‘Must Have’ Culture
Following on from a recent blog by one of the 4Togs about portrait lenses, it brought to mind another strange thing that occurs within photographic circles, the must have culture!
Now don’t get me wrong, I love technology, gadgets, gizmos and anything that’s a little bit trick. What I’m talking about is the incessant need to upgrade constantly to the latest piece of equipment. Seriously, will the newest camera improve your captured images? No it won’t on its own. What it may do is improve the quality of *output, the actual clarity, sharpness, or contrast; this is assuming that you own decent quality lenses. But overall the image content is the same as before, exactly the same as the person behind the camera, the mind or eye, saw and captured before. The amount of times I’ve heard, been asked, or been told that the newest camera body by X manufacturer is the best way to improve, is quite surprising. It’s spouted not just by new SLR owners, but quite often by people who should have a better understanding. How can a static piece of kit, which takes all input/control from you improve your own images? Personally I use a Canon 5D, a now discontinued camera. Ok it’s full frame, has a good reputation for handling lower light levels, but there is better out there now the 5D MkII, 1D series, even a selection of Nikons… Even so, I’m not interested in upgrading.
If I had the money and wanted to upgrade, I’d look at my lenses first. Quality of glass is more important and will last longer than the latest camera body, just don’t forgot though: Lens envy is ugly! Moving along, your lens of choice may be important in the image making (see the blog about portraits), but it’s still not what’s really important. You can have all the latest equipment, camera body, best lenses, top of the range lighting equipment, and still take shit, boring and lifeless images.
What really makes a difference is you, your mind, your inspiration, drive to improve, create something better, something different… Engage your mind and challenge yourself, choose a subject to push your own boundaries. So forget what camera you use, how many mega-pixies it has, just be creative and look outside your comfort zone. Think for once! David Bailey recently said in an interview “There’s not much skill involved in photography anyway. I could teach you to be a photographer in three months, I could teach you how to drive in three months, it doesn’t mean you’ll be any good. There’s no technical thing, I’ve no technical… Look at poor old Lichfield, he’s gone now but he was technically great, couldn’t take a picture to save his life.” So you can be taught to use a camera, but not to take a picture, this is where you come in, you are the creative. Think about your image, what you are creating. David expands in the interview to support this point by saying “You look at those photographic magazines and they’ve hundreds of fantastic, boring landscapes all the same. They do up the colour and it’s a picture of another tree. How many trees can there be that haven’t been photographed?” People have been taught to take that picture, but not to actually think about what or why they are taking it.
Save your money, spend it on beer, your other half or just waste it on nothing… but please get creative! Once you challenge your boundaries, you will find yourself on a journey; a journey that will take you and your images on a tour of improvement.
Go, be free with your new found creative self… just don’t get too pretentious about it!
*dependant on camera & settings.
