My friend Charles had one of those dads. You know the type. Stoic. Pensive. A little surly with a furrowed brow and an impenetrable stare. I remember when we were all in high school, his favorite saying was “The poor craftsman blames his tools,” much to his son’s consternation. Charles would inevitably fire back, “Yeah, well you can’t build a space shuttle with Tinker Toys!”
Maybe it was my fondness for Tinker Toys. Maybe it was the simple truth of the statement. Whatever it was, that always stuck. Of course you can’t. But what can you do? You can shoot weddings with iPhones. That’s been done. And Ben Lowy can shoot conflict photography with an iPhone. And we know about Lomography and Polaroids and pinhole cameras and the like. You don’t need a whole lot of tools to get things done.
When I started taking pictures, you’d go for the 70-200 f/2.8. That was the easy way out. Pop it out to 200, drop it down to 2.8, add water and stir. Boom. You were an instant professional. Backgrounds didn’t matter, people were easy to frame, and bokeh did the rest. But it was big wad of money to lay down for some glass, so a lot of us just had to make due. Of course, now, you go for the tilt-shift. Not cheap, for sure, but in this day and age, almost everyone is willing to pay to play.
Which isn’t to say these things have no place. Charles had a point. Tools do matter. I’ve seen great shots with long lenses. I’ve seen beautiful work with tilt-shifts. And no one is going to say Crewdson would be Crewdson without his 8×10. But his father had a point, too. What matters is the knowledge. It’s about getting every little bit out of everything you’ve got. Always. Doesn’t matter whether it’s an iPhone, a Contax 645, a Golden Half Camera.
Creativity comes when when you’re forced to find solutions. If you have the vision and the tool is the way to get it done, don’t let resistance stand in the way of doing what you need to do. Some things need the work. But if you don’t have the vision and you want the tools, don’t let resistance stand in the way of learning to work with what you have. Some things need the work.
The real question to ask? Are you owning the tools? Or are they owning you?
Truth to be told it’s the bank that owns me…
There is a synergy between creativity and tools similar to the one between us and our billions of gut bacterias. Simple or complex, cheap or expensive, the tools are indispensable in putting down creativity’s message on one’s choice of media or support. One needs that piece of paper or canvas or lens or brush or pen or whatever to produce a record of their creative ideas, a record that can be shown and shared. Our progress as humans is based on that.