Gear Lust and Shopping

January 10, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 7 Comments

I saw a post in a forum thread recently that summed up a situation that seems like it should be a red flag to those suffering from Gear Lust*. Here is the exchange, somewhat edited, beginning with the original post and followed by my reply:

OP: I know you are familiar with the situation. Your lens is in the shopping basket on Amazon, all but the last one checkout step is completed and you hover the mouse over “Order” button. And you go again and again pixel peeping, comparing MTF charts. etc etc.

ME: If you find yourself second-guessing to this extent while you are ordering, with all due respect, it is not time to be ordering a new lens.

You should be certain (or as certain as one can be) that you are ordering the right thing before you order it. By ordering while you are in that anxious and ambivalent state you are making it much more likely that your decision will not be an intelligent one, but rather one driven by irrational forces.

I urge you to make a solid and final decision about what lens you want – a decision you can make without then feeling compelled to go back and look obsessively at MTF charts and 20 reviews again – in other words, a final decision based on everything you know about the gear and your needs.

Once you think you have decided, wait. Wait about a month. One of two things will likely happen:

– If your decision does not change and you don’t find yourself second-guessing the choice, you probably made a very good choice and at the end of the waiting period you should buy the lens.

– If you find yourself worrying about the choice or second-guessing the choice or going back and poring over the test charts and reports once more, reset the one-month timer when you have really made a decision.

It is easy to become way too passionate and emotionally involved in gear purchases. Equipment is just equipment. It may (or may not) help you make better photographs, but it is not going to change your life.

* I’m not suggesting the equipment is unimportant, nor that getting good and appropriate equipment isn’t something to strive for. To the contrary, I think that making smart and appropriate decisions about equipment is very important. Gear Lust, however, is a general condition in which the search for and purchase of photography equipment becomes an obsession and ends up being more important than actually making photographs with said equipment. It is unfortunately an all-too-common malady.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Monterey Cypress Forest, Point Lobos

January 10, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Winter light on the Monterey Cypress forest growing on a hillside at Point Lobos State Reserve.

This is perhaps an absurdly complex photograph – I think it is going to have to end up as a large print at some point. This is a section of Monterey Cypress forest that I’ve walked through many times on the trail along the north shore at Point Lobos State Reserve near Carmel, California. These trees grow along the tops of rocky bluffs above the ocean and in some sheltered places can grow tall and straight.

I made this photograph in what almost amounted to midday sun, though there were a few fog clouds floating around to mute the harshest character of the light a bit. But I knew that the photograph was going to be tricky. The first challenge was finding a location from which to shoot it – most angles are blocked by closer trees or are inaccessible. I finally found a spot along the trail where I could shoot between trees using a longer focal length. Then there was the problem of the light, or more accurately the dynamic range between the clouds and a bit of blue sky and the much darker backlit and shadowed trees in the foreground. Finally, it is just a very complex scene, and making any kind of coherent composition out of it was tricky. I don’t know yet whether it succeeds or not, but the idea was to use the angled division between the darker and very complex lower right side and the lighter upper left side with its vertical tree trunks, and to let the darker foreground tree connect it all together. That was the idea, anyway!

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Technical Data:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II (at B&H)
Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L USM at 94mm (at B&H)
ISO 100, f/16, 1/40 second

Commentary, Ideas

A Difficult Question, and Thinking About Feedback

January 9, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 7 Comments

There is a lot to say about the subject of feedback – what constitutes useful feedback, when it is and is not appropriate to offer it, when to be “direct” and when to be diplomatic, how to offer it, and so forth. I’m thinking about this today – though I think about it often – after a thought-provoking experience I had yesterday.

Yesterday I visited Charles Cramer’s beautiful solo show at the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel – for the third time! I made a point of dropping in one more time because a) this was the final day of the show, b) I’m a huge fan of Charlie’s work, c) I knew that he would be there in the afternoon, and d) it gave me a perfect excuse to photograph on the Monterey Peninsula yesterday before and after visiting the show!

Charlie asked several of us two questions – one merely difficult and the other very difficult. The former, merely difficult question was, more or less, “Which are your favorites?” This wasn’t too difficult, since there are some very specific photographs in this show that “speak” to me very powerfully. In fact, I basically responded to this question by pointing those out and trying (with varying levels of success) to say something about what makes those photographs “work” for me. But there are so many that work in so many different ways that I could really do the question justice. Some work “as photographs” alone, there are others that I probably see differently because of my affinity for the subjects, some require some time to understand, and so forth.

But the second question was the really tough one: “Which photograph(s) would you leave out of the exhibit?” Really? You are asking me, Charlie? :-)

But then I thought about this a bit more and decided to attempt an answer. I’m not going to write about which photographs I would leave out – frankly I would add more of his photographs rather than removing any – since my selections are not the point. But I do want to think out loud a bit more about the question and the value of asking it and trying to answer. Continue reading A Difficult Question, and Thinking About Feedback →

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

Pelican Above Water

January 9, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

A solo pelican coasts above the surface of the Pacific Ocean near the central California coast.

There is not too much to say about this one – since I posted a companion pelican photograph yesterday! This one is also “from the archives” – a photograph from last May that I found as I looked through last year’s raw files one last time.

(For those who are reading this in the archives, a bit more information. I frequently photograph pelicans along the California Pacific Ocean shoreline. This photograph was made from a location where I can access the top of a coastal bluff that drops almost immediately straight down to the water. The pelicans seem to make a habit of cruising up and down the tops of these bluffs on the updrafts that are created by the onshore breeze, and they fly very close to the bluff edges where I can photograph them close up.)

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.