Kris D'Amico Photography

October 12th, 2009 by Kris

Recently I ran across this little article on the web:

Unfortunatley a Professional Photographer does need to invest quite some money on Pro Gear. If you are starting fresh to purchase everything new then you will be looking at no less than $7.000 for starters. It’s not just simply of buying a Camera Body and a few Lenses. Try two Camera Bodies, two Speedlights Flash Units are a must. Don’t wnat to let an important wedding go down the drain beacause you don’t carry spares? Oh, And don’t forget Insurance. An F1.8 Lense for a $100.00? Not seen one for that low of a price unless it is second hand. Not a Pro Lense or you where very lucky to gotten such a Pro Lense very cheap or perhaps it’s jusy a cheaper Lense anyway.

and a response:

I would disagree, but only slightly.
Starting out, the most important thing is developing your eye and understanding the differences between good and bad photography.
It’s possible to do good photography via polaroid. Whether or not you can find a niche to make money via a polaroid camera is another question.
My advise is to start slowly and try to photography your way out of the limitations of your equipment. Once you understand exactly what those limitations ARE, then you are ready to surmount them with new gear.

Originally posted on  MarketingTool.com.

So, let’s break this down.

One, we all know that a photographer needs a few crucial things to do their jobs. Not the least of which is a camera with a lens. Beyond that there is great debate, especially in the low and very high end photographers. Normally as a rule I don’t get involved in this debate, but I figured I open it up here just to see how you feel about it.

Let’s look at this a few different ways. First, for a person to be able to start a business from scratch for under $10k, well I don’t think that too bad for startup costs. There’s no formal training necessary, cameras are increasing easy to use and more and more accessible with the cost of digital chips  falling. So, from that standpoint anyone with a disciplined budget can be a photographer, right?

Now, let’s talk about what makes a good photo. We’ve all seen the flickr feeds and the tweets about “this photo is amazing” and shots that seemingly have no real direction or planning. But it was shot with an expensive camera and may be, from an equipment standpoint, a technically sound photograph. The we’ve also seen the opposite someone shooting with a kodak disposable camera taking an amazing image. So, knowing how to compose a shot in this instance, trumps the equipment.

Let’s think about a third way, what if that image that was wonderful that was taken by the kodak  was taken with a 50mega pixel hasselblad with a nice light kit? What then?

Anyway, just some food for thought!

P.S. – On a personal note, I think that those of us in the middle are too busy working to worry too much about if we’re shooting Leica or  Tamron. We just need the equipment to do it’s job and work. Incase you wanted to know my take on it.