Category: Photos

Cameras Don’t Take Photos

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

Cameras don’t take photos

I was at a friend’s wedding in my early 20’s, chatting to the official photographer while we awaited the bride. I commented that I wanted to save up enough money to replace my little Kodak Instamatic with a camera more like his. All he said, at first, was:

Cameras don’t take photos

I was shocked until he added:

People do.

He made the point that having a better camera will not improve your photos. Then he expanded his advice

Taking good photos is about composition and lighting. Learn to take good photos with your little Instmatic first. Then, when you’re happy with them, buy the best camera you can afford.

It was good advice that I transferred to the rest of my life. Learn to use what you have to the best of your ability. Then buy the best that you can afford.

It’s saved me a lot of money over the years.

In Search of Perfection

What’s something you used to worry about but don’t anymore?

Wanting to be perfect is not a bad thing. It helps us to always strive for improvement. But we still need to remember that we’re not perfect. We are going to get it wrong at times.

I used to worry about this. I wanted everything I did to be perfect, mainly because nothing I did ever seemed to please others. This was coupled with the common fallacy, “Good enough, isn’t (good enough).”

Then I came across two concepts that made me think.

The first was a building drawing for the carpenters. Having gone to great lengths to specify proper dimensions the architect’s drawing pointed to one piece of timber with the dimension, “Fit on site.” The exact dimension was to be adjusted by the carpenter, depending on what had been done previously, because building with bricks and mortar isn’t an exact, or perfect, science.

The second concept was the Pareto principle. 80% of the results come from 20% of the work. It means that we could be spending most of our time achieving very little.

And then it struck me. Just because we like consistency, it isn’t always necessary. Otherwise we would all look and act and speak the same. We would be robots. But what’s attractive about humans is the differences between us. We love those differences. We love not being perfect replicas of each other.

And suddenly, perfection didn’t matter so much any more. As someone pointed out to me, decades ago, a shirt that’s a perfect fit for one person will not fit someone bigger or smaller. Perfection is relative.

And now, I don’t worry about it any more. Yes, my perfectionist tendencies still make me feel bad, sometimes, especially in the face of negative criticism. But I’ve learned to take a step back and challenge my perfectionism. And it doesn’t worry me so much anymore.