Do you need all the gear to become a photographer?

When you’re starting out as a photographer there’s such a pull towards getting more and more gear. Finding the right camera for the job (that’s if you even know which kind of work you want to shoot) and also which lens/bag/flash/tripod.. and the list goes on and on.

In our courses we’re often asked to recommend certain camera systems, help to work out which lenses and so on. If we can help at all. we always will, there will no doubt be a perfect set up for you out there.. but you have to start somewhere.

I wrote in a previous post about being limited. How narrowing down choices can really help you to ‘Master’ something. Maybe these days we have too much choice available to us and it might just be confusing us and taking up too much of our valuable ‘mastering’ time.

What we’re saying here is - how about you find a camera and/or a lens you can afford, go for the best you can possibly manage and work with it for the next 2 years. Really get to know it inside and out, push all of it’s boundaries and your own. Move with it, stay still, shoot people, shoot still lives, shoot movement, come close, move away.. but ALL with this same kit.

Become a specialist within these limits, learn more about yourself as a photographer and spend a little more time watching, learning, and listening. Find the things that make you tick, and that make others have fire in their belly’s and follow those stories within your limits.

You will know when you have spent enough time within them as you will have broken free from those initial limitations and found your own voice, you will have come so far that you will have pushed through those boundaries to make new creations, things people have never seen or felt before.

So the next time you wonder if you really do need that 35mm lens, or to change systems.. ask yourself.. are you already pushing the limitations of the things you already have surrounding you?

If the answer is no. Stick with it. Stay with it. Wait with it. Run with it.

You will find a way to use your limits. Bend them, shake them, move them.. just don’t give up.