THE CAMERA

“The camera doesn’t matter”

 

Foreword to all my non-Catalan or Spanish speaking friends:

This will be an English resume of my blog texts. Please by kind with me about my grammar skills, and never doubt in suggesting any correction for the mistakes you may find.

 

This is a sentence that, even if true, must be explained.

It’s obvious that, if there’s someone without knowledge or interest, no matter how good is the camera: good results won’t come.

But it doesn’t mean that the camera it is not important.

The camera is the link between the scene and the photographer, the tool that will allow the author to express himself.

Saying that “the camera doesn’t matter” is just an advertising slogan.

If we think about that from the professional side, is as if all pros who need to spend lots of money in expensive cameras are silly people.

From a personal side, an author side, the camera is a very important thing, with some features far beyond from the strictly technical.

People usually think about cameras from the technical side, forgetting that most technical features on most cameras are useless.

Technical features aside, I need to feel comfortable with my cameras; I need to like them, I need to feel them right on my hand. I love watching them, touching them, holding them… even hearing them: I love this smacking discreet sound of some shutters that act in my mind as Pavlov’s dog’s food: it keeps me concentrated, it confirms me that I got it. And it is not the same sound in all cameras…

Does that mean that I make better pictures with a camera or another? No. It just means that I feel like taking pictures even more than usual and, more important, I enjoy even more the fact of photographing, which implies being in touch with a magic box that is far more than a simple tool.

I love my cameras aging, looking the paint vanishing under the constant touch of my fingers… In other words, I love my cameras accumulating all experiences I have lived and registered with them. Something that is becoming harder in a world of plastics and electronics and planned obsolescence. More than a tool, my cameras are trip mates. This kind of mates who never fail.