Marco Ryan – Travel and Landscape photography
I learned the hard way this week that it really isn’t about the kit. It really is about the years of experience, the years of study at the school of hard knocks, and a relentless pursuit of excellence.
I wrote recently how through a combination of factors my 5Dmk2 and f2.8 70-200 lens and I had parted company, with the kit bouncing on the pavement rather than resting securely in my Cotton Carrier.
What made it all the more galling was that I was out with Matt Brandon and his daughter Jess (She will be one to watch in a few years as she has an amazing eye for composition aged 13!) that day, having some amazing one on one tuition, getting some fantastic opportunities for some compelling images and benefiting from Matt’s encouragement and advice.
Matt had made me go out with the two lenses I was least comfortable with – for me the f2.8 16-35mm and the f2.8 70-200mm. Normally my default lens is the 24-70mm. Suddenly I was down to one lens, and not one that I would normally have picked as my main lens for a day’s shooting street portraits and the inside of temples.
Matt is just incredibly patient and generous with his time and his insights. Having conformed that the camera and lens were in need of repair (see photo), he took me to Georgetown in Penang, where the endless stalls, temples and sights made for some great earning opportunities.
About an hour or so in, he could see that I was getting frustrated and wisely was ignoring my increasing whinges about not being to get the tight composition I wanted because I didn’t have the right lens.
He stopped me and quietly swapped my 16-35mm lens with his 85mm f1.2 lens and said “try this”. Wow what a difference. What a lens. Now I could go and get those images taken…or so I thought.
I shot away getting some exciting compositions and back-lit photos, marvelling at the flexibility that this lens gave in low light. I walked over to Matt to show him a couple of images.
“Nice – that one’s a keeper”, he said. “Have a look at this”. You can guess what was coming, can’t you.
I looked at the image on his screen, taken with my 16-35mm lens. Wow! A compelling image, with amazing light, awesome composition, back-lit and tack sharp. The shot that I had been trying to take all morning! Matt smiled and slowly walked away to carry on shooting. No criticism, no sarcasm, no negative comment – that’s just not his style. Just a smile and a point well made. It not about the kit, its about the photographer’s ability to make the kit do what he wants. Lesson learned!
When I got back that evening and looked at the images I had taken with Matt’s lens, I realised I still needed a good helping of humble pie! Of the 30 or so images that I had shot with his f1.2 85mm lens, only a couple were potential keepers. I had underestimated the incredible precision of a lens with an f1.2 focal length and its impact on the depth of field. Sure, I knew it was going to be completely different from my f2.8 lens, but even selecting a singe eye to focus on resulted in the other eye being out of focus!
It just goes to show that it really isn’t the gear or the expensive lens that makes the difference. It’s the photographer. I know now why the likes of Matt (hard at work to the left!), Gavin Gough, Jeffrey Chapman and David duChemin are for ever re-enforcing this point but sometimes this is just one of those lessons you need to learn the hard way, to help re-calibrate your own confidence and capabilities and to make you focus on what you really need – experience.
Matt had proved to me with my own kit, that the shot was there to be made. It just required vision, great craft and more experience. We laughed about it later, but maybe the expression should be “graft and vision”, rather than “craft and vision”! Either way, when the camera is back, I know what I am going to do… practise, practise, practise!
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Good post. Loved the humility.
Great post, great thoughts. Although it can be exciting to get new gear, sometimes even motivating, most often we just need a new take on what we have. Like Scott Bourne says, “99% of all lenses are better than 98% of all phtographers.”