So the other day at work a customer approaches the seafood counter and starts talking to Jake about shrimp. Or maybe it was flounder or squid. Who knows what it was they were talking about, my eyes were fixed on his hat: Nikon. I had little going on at the time, so I wandered over — “Nice hat!”
He asks if I’m a shooter—yes!
He then asks what I knew was coming—Nikon shooter?
“Negative, Canon.” I say (Lowkey worried this is where the conversation ends )
“No, that’s great!” he says.
He went on to say that he owns the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, and prefers that for portraits because he likes the way Canon does skin tones out of the box compared to his default Nikons. He wasn’t exactly sure what model Canon he had off the top of his head, which sort of blew my mind. But not compared to what came next.
“Your boys just bought RED you know!?” I said to him. He’s already shaking his head halfway thru my statement.
“I don’t care about any of that. What I care about is getting better as a photographer.”
Duty called me back to my end of the world, but he said he was going to look out for me the next time he came in.
“I don’t care about any of that. What I care about is getting better as a photographer.”
I’m not sure this fine gentlemen has any idea what kind of impact that statement had on me. Do I spend too much time giving a fuck about photography RSS feeds that don’t really matter at the end of the day? Do they only really serve as talking points to my photography friends—that do not exist? Don’t get me wrong, I have some very fine people whom I engage with online who definitely inspire me to be a better photographer just by the way they conduct themselves behind a lens. Regardless, this speaks directly to the downsides of not having real-life photographer friends who you are out with in the real world taking pictures with. People who do things to their camera that make you ask things like: “Why did you do that!?” or just the overall general exchanges in how they feel about their equipment, how they like to walk around and all of that.
I really need that in my life, but I don’t want to hang out with people who make me feel poor. Lone wolfing everything was a lot more satisfying when I was younger. It kind of sucks now. But we’re not here to sulk ourselves in any sort of ill-tempered manner. There are always benefits to everything and when those things are the most unclear, that’s probably because what is to be revealed is very large and we’re walking around looking for the tiniest of clues.