The camera as a tool.

Panoramic 617 film camera. Still works.

For anyone wanting to buy a used camera, I would always tell them never to buy one from a professional photographer. This is especially true of landscape photography, where cameras are subject to rain, mud, snow, and sand. My 617 panoramic camera, (now more tape than actual camera), has been dropped in the ocean, bounced off rocks, driven over by a jeep, and thrown out of a moving car (well actually dropped while trying to photograph a storm). The idea of spending tens of thousands on a camera and then going on a landscape jolly is something I prefer to avoid. No matter how careful you are, the wind may blow, or the tree limb snap when you least expect it. But at the end of it all, the camera is, first and foremost, a tool. It was never intended to serve as a pendant of wealth and prosperity, as some cameras often do.

The joy of photography will always come from creating something. From that special moment when we know we have something good, to seeing an image published, or on a gallery wall. I will always have a bee in my bonnet for camera manufacturers and their ploys to have you buy their latest piece of plastic. There is nothing worse than someone spending oodles on a camera because they believe it will make them take better photographs. Actually, there is; spending oodles on a camera and never using it.