You may often listen to photographers’ questions asking which brand of camera that suits them to be a better photographer. Stop asking such question. Just use what you have in hand now. Go find great locations to shoot wherever it is and just take shots and snaps. Sometimes, people think that expensive camera makes images appear to be professional and such thought really prevents them to grow as great photographers.
It cannot be denied that we like using good camera and even use canon L series lens like most photographers do today. New expensive camera and lens are not the ones that create great photos. It is you who is capable of doing it. What about software applications for image processing like Photoshop, Light-room or Aperture? These will not be able to change a bad photo into a good one. But one thing for sure is that the software can help make your good photos possess better quality.
Buying a new camera will not make you a better photographer. It just makes you an owner of a brand new camera and that’s all. To be a better photographer, learn to see things using your perspectives as a photographer and try to maintain your originality and create your own style. Go and find outdoor places and do as many street-photography activities as you can. Make a sort of daily or weekly photography project. Set your own goal for yourself and the most important thing is to get out from your safety zone. Just shoot and take snip snap.
If you have done all of those steps above and the result of your photography is not enhanced, you may buy some accessories and instruments. And if your images get better and you already feel constrained and have some more budget to spend, maybe it is the right time for you to invest it on a new camera body or new lenses.
Most of photographers, who understand this concept well, own and use basic photographic equipments. Even when they actually become professional photographers, they keep using the same devices for a while. What is even funnier is the fact that clients usually have better cameras than those photographers. You may upgrade your equipments gradually along with the increase of clients you got. And of course, you have to be able to pay for it. Do not get yourself into debt and stuff.
Your first orientation and goal in photography is to enhance your ability. It is indeed true that camera with advance technology and expensive price can help you enhance the quality of your work, but you can actually do it when you have mastered the techniques of how to take good photos using your equipments that you have now. Every day, there are so many good quality images spreading on the internet. And most of them are taken by using hand phones or iPhone cameras. There are so many bad images which are resulted from expensive cameras.
You can try to visit photography forums or communities in your city. When they find a photo that they think is good, they will not ask a question like “what a good photo. What’s camera used to take it? After a beautiful piano performance in a concert, there is no one that will ask about the brand of the piano that was played.
The audiences will be moved by pianist’s play compared to the piano and other instruments used. And it is a fact. Just realize it that almost all legends in photography in this universe created their pieces using basic photographic devices or equipments. But they have one thing in common. Their masterpieces were created through passion, desire and vision. Inspirations can be obtained from everywhere, online, books on photography, and also from other photographers’ works.
Go and find inspiration but never think of copy their works. Build your own photography style. Style of your photography will come along with your vision, technical ability and experience. In order to make progress and to develop your ability, you need time. New camera will only make you look cool in front of others, but it will not lead you to your original style of photography.
Limitation is a challenge that can help you improve your technical ability in photography for example: if now you got 8 different lenses, you just have to bring one on hunting session. That one lens will help you see the world outside in a new way. Maybe now you just have one DSLR camera and a 50mm f/1.8 lens. So do not hesitate. Make some good quality images with that device.
By doing so, it will help you to improve artistic value of your works in the future. Our camera is our tool. Indeed, we are free to get obsessed by a new camera. We all do try to make improvements, but you need to stop whining and complaining and hoping for the arrival of new series from Nikon or Canon. Get out to streets and use what you have. That is the thing that can really make you into a better photographer.
