“You must have a great camera”. Anyone who’s even remotely into photography has probably heard that a lot. At first glance it sounds like a very innocent thing to say, and indeed it usually is said very innocently, but think about it a little more carefully and you’ll see it’s actually very insulting. It really is equivalent to telling an engineer that he must have a very good calculator or a painter than he must have a very nice brush! It actually boils down to: “your shots are nice because you have expensive kit”.

I’ve never heard this said with any malice at all. It’s completely down to the fact that most people have no idea what goes into shooting a great photograph. They consider all photography to be a point-and-click affair and that great photographers get great pictures because they have a great camera to point-and-click with. That could hardly be further from the truth. A great shot is the result of a lot of skill before the shutter is even pressed. Obviously a good photographer has to have an eye for detail, for composition and for the mood they want to capture. But there’s often also hours of waiting for just the right light, or in the case of transient events, months of planning and waiting. Once the shutter has been pressed then the pain-steaking post processing begins. The tweaks are often immensely subtle but they make all the difference in the world. Tweaking the white balance so everything looks just right, pushing those curves ever so slightly so you get good contrast across the dynamic range of the image, dodging and burning ever so slightly so the subject really stands out and so on and so forth.

After all that it’s no wonder you get a shot that looks fantastic! The thing is, the big factor was not the camera! A good photograph has almost nothing to do with the camera, and almost everything to do with the photographer. Bear that in mind before complimenting a photographer’s camera rather than their craftsmanship!