I was thinking about why photography is a different thing for me than any other instance of buying things and then getting bored of them quickly and not feeling anything for them.
You see, with photography, there is indeed that brief rush of getting the new lens or a camera. However, I don’t actually start feeling anything for the gear until after I’ve made some really good pictures with it. And then, it’s something different – I love the gear, but that’s completely detached from physical possession. It becomes something else – not a physical object that I own, but part of the creative process that made something I love.
This, for instance, was made with 35mm negative film – Kodak Gold 100 or 200, I think. Minolta X-300, MD 35-70mm f/3.5 lens. I still remember the moment I took it; sometime in early 1999, I think, on Sljeme. I love it; it brings me back there instantly, and the colours turned out so good, I never really repeated anything as good with the primroses. But I no longer own that camera, or the scanner, and I no longer shoot film. It doesn’t matter. The equipment, the moment, the motive and everything are tied together in the picture in ways that transcend equipment ownership.
This was taken with the Olympus E-1 and ZD 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5, my first proper digital camera, after the abortive attempt that was Fuji S602z. It had such wonderful colours, the first digital camera that produced colours that matched slide film in my perception. I love the results. I sold both the camera and the lens during hard times when I needed the money for the bills. By today’s standards, it’s completely obsolete. I have great memories with it, though, and great pictures. Would I buy it again? No. The feeling and the memories are detached from ownership; having the camera wouldn’t change them.
I made this with the Soligor SR-300md camera, MC 50mm f/1.4 Rokkor lens, on Fuji Sensia 100 slide film; scanned with Minolta Dimage IV film scanner. E6 slide film no longer exists as a technology; it is lost to time. I can remember pausing Romana, taking the picture, and then letting her eat it. It was in Dotrščina, I don’t remember the exact year, but during the time I owned that film scanner, and I sold it to finance buying Olympus E-1 in 2004. I love the picture, the atmosphere and the colours. The chemical process that allowed me to make it is lost to me and I can never retrieve it; and yet, I have no regrets, no nostalgia. The image and the achievement are divorced from the process that made it possible.
I took this one on one of the Medvednica peaks after we completed the hike to the top; Strmopeć, with Canon 5d and the EF 15mm f/2.8 diagonal fisheye, in 2010. The memory is very much alive, and that camera helped my not only make many great pictures, but also helped me learn completely new styles of photography, it completely pulled me out of my former habits. I let it go without regrets, because the achievement and the memories are detached from the actual physical camera that made them. There’s the idea of it, the feeling of it, but that feeling is me.
This was taken with my current camera, the Sony A7RV and the FE 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 GM lens. I love both the camera and the lens, but the idea about them is very different from the physical object on my desk. The idea about the camera are the moments when I took the pictures like this one, and I’m there, in that moment, in the golden part of the sunset at Plitvička Jezera, atop the mound overseeing the lake. Sure, I know I had the camera and the lens with me, but the idea about the camera in my mind is what it helped me make. It’s not the physical object, or connected to the ownership thereof. They are always with me, even if the physical object that made them was lost to the sands of time.
That’s what makes photography different – it’s not a gear acquisition thing, although acquisition of gear makes it possible. The good part doesn’t start when I click “buy” or when the courier delivers it, or when I unpack it. It starts when I make the first good photo with it, and it doesn’t fade when the novelty expires. It stays with me forever.