When you shoot for a living,

"When you shoot for a living, you spend as little time in front of a screen as possible..."

by Ken Rockwell.

Andreas Feininger said

Andreas Feininger (French, b. 1905 - d. 1999), said


"Photographers — idiots, of which there are so many — say, “Oh, if only I had a Nikon or a Leica, I could make great photographs.” That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. It’s nothing but a matter of seeing, thinking, and interest. That’s what makes a good photograph. And then rejecting anything that would be bad for the picture. The wrong light, the wrong background, time and so on. Just don’t do it, not matter how beautiful the subject is."

Do you need 36Mpixel?

"Now have you noticed how camera makers try to get us to forget all this, since obviously with 36MP, we could crop so far that we don't need to buy any telephoto lenses!"


By Ken Rockwell.

Should you buy a Nikon D4?

"Simple: I earn my living with this every day, and in this highly competitive real world, if you're doing enough business to justify $6k for a small competitive advantage for the next few years, it's a no-brainer. In competition, sometimes only the slightest advantage is what wins the race."
and
"The professional advantage of the D4 has nothing anything to do with "picture quality," it's about getting the shot someone else won't."


In other words, if you are a pro and a D4 will make you do your work better, faster, etc. than the competition, then buy it.
Read the rest here (Monday 30 January 2012).

learning to take risks...

"It's all about learning to take risks. It's safest in the short term to work for someone else and let them take the risks for you, but long term, you're never going to get rich or famous working for someone else. Heck, when your employer loses the game, you all get fired anyway when he goes out of business, so why would anyone work for someone else? Laziness and fear, that's why, but that's another day's story."


Read the rest here.

"... few photographers ever master their medium. Instead they allow the medium to master them and go on an endless squirrel cage chase from new lens to new paper to new developer to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don't know what to do with it."


"... the task can be made immeasurably easier by selecting the simplest possible equipment and procedures and staying with them. Learning to see in terms of the field of one lens, the scale of one film and one paper, will accomplish a good deal more than gathering a smattering of knowledge about several sets of tools."


by Edward Weston.


Found it here.

The Pen and Your Signature

If I gave you my pen,

would you have my signature?

Of course not.

So if I gave you my camera,

would you take pictures that look like mine?

Of course not.

read the rest here :)

Your Camera Doesn't Matter

"It's always better to spend your time and money on learning art and photography, not by spending it on more cameras.

...

So why do the artists whose works you admire tend to use fancy, expensive tools if the quality of the work is the same? Simple:

1.) Good tools just get out of the way and make it easier to get the results you want. Lesser tools may take more work.
2.) They add durability for people who use these tools hard all day, every day.
3.) Advanced users may find some of the minor extra features convenient. These conveniences make the photographer's life easier, but they don't make the photos any better.
4.) Hey, there's nothing wrong with the best tools, and if you have the money to blow why not? Just don't ever start thinking that the fancy tools are what created the work."

Read the full post here (From Ken Rockwell).

Think about it the next time you want to buy a better DSLR :)

(Also, read a previous post of mine)