bomknights

View Original

What gear, what settings, what lens, what preset?

What camera should I use? what’s better - primes or the zoomy lenses?, What’s the best setting to use? Any good presets for weddings? Which version - Black&White or colour ? What’s the best camera to buy? What setting & lens did you use for that picture? 

..... I don’t fucking know.  

What lens another photographer uses is irrelevant.  What preset they use is stupid. What camera they buy.  What settings.  All pointless and irrelevant, not conducive to learning, not one bit....unless you want to be someone who traces pictures rather than actually creates them. 

Why do you want to take pictures, what do you want to create, how do you want your pictures to look?  You’re the photographer, you decide.  

The equipment, the settings, the presets - none of it means a thing.  

I saw someone who said they bought a brand new lens, a very expensive one - apparently it was going to take their pictures to the ‘next level’ , unfortunately the magic lens wasn’t actually made of magic and their pictures looked exactly the same as they did before, just at a different focal length.

I also saw someone jump out and buy a brand new medium format camera and other ‘stuff’ total price around £10,000...holy shit their pictures were awful, like vomit inducing bad...just imagine if person would have saved that money to use on experiences and photographed them instead - better pictures guaranteed.  Anyway, camera was up for sale after a month, no good apparently - seriously. 

‘Things’ don’t make people better photographers....going out, taking lots of images, experimenting, failing a lot, figuring out what you want to say and who you are - that makes you better.  You make you a better photographer, spend all your time, money and effort on you - not being someone else.