To Do or To Own? (or the Photographer’s Dilemma)

To Own or To Do is the photographer’s version of Erich Fromm’s dilemma posed in his famous essay, ‘To Have or to Be’. I don’t have the authority to talk about a complex topic such as the relationship between individual frustration or lack of accomplishment and compensatory or self-delusional behaviour. I would rather like to focus on how putting gear ownership over gear use affects the ability to take meaningful shots.

Like many fellow photographers, I have been affected by the Gear Acquisition Syndrome, which in my case has manifested itself not in a quest for a —whatever it means — ‘perfect image’ but rather a ‘prepper’ mentality. In other words, I stockpiled cameras, lenses, adapters, filters and so on in the hope of not having to complain about a lack of equipment should a specific need arise. This attitude may prima facie make sense: the more your arsenal is full of different gear, the more you can handle whatever comes your way. There are, however, some practical constraints that challenge this assumption.

The first one is, simply, the budget. One of the criteria to calculate the fees of an assignment is how much of the money goes to cover the equipments’ cost. It doesn’t take a PhD in math to understand that the higher the gear cost, the more one should work and/or charge for a job. And if the kit is going to change from time to time the photographer is entagled in a loop from which he will never escape. It would be more efficient to spend the money earned on other things, such as learning how to improve your visual style, which can raise your professional level. This leads to the second point.

Another problem with this attitude is how it relates to proficiency. Mastering a tool up to the level where its handling becomes second nature takes time. The more complicated is the hardware, the longer is the learning process. As far as photography is concerned, this issue is particularly relevant to lenses. While, indeed, learning to use the new button and joystick layout of a camera may take a  (relatively) short time, this is not the case with lenses and sensors. Sharpness, chroma, distortion and all the usual charcteristics used to judge the performance of a lens are only a fraction – a tiny one, indeed – of the overall knowledge necessary to get the best out of a lens. The aestethics of the results and how to achieve them, by contrast, takes more and more time because only a diuturnal real life use in the most diverse environments and shooting conditions can provide enough feedback to build knowledge from the experience.

Finally, it is worth remembering that it is not necessary to have the ‘best’ equipment to take good pictures – whatever that means. Depending on the nature of the assignment or the industry in which you are working, a tack-sharp photograph is not always a feature that, by itslef, makes it compelling enough to deserve payment. In my photography lectures, I always use three photographs – Tankman, The Falling Soldier and Napalm Girl – as examples where the narrative power of an image has nothing to do with expensive equipment.

Contrary to what one might think, the do-rather-than-own approach is also common among ‘amateurs’, i.e. those lucky photographers, often no less capable than ‘professionals’, who are free to choose when, what and how to take pictures without the pressure of deadlines and pending payments. Indeed, if one has chosen photography as a personal journey, it comes without saying that the his main goal is to take pictures instead of wasting time pixel-peeping an image or comparing this camera to that camera.

Finally, I’d like to make it clear that I see nothing wrong with collecting or trading equipment to learn how it’s made or how it works, even if you don’t use it in the field. Similarly, I think there is nothing wrong with collecting equipment for the sheer pleasure of owning it without knowing how to use it.

Of course, as long as you don’t break the bank.

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