The importance of gear

This morning I was listening to Paul McGowan of PS Audio. He was answering a question on why more people are not audiophiles, and Paul basically said, well whilst people may be wowed by the sound that comes from an audio system, they are not interested in the audio system itself.

This then got me thinking. In the photography world, gear is very much looked down upon, There is a certain amount of defensiveness in photography, when it comes from gear. One of the most common photography meme’s is ‘That is a really good photo. you must have a really good camera’. Suggesting that the equipment is what is making the image and not the photographer. So photographers get very defensive pointing out that it is their imagination and ability that created the photo.

Recently, a very good photographer Irene Rudnyk in a video, suggested that maybe 10% was down to gear, with the rest being creativity and ability. Which I disagreed with. Now, I am not going to say that everything is down to gear, it certainly is not, and I will say that the majority is down to creativity and ability. But I believe a lot more is down to the gear.

An audiophile is not just someone who enjoys listening to music. A lot is down to creating the correct system. A high end audiophile, is always on the search for a better sound, or even a different sound. They will spend hours, researching and looking for new equipment to make their system better. The gear is important to them, and they understand that different equipment will change that sound. Sometimes for the better, sometimes something different, and occasionally even worse, as not everything will work together well, and there is a lot of snake oil in the audio world.

So what has this got to do with photography? Audiophiles acknowledge how important gear is, in a way that photographers are often afraid to acknowledge. A part of being a good photographer is knowing what equipment to use, but different equipment will have different affects on an image.

So the most obvious example I can think of is lenses and a photographer called Frank Okenfels III. Now Frank is a great photographer and artist. Much of his commercial work for Hollywood is amazing, technically very clean and stylish, but when you look at much of his personal or magazine work, it isn’t. Frank will use different equipment for different shoots, because he knows what affect that equipment will have on an image.

So the equipment is making a dramatic difference to the image. I have spent 18 years learning equipment, looking to see the different details of how it will affect an image. Examples would be, using white inner baffle on a soft box compared to a silver, giving a softer light or using a different lens, because it is going to have an look to the image.

So for me, the equipment that I use, is incredibly important to the images I create. Without them I wouldn’t be able take the photos I do, and that should be celebrated, because I don’t want to take the same photo as everyone else.

I thought I would link to a video interview with Frank Okenfels III as he has a very similar perspective to my own (though he is much more talented than I am).

Hollywood reporter Frank Okenfels III interview