Philosophy

Philosophy is an interesting word, especially for me because, among the things that I’ve acquired along the way in life is a degree in philosophy. If anything, the study of philosophy taught me to question things. It’s that questioning, especially the questioning tradition, that has led to my irreverent exploration of photography tools.

When I talk to photographers who are more excited about their equipment than their photos, I am reminded of Plato’s story of people in a cave seeing the world only as shadows on a wall, not seeing the actual objects drawing the shadows. A photo tool is simply a tool to help make a photograph. If you can get something for a few dollars at the hardware store that gets the job done, or make a photo tool from items around the house, you can be just as successful, and accomplish the same task, as the photographer who spends a fortune on traditional photo industry tools.

This tutorial began as a series on my blog. As the series grew, I found I took great joy in sharing the tools, techniques, and experiences I’ve acquired during decades in my profession. The idea to expand the blog into a tutorial was also inspired by some of the alternative lifestyle catalogs that were published at the time I began my own career, catalogs that broke ground in the way people used things.

I should mention: No one paid me any money to use any of the tools in this tutorial. There is a mix of found objects and items that you can buy. I have included tools I already have, or scrounged stores for useful, non-traditional photo tools. If I felt I had exhausted a particular subject in a chapter, I took walks through the local or big box hardware stores for inspiration. Also, I have tried to include tools that have many uses or pertain to many types of photography and not ones with specific needs. I have even more irreverent, non-traditional tools than I’ve included, tools so unusual, or for one use only, that they didn’t make the final cut.

Some of the tools in this tutorial may even smack of traditional photo tools, and you might wonder what is irreverent about them. The irreverence comes either from the way I use them, or from the fact that they aren’t used in traditional photography as much as they should be. If I can steer my readers toward best practices for photography by demonstrating something they should be using but aren’t, I’ve also accomplished my goal to nudge you in the right direction.