Tag Archives: preparation

The Week In Links: April 2nd, 2010

David duChemin had a crazy idea this week. Become a better photographer by not buying loads of gear. Thom Hogan is riffing on the same subject and the tendency to “blame the equipment“. Lord knows I’ve been guilty of that in the past, complaining to anyone who would listen about the limitations of my old digital camera, the inadequacies of its control interface, its lack of speed, and so on. Yet I used that very camera for a week in Costa Rica and never once considered the problems I’d been whining about just days earlier. I spent the time shooting great pictures of incredible scenery and enjoyed doing it.

Are you as forgetful as I am? This week I finished up my first trial roll of Ektar 100, switched it out for my first trial roll of Portra 400NC and was lucky to take only one shot before I remembered that I had to set the film speed manually on the F-1. I’ll pretend I was testing the overexposure latitude. Yeah. If I was following a checklist as suggested by DIYPhotography, even for something as simple as loading a roll of film, I might not have missed that glaring omission. Linked from a comment on the DIYP article, Scott Bourne seems to be on the same line of thought here, too.

I like where this is heading. Buy less gear. Enjoy what you have and quit worrying about what you don’t. Remember to reset it to sane defaults. Remember to bring it. Be ready to use it. Wise words.

On a different note, The Online Photographer has a new article entitled “Facebook: Ripoff and Appropriation?“. It does seem as though the folks at Facebook have comprehension difficulties when it comes to issues of privacy and copyright. Not the first time they’ve tried for a rights grab, probably not the last either given their track record on these things.