… but the pho­to­grapher, that makes the pho­tos. Many people think you need great gear to take great pho­tos. Or shall I say, they equate a “big” (and hence auto­mat­ic­ally “good”) cam­era with shoot­ing only “good” pho­tos. While there is some truth in this, there are also a few misconceptions.

First of all, think of a cook and his pots. A ★★★★★ star cook can cook a great meal pretty much any­where, even in your shitty stu­dent acco­mod­a­tion kit­chen with the most pathetic, 25 year old pots. But in turn, buy­ing some ridicu­lously expens­ive, extra spe­cial coated cast iron cook­ing gear alone prob­ably won’t make you a good cook…

It’s the same with cam­eras. Of course, hav­ing bet­ter pots and pans helps a good cook to pre­pare his meals more eas­ily, and spe­cial equip­ment is needed for some spe­cial treats (say a small blow torch for a decent crème brûlée). In pho­to­graphy, some­times there’s no way around a decent tele lens with a wide aper­ture, or a super wide angle, or a flash gun. But given a few ingredi­ents, its a cook’s exper­i­ence, taste or shall I say his “art” that allows him to pre­pare a good meal. The same holds for a pho­to­grapher: see­ing inter­est­ing sub­jects, lines, col­ours, light situ­ations, then cre­at­ing strong com­pos­i­tions, not to men­tion care­ful post-​processing — that’s actu­ally all inde­pend­ent of what cam­era you’re using!

Any­way, I just want to rant about all the people that tell me “oh, that’s a great cam­era, you must be a great pho­to­grapher”. No, first of all you prob­ably have no clue about the cam­era, what is cap­able of (and what not). Second, just hav­ing the means and the guts to spend ridicu­lous amounts of money on photo equip­ment just doesn’t make you good pho­to­grapher — that just means you’re either rich, or you’ve lost your senses.

It’s what comes out at the very end of the pro­cess, what’s left after you have made all those mil­lions of decisions involved in tak­ing and pro­cessing a pic­ture — this is what may or may not make you a “good” photographer.