Photography Gear Philosophy - No Such Thing as Best

If you are part of any Photography groups or forums you have most likely seen questions posted along the line of.

” Best lens for product… Go”

” What’s the best camera for portraits please”

” What is the best light for product photography”

You have probably also seen some of the sarcastic and unhelpful answers provided. I get it these questions can be annoying and repetitive, especially when they provide little information or context.

Let’s take a moment and think about this.

If you are wanting to know which direction to go when looking at adding some new gear to your kit you need to pause and take a moment to think what you want.

1. What problem do you need to solve. Maybe it can be solved without buying new gear?

2. What’s your budget?

3. What do you need the light to do for you?

Now to be fair you might not know the above when starting out but you can elaborate, show example images or explain what you are photographing to provide more information for the folk offering help to go off.

Now I you are commenting or replying on one of these posts don’t be a dick. If it bugs you just scroll on by.

If you do want to help may be point them in the right direction by suggesting they provide more information for people to go off.

It’s good to help people but sometimes they do need to help themselves / need a little guidance.

Remember. No such thing as best as we have simply too many variables to consider.

Thank you for reading.

Rick

What Is Portrait Photography? - My Thoughts & Philosophy

Portrait photography?  If we look a the basic definition on Wikipedia it is

A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant.

That said I feel that  portrait photography today has become more of just an image of a person or an image to follow a tread be that a technical one or one of post-production… instead of being an actual portrait of the person on set which has been crafted via collaboration, getting to know and breaking down the often larger than life persona that we all put up in today’s world (especially online).

We need to refocus on the making of a portrait and less on the technical or what the next person down the road is doing?  Trends will come and go but good colour and simple black & white will always be here to stay.  A good portrait shows part of the real person, a real moment. something genuine and it should in my opinion not need to rely on the postproduction to carry it forwards.

The hardest thing to learn in portrait photography is learning the psychology of it all and building relationships and rapport on set.  Sure we need the technical knowledge but that need to be nailed so it gets out of the way so we can focus on making the portrait.

I go into this in more detail in the video below and would love to hear your thoughts on this subject.

Thank you for reading and watching.

Rick