Toys

Last week Ariel Shanberg, friend and  executive director of CPW, and I journeyed down river to the city to attend PDN's Photo Plus Expo.  If you have never beheld the glory that is the Jacob Javits Center in full gladiatorial splendor you should start gathering your mental reserves for next year now.  Like visitors to a sacred shrine, we, the creative, circle within the glass walls like pilgrims to a photographic Mecca.

So many things to want.

When I teach photography I extol the virtues of various ideologies; "its only a black box with a hole", "the art is in you, it is the camera in your mind that is most important" and "if your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough".  I tell war stories of my first cameras, (rocks and Holgas), I channel Bob Ross with cryptic koans about bokeh.  All of this goes out the window upon entering the vast halls of The 'SPO.

Leaping up the stairs toward the main hall, I dream of the possibility that this time I will be the 10,000th customer and I will receive that free Canon 1DS Mark III super deluxe professional photographer's kit.  For now I will have be sated with the ubiquitous, (but free), swag bag displaying a logo that is seemingly larger than the bag itself.  Somewhere within these Tolkien halls is the thing that I need.  It will elevate my photography to that next level.   I will learn that one Photoshop technique that all the pros know but keep secret like a Mason's handshake.  After a few hours of searching, the reality of my economic situation rears it's ugly head.  I did not win the kit,  I did not find my grail and I am still not sure what layer comps are for.  I ask Ariel if he found it.  "No", he says, " but the guys from B&H told me where to get the good pastrami around here".

I will simply need to keep shooting with what I have.  True, I don't really need a 600mm lens,  yes - the 60" ipf9100 printer I lusted after would require Ariel to build me a new wing at CPW and I suppose the 10 foot beauty reflector I saw could not actually fit in my Dodge Neon.  I head home chanting the word Bresson over and over. At home I sooth my pounding purchasing urges by sticking up some of the gear posters I got at the 'spo above my bed like some photo geek pin-up.

I actually have an architectural shoot tomorrow that I am quite excited about, and nothing I saw in the city was going to help me with that.  It is a lovely structure.  I need to try and discover how I connect to it.  What about this subject makes me get weak kneed. Then I will figure out what I need to to do to capture that feeling with the tools I have.  In the end it is not so much about the tools but it is about understanding what you are feeling about what you are seeing.  It is after all 'a black box with a hole'.

Oh yea, there was one small extra piece of equipment I would need for the shoot.........

 If you're in town, come on down.