Ive got to say one of the most immediate and abject ways for me to lose respect in a photographer is to hear them utter the phrase: what professionals use....
As in: Pros use speedtron lights or Pros use ring-flashes or ...prime lenses or ....tripods or whatever.
When I worked in Hollywood, everyday Id see studio movies employ a roll of duct-tape to keep a $150k Chapman-Leonard dolly on track. Thats what real pros use: anything and everything that works. A $300 MSE gobo or a stick snipped off a backlot tree; Ive watched them both used, its all in what you do with equipment! While Richard Avedon may well use 8x10 transparency, slow speed film, one of the hottest properties in the last few years, Terry Richardson, will shoot the cover of W magazine with a $50 Nikon N65 and a kit lens. This is one of the things I love about our medium, we have a stupefying amount of tools to draw from. Throw in the software used in post production, and our control over final product is boundless.
Implicit in the statement is that the tools YOU are using are somehow inferior. While certain pieces of equipment can enable more things, whatever you have is GOOD ENOUGH to make great images. Seriously, have you never seen a print by Eliot Porter, Ansel Adams, Ray K. Metzger or John Caponigro? They are astonishing and all done using technology that has been obsolete for 50years! The $47.50 wal-mart camera would be seen as nothing short of miraculous when Man Ray started working. Imagine what he could do? So fuck you Popular Photography.
A few weeks ago I was sitting in on a photography class at the local community college (yeah, I know) and the teacher was pretty competent. In fact, I picked up a few tips (though mostly about what to do when I teach such classes :-). But towards the end, he started to use the phase what pros do and it fully wrankled me. So much so that as I was sitting there, I went to Calumet photos website and ordered a Holga and a roll of 1 lightsafe tape. Just to prove something....
As in: Pros use speedtron lights or Pros use ring-flashes or ...prime lenses or ....tripods or whatever.
When I worked in Hollywood, everyday Id see studio movies employ a roll of duct-tape to keep a $150k Chapman-Leonard dolly on track. Thats what real pros use: anything and everything that works. A $300 MSE gobo or a stick snipped off a backlot tree; Ive watched them both used, its all in what you do with equipment! While Richard Avedon may well use 8x10 transparency, slow speed film, one of the hottest properties in the last few years, Terry Richardson, will shoot the cover of W magazine with a $50 Nikon N65 and a kit lens. This is one of the things I love about our medium, we have a stupefying amount of tools to draw from. Throw in the software used in post production, and our control over final product is boundless.
Implicit in the statement is that the tools YOU are using are somehow inferior. While certain pieces of equipment can enable more things, whatever you have is GOOD ENOUGH to make great images. Seriously, have you never seen a print by Eliot Porter, Ansel Adams, Ray K. Metzger or John Caponigro? They are astonishing and all done using technology that has been obsolete for 50years! The $47.50 wal-mart camera would be seen as nothing short of miraculous when Man Ray started working. Imagine what he could do? So fuck you Popular Photography.
A few weeks ago I was sitting in on a photography class at the local community college (yeah, I know) and the teacher was pretty competent. In fact, I picked up a few tips (though mostly about what to do when I teach such classes :-). But towards the end, he started to use the phase what pros do and it fully wrankled me. So much so that as I was sitting there, I went to Calumet photos website and ordered a Holga and a roll of 1 lightsafe tape. Just to prove something....