Gear as Crutch. Or Disincentive

IMAGE CREATED WITH ADOBE FIREFLY

Good day all. I am very fortunate to chat with photographers from many different places, seeking to achieve different goals, but a couple of things are consistent regardless of genre or location.

Gear as Crutch

We understand the value proposition of a crutch when our mobility is challenged. But if you have ever been relegated to using a crutch for an extended period of time, you’ve also realized that while it can be beneficial, it’s also often a hindrance.

This is very evident with committed photographers.

Can you remember the days when all you had was one camera and one lens? You may look back on those images and ask yourself what you were thinking, given your skill development and progression since then, but I encourage you to think back to how easy and free making images was. You may not have even had a camera bag. Photography was low stress, and very much grab and go.

There was no option paralysis. There were no shots missed while vacillating on which lens to use, or which filter, or whether to unlimber the tripod.

As your skills improved, as is true for many of us, myself included, we accumulate more gear. We need it! More is better! Isn’t it?

Have you ever caught yourself saying to yourself, or someone else perhaps, “if only I had an XYZ, I could make a really fine image here” and then not even make an attempt? Or to say that to photograph subject A, you only need gear pieces B through Z.

This is gear as a crutch. You may even be comfortable in this way but it’s not helping your creative modality and it’s getting in the way of seeing.

Regular readers have heard my oft repeated phrase “gear does not make the photo, the brain does”. Sometimes, perhaps more often than not, gear prevents the making of the photo. This may account to some extent why very committed photographers shoot so much with a camera phone. It’s with you, and there is not a whole lot that you can do to it in terms of gear add-ons although that has not stopped multitudinous vendors from creating all manner of cruft to make the smartphone clumsy and unusable.

If you find yourself in this kind of situation, try the following adage as your preparatory process. As simple as possible, but no simpler.

Perhaps when you go for a walk, instead of taking a camera and more than one lens, take only the camera with a lens attached. Nothing else. Not even a bag. The camera should be on a strap and readily available. The strap type is less relevant so long as it lets you get camera to eye in under a second. This negates the use of carriers, clips, holsters and all manner of stuff that while perhaps interesting, just gets in the way between your brain and the subject matter.

Ask any person who had to use a crutch or crutches for some period of time how free and loose they felt the day the crutches, however helpful, were left behind.

Wrapping Up

While many assignments or challenges that I offer may sound difficult, for many photographers, this may be one of the hardest. You worked hard and spent a lot of money to build your collection of gear. Unfortunately gear can become a crutch, or the thought so selecting gear to carry a disincentive to carrying any camera other than the smartphone at all.

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