Within the Frame: The Journey of Photographic Vision

Gear Is Good, Vision Is Better

Photographers, like few other kinds of artists I can imagine, have an insanely personal relationship with their gear. There is a geek factor with photography that I can’t imagine applying to painters or writers. We can’t help it if our craft is so dependent on gear, but it’s scary how quickly our gear becomes not the means but the end. One of my favorite authors, C. S. Lewis, once said something along these lines: it is the great temptation of storytellers to love the telling of stories more than the stories themselves. I’m paraphrasing, but I don’t think I’m at all far from the sense of what Lewis was saying. Applied to photography, I would rephrase it: photographers run the risk of spending more time thinking ...