What camera do you use?
We see photos everywhere. On the internet, magazines, newspapers, billboards. Everywhere. Few of them are great and others just vehicles to pass, to the untrained certain mostly marketing, messages.
Perhaps the most common question photographers, amateurs or pros are asked is about the tools they are using, camera, format, lenses, cords, software etc. Sometime others talk about the X or Y camera and lens the X or Y famous photographer used or uses.
So, what’s your point? Keep in mind that all the old masters, didn’t have the exceptionally fast or accurate or light tools we are using today but yet, we study and teach their work today and I am not sure that even with the tools we have can really copy their work or even make it better. All this has to do with their background. I often talk about André Kertész’s, picture from 1928, “The Fork” and asked people to replicate it. So far, just a handful made it almost identical and took them lots and lots of hours and tests before they had the picture. The point is that all those old masters, had an inner need to communicate and shed light to darker corners of life and things that we keep on visually missing. They kept educating themselves till the last day and they had failed a million times but they kept on using their camera. Experimenting and interacting with different people was their routine and a profund need.
Their pictures had a depth of feeling even if, have heard many say, lacked technique. They weren’t sharp enough, not enough bokeh etc. The list is too long!
Every time I asked what camera I am using, I reply with a simple question. Have ever asked a painter about the brushes he/she used? A poet about the pen or the paper? A chef about the knives or the stove in the kitchen?
The answer of course is always no. We like a painting, a poet or food for the need it fulfils. The same goes with photography. With a collection of more than 40 cameras (all field tested and fully operational), each time I will use the one that serves the need best that specific moment. Could be a 6x4,5, a 35mm DSLR, a 35mm point and shoot or even my mobile.
A golden pen won’t make your writing worthy of a Pulitzer Prize. The same goes with a camera. Just forget all those marketing tricks and use that tool you have in your hands to expand your mental and visual horizons. Live life and be willing to learn always something new. Visit museums, galleries, theatres, read books (not just about Photography or photographers or techniques) and keep asking yourself “Why I want to show this picture to others?”.
First we have to accept ourselves and our pictures and then seeking approval by others won’t be necessary.
