If you're at all like me, your thought process when it comes to gear probably involves a constant battle in your mind between remembering that it doesn't matter as much as we pretend it does and drooling over that new body, because holy cow, it shoots so many frames per second and has enough dynamic range to shoot the sun and the inside of a dark cave in one exposure. Here are five things to think about instead the next time gear pops into your head.
Coming to you from Francisco Joel Hernandez, this great video gives you five concrete things to think about to improve your work instead of gear. When I first started out, I was obsessed with equipment and spent hours upon hours agonizing over which body and lens were the right choice, which filter to buy, etc. The result was that my portraits and landscape shots looked like I had no idea how to interact with people or compose a shot. In a strange plot twist, it turned out that I had no idea how to interact with people or compose a shot. I could rattle off specs all day, but I could not take a photo. And don't even get me started on my retouching back then (friends don't let friends touch the clarity slider). Once I started worrying about what really goes into an image, I became much better. I still like to geek out about gear, but nowadays, that's just the tech passion in me, rather than the belief that it'll suddenly make my images spectacular.
"In a strange plot twist, it turned out that I had no idea how to interact with people or compose a shot." If you decide to give up on photography, you're a very adept writer! :-)
Why thank you! :)