Your camera takes good photos
I get this pretty often from the people around me, and this is something that happens quite so often that it has produced the following comic strip.
It used to irritate me when people credit the quality of my photos to my camera. I used to ask them, do my photography skills not contribute to the making of the photo? When I was a photographer for my college’s newsletter, my editor used to tell me how wonderful she thought my DSLR was. Whenever I expressed irritation at her passing remark, she would apologize for me. But she insisted she felt my camera is largely responsible for my good photos. I do not discount the contribution my Nikon D90 has played in my photography, but I suppose such fleeting comments dented my self-confidence.
That was then, and I have since matured as a photographer. I have come to accept such careless remarks to a photographer. Many people own DSLRs, but how many of them are photographers? If you could afford, you could own a Leica or a Hasselblad. But how many of us are an Adam Ansel or a Henri Cartier-Bresson? I was not born a gifted photographer. I learnt and improved on my photography from sheer practice. Endurance is the key to many things in life. It doesn’t matter what camera you use (unless you wanna achieve something only a specific camera can give you) but rather how you use it. Any tool is only as good as the carpenter that uses it. If you don’t know how to fully utilize your equipment, it will only be a pity.
Chase Jarvis made a very good point when he published his “The best camera is the one that’s with you” iPhone photography book. His premise for this iPhone photography book is that a good photo matters not in the equipment used, but with the photographer, and the very fact that the photo was taken in the first place. Although I personally am not inspired by the contents in that book, because I have passed that phase of realization, it is still a book that reminds you and keeps you grounded from mindless gear envy.
