Crackpots #42: Gear Guys (Patreon)

Yung Chomsky here. Today I have some thoughts on Gear Guys. Gear Guys come in many flavors — and I should note at the top here that while I think Gear Guys skew male, they can be any gender. A Gear Guy is someone whose participation in a hobby or creative practice is more focused on buying, selling, trading, and discussing equipment than it is on actually using it. Many different fields can spawn Gear Guys; there are Gear Guys for music, fashion, cycling, cooking, photography, shooting, you name it. As long as there’s expensive equipment and technical specifications to memorize and compare, there will be Gear Guys arguing on forums, trawling eBay, or sending DMs asking for IDs. A closely related phenomenon is Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS): This is the disease of the Gear Guy that leads him to believe that what holds him back from success, satisfaction, or true self-expression is lack of the right Gear, and his next purchase holds the key to his happiness.

The Gear Guy isn’t totally misguided. It’s good to develop a deep understanding of your tools and their capabilities. It makes sense to witness an impressive performance and wonder how it was done. Asking someone what camera they use, or what type of synth they play, or who made their shoes, is a reasonable enough conversation-starter. But when we start to focus on the gear to the exclusion of the activity the gear is ostensibly for — which , I would be remiss not to mention, is facilitated by a massive and ubiquitous advertising apparatus — we miss the forest for the trees, and lose connection with the inspiration and wonder that got us hooked in the first place.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about this a lot in relation to photography. There’s an interesting contradiction of sorts at play here. As of 2024, 91% of Americans said they owned a smartphone, and most people who own a smartphone use it to take photos. Modern smartphone cameras are an incredible feat of engineering from both a hardware and software perspective, able to capture clear images in a wide variety of conditions, with an extremely small physical footprint and a very low skill floor. But is everyone who takes a picture with their phone a photographer?

I don’t think most people see it that way; I know I didn’t used to. When a new phone generation came out, I used to get excited at the idea of getting it and improving my photos. But when I got my hands on it, I was usually disappointed by the results. The photos didn’t seem to look much more beautiful or interesting than before. Was I just being suckered by the marketing? I’d lose interest pretty quickly, reverting to my standard attitude towards photo-capture, the one I think most smartphone users operate in. With hindsight, I eventually realized that I had been taking photos more like evidence than art. My photos said: I was here. I saw this person, place, or thing. I’d take a picture of a landscape the same way I’d take one of a parking spot that I wanted to find my way back to. Many aspects of smartphones’ default camera software facilitate this approach, but ultimately the device is just a tool, and it can be used in many ways.

I remember the vague skepticism I felt in the not-too-distant past when I’d hear someone talk about the composition of a photo. What do you mean, “composition?” It’s not a painting; these things were already there, and you just took a picture of them! The camera did all the work. I felt similarly when people would talk about “styling” an article of clothing. They’re just wearing it! While it’s true that these terms can be applied too liberally, particularly by influencers or the influencer-aspiring, they do have meaning. Put very simply: photo composition is about the arrangement of objects within the frame. Small changes in vantage point, angle, and timing can make huge differences in the end result. (Styling clothing is about combining one article with others, plus myriad small decisions like which buttons to fasten or leave undone, whether to roll the sleeves, and so on.)

My mindset started to shift when I bought a film camera, around 5 years ago. I didn’t really know anything about film or photography, I just thought it would be a fun new thing to try. I walked into a camera shop and said I wanted something affordable and easy to use. I walked out with a Canon AF35ML, from 1981. I read the manual, but there wasn’t much to it. The camera has almost no controls; its exposure and focus settings were entirely automatic. There were a few frames that I liked in my first few rolls of film, but they were mostly disappointing. Here’s where I think the simplicity of the camera helped me arrive at an important realization sooner rather than later; my problem wasn’t my technical skill, but my attitude. I was approaching pictures with this camera the same way I did with my phone. I wasn’t thinking like a photographer because I didn’t think of myself as a photographer.

And so I decided to commit to the bit. I started taking my time, choosing my shots more carefully, taking more notice of light and shadow. I started learning to see differently. Because although taking a photo, or mixing a song, or putting an outfit together all involve technical know-how — understanding exposure, or signal processing, or color theory — being consistently good at these things is a perceptual skill. The key is being able to see or hear in a specific way.

Try this as an exercise: take a photo with your phone, or whatever you have handy. Then open it in any photo editing software and start adjusting a slider, like contrast or saturation. Move the slider slowly and pay close attention to how it changes. What do you see? How are different parts of the image affected? Could you give a clear explanation of what’s happening without using the name on the slider? You can try the same thing with audio. Record a simple track and then add an EQ or a compressor. What happens when you change the settings? Can you identify it by ear without relying on the screen?

I find the iPhoneography (a portmanteau of iPhone + photography) subreddit illuminating in this regard. There’s an incredible range on display there; a lot of really terrible photographs alongside some beautiful ones. It’s not surprising that the average quality on the iPhone subreddit is lower than, e.g., the analog photography subreddit. Shooting on film has a higher barrier to entry, so people who do it are more likely to be passionate about photography than someone who has an iPhone and happens to take photos with it. But I think the way in which the bad iPhone photos are bad is instructive. It’s not that they’re poorly exposed, or out of focus, or too noisy. The iPhone takes care of all of that. The bad photos there are bad because they’re boring. They lack a clear subject, a story, an interesting perspective. They look like evidence, not art. I think this comment puts it well. But I don’t want to pick on the bad ones — here are some iPhone photography posts that impressed me: one, two, three.

Apart from lacking a subject, another common thread I’ve noticed with disappointing photos is failure to consider the frame. Frank Zappa apparently called the frame the most important thing in art, and I think he was onto something. I was thinking about this recently after getting a roll of film developed. Occasionally I’ll hand my point-and-shoot to someone and ask them to take a picture of me. When I see the results, I’m puzzled as to why my friends and family compose photos so awkwardly. Then I realized that it’s because they were simply lining up the focal point — my face, in this case — face dead center, like this:

They were thinking about the focal point, but not about the frame, the composition. So the photo would end up with my feet cut off, and a bunch of empty space above my head. Photographers use the term headroom to talk about this. It seems really basic and obvious in hindsight, but it wasn’t too long ago that it wouldn't have occurred to me to think about it at all.

iPhone photographers often get hung up on which app is the best for taking photos. Fujifilm users are always asking for “recipes,” i.e. the combination of settings that creates a specific look. It’s not that these things don’t make a difference, but the more I learn, the more I realize that the most important ingredients in a photo aren’t the camera, or the app, or the settings, but the subject, the lighting, the vantage point, and the timing of the shutter. I thought that this post, comparing images of the same subjects taken on cameras from 2005, 2013, and 2018, drives that home pretty nicely. There are definitely differences between them, but they’re subtle. That’s good news because it means you can take great photos with almost any equipment; it’s bad news because it means you have to spend a lot of time practicing if you want to take one.

Some miscellaneous thoughts before I wrap this up: this site is a really cool interactive simulation of the exposure triangle. The various photography subreddits are nice; I see a lot of beautiful stuff on r/analog. I get a kick out of Ken Rockwell’s site; I like its 90s-style simplicity, and his crank opinions. I’ve been following more photographers on twitter, which has made my timeline less obnoxious. A few I like: @susogarc, @WunderJp, @hinamin012, @marvinj_lee, @viewfinderthis. I liked this blog post about photo composition. And finally, here are some photos I've taken this year that I'm happy with:

iPhone 15 Pro

Canon AF35ML | Ektar 100

Canon AF35ML | Portra 400

Canon AF35ML | Tri-X 400

Fuji X100VI

Until next time,

YC