Reply interspersed. On 8/9/2012 8:13 AM, Igor Roshchin wrote:
It has been said many times that abundance of equipment can suppress the [necessity for] creativity. Or, maybe the opposite is correct: lack of proper equipments boosts up the creativity.
IMO - neither. You see, Igor, equipment is a tool, creativity is a state of mind (or even state of soul, if I may be so creative to put it this way :-) ). Consider this - in general people don't fly. Yet they take wonderful landscape photos. But if people could fly as easily as they walk, they might have been able to make even better landscape photos. Or may be not.
This guy, shooting Olympics with iPhones, has been feature in many news/blogs: http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2012/08/covering-the-olympics-with-three-iphones-and-some-binoculars/ Or see it with all photos at once: http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2012/08/covering-the-olympics-with-three-iphones-and-some-binoculars/?pid=3287&viewall=true Short link: http://goo.gl/bl2Qv
This person is excellent photographer. So, for him the gear is so much a tool that he knows how to get the best of it given his creative photographic idea. The tool does not pose a limit for him.
Of course, the fact that you have your top-notch DSLR doesn't forbid all this creativity. But it doesn't stimulate it either.
Whenever you learn your gear and get to know its limitations by heart then you become creative within these limits. So if one such person buys a new lens for a time being their creativity expands only to become again limited when they hit what they perceive as gear limits.
That is, if (like me for example) one is driven by one's gear, then one's creativity lives within gear's domain, so to speak.
If one's truly creative, one can do things that people like me couldn't possibly dream about although the gear we use may be very similar if not the same.
I still remember a lady with whom I worked between 1998 and 2000. At the time she was shooting with simplest film P&S camera, but boy, her photos were exciting and most enjoyable to look at.
The question remains open, - does too much gear hinder your creativity? What do you think?
Yes and no. If you're driven by your gear, then yes (see above). If you consider your gear a mere tool, then probably you're more creative to start with.
PS. My wife made a suggestion for the actual reason why this photographer decided to use 3 iPhones instead of his 3 (5? 10?) DSLRs: their office ran out of ponies that carry the heavy photo bags. So, he had to carry his gear by himself.
Indeed. I find it much more convenient to "lug" Ricoh GXR with 50 mm (EFL) lens module than any of my DSLRs. As of recently I have come to realize that I value size and portability far more than alleged and probably theoretical anyway (for me, that is) image quality. Ricoh GXR gives me excellent quality that I dare say may surpass my Pentax gear under certain circumstances (modulo this very photographer). So most certainly your wife, Igor, has a most valid point.
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