Less About Gear, More About The Moment

Sealed With A Kiss, a photo by C.Duncan's Photography on Flickr.

Someone made a comment a while back that made me cringe. If you take photography seriously, you've probably heard it at some point as well, and it's made you even second guess your skills at times. The comment went like this, "Oh, you should see Christine's photography, it's wonderful. Of course, that's because she has such a nice camera.....!"

Comments like this make it to blogs as a topic of debate all the time, because there's nothing further from the truth and yet, the public seems to think that if we spend enough money, or buy big enough gear, we'll take better photographs than most. I'm not going to rehash this old myth in regards to how camera choice is or isn't a huge factor but I will say I don't have the latest, biggest gear... all I have is continual practice with the gear I have, and the ability to anticipate a worthwhile moment like in the photo above. I have worked tirelessly to hone the ability to compose in an instant and expose for the scene while watching for the sweetest moment possible to press the shutter... all at the same time. And I started out doing it with a point and shoot. It's so over-said by now, but we never say of an artist who creates a great body of work... "wow, he obviously uses the best brushes on the market because nobody paints like that!" Or after being at a restaurant... "hey, anybody would be able to cook like that if we all had a stove that fancy...!" Cause, no matter how nice a stove you give me, I'll never be able to make dinner like Gordon Ramsay... it's the person, not the gear.

For the image above, all I had was my trusty, out-dated but perfectly usable Nikon D80 with it's sturdy little telephoto... and 6 years worth of mistakes and victories, trial and error, till I found my groove, and the perfect moment to press the shutter. And I'm still learning. I'll never stop.

I hope that this is what is more evident to those who look carefully at my body of work. For anyone who works hard at what they love, in fact!

Thanks for the ramble, and have a great week. And tell your local artists this week how much you love how hard they work! They'll truly appreciate it, more than you know.