On gear & editing

I’v heard many times that photography gear isn’t the most important aspect of a photographer’s expression, but I have to somewhat disagree. One can have lots of artistic yearnings, a great eye and talent, but if the camera is too basic, all the results would normally be quite basic. That isn’t to say that nothing can be used, but we do have limitations inherent to any particular model’s specs. 

Thus, despite some great artistic shots I had with my really basic webcam, back in my earliest experiences, I was limited by the lack of functionalities. 

Indeed, as you shall see in my upcoming series of moon photos, my first results were low-def and I had absolutely no control of exposure, as it wasn’t even included. In time, each of my 2 bridge cameras, both offering semi and full manual modes, allowed flexibility and control, resulting in sharper and clearer images.

The same goes with Lenses, be it my macro attachement, that is basic but expands my camera’s capacity, or other filters that one can add to improve the overall look of a photo. 

Then, comes additional tools, such as tripods, in a huge price range. I’ll discuss the details of my 2 models in a later post ; suffice to say that it’s not always easy to choose a tripod, not much more than a camera model, where we have to compare our budget to the functions we want to have, and those we are willing to forgo... 

I didn’t used to edit my photos, for quite a few years. Even though I have been editing them in the past few years, I don’t do so in a massive fashion. I work mostly on contrasts and luminosity, white balance, occasionally saturation of the photo or individual colors, and rarely anything else. This is because I try to be as truthful to what I could see, as I don’t wish to have unnatural looking results - for my own documenting needs. Each photographer is different, and many like to edit much further their images, and that is fine, as long as we the viewers know it, and aren’t lied about the true aspects of each image.

Since my main focus is nature, and even more specifically, macro-photography, and I don’t do portrait work except on rare occasions, the need for alterations such as the majority of fashion shoots on magazines isn’t there at all. I personally hate the fakery of these fashion photo-shopped images, which have caused many debates, subsequent to societal issues I won’t go into here, because I don’t really want to go into that debate at the moment.