i see about photographers (and i’m guilty of this too) is that once they get into the big world of SLRs, there are so many choices, options, and toys to have. what kind of camera body do you get? what kind of lenses do you get? what kind of lighting equipment do you get? what kind of studio equipment do you get? what other accessories do you get?
it’s endless, really. my friend, john, got me into the world of canon. in the world of digital photography, i think that there are two big players out there: nikon and canon. i guess i was convinced to go the canon route because i had a friend who was already a canon user and so we could share equipment…well, that and because canon had the first affordable (and i use that term loosely) digital camera body.
so anyway, since then, i’ve bought lenses, flashes, more bodies, and more accessories. i’ve made a few purchases that i regret, but i’m happy for the most part.
but whenever someone starts talking about getting new camera equipment, my eyes open wide with the whole world of possibilities that lay ahead. i don’t know why i have this reputation that i tell people to buy things that are way out of their budget. just because *I* happen to have spent a lot of money on camera gear doesn’t mean that i expect everyone else to. in fact, i REALLY hate those stuck up snobs at san jose camera who look down on everyone who doesn’t buy the best of the best. stupid camera snobs.
but what sort of alarms me is when people think that if they buy all of this crazy camera equipment that they will instantly take great pictures. that simply is not the case. it’s like the little boy who can’t shoot a basketball if his life depended on it who goes and buys all of the latest jerseys and shoes that his idols use because he thinks that if he gets all this stuff, he’ll be able to play like them. what happens, of course, is that he just looks really good at playing really bad.
but anyway, with camera gear, i’ve seen too many people spend too much money on things that they don’t appreciate or can’t use. or they will look down on other people who don’t have the best gear. i think it’s easy for lesser experienced people to believe that just because they don’t have the best gear that their pictures will suffer as a result. and that’s simply not true. just because you don’t have the best pictures doesn’t mean that you can’t take great pictures.
i once challenged a friend of mine (though he never took me up on it) to go out on some photo shoot and we’ll go and take pictures and compare the pictures. to make things fair, i said that i would even switch cameras with him so that he would have my crazy big camera and i’d have his point and shoot digital and i told him that i believe that i could still take good pictures with it.
it’s true that a nicer camera will give you better optically quality. it’s true that a nicer camera will give you better color reproduction, but i think that a good picture is one that is composed well and for that the camera doesn’t really matter.
usually i believe that it is the mark of an inexperienced photographer when they blame their equipment instead of them. maybe they are expecting too much from their equipment. maybe there are workarounds to it. that’s the nice thing about photography is that there are so many possibilities. but i think that some people blame their equipment much too soon for the fault of the pictures that come out of it. they think that they’ve outgrown their equipment when they really haven’t…they just haven’t grown.
just because you have all the toys in the world doesn’t mean that you’ll be the best at what you do.
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