Thoughts on minimalism and photography

The end is near!

The end of my quest to remove clutter from my house is near.  For the last few weeks I’ve been trying to remove clutter from my house.  I started with the low hanging fruit, the items I haven’t used in over a year.  I haven’t brewed beer in a year, so I sold my beer brewing equipment to my brother for $70.  I have dropped off books at a charity.  I have donated clothes to charity.  Now I’m getting to the tougher decisions.  I have golf clubs, that I haven’t used in over a year, but I do enjoy playing, and when I do play, it’s pretty expensive to rent clubs, plus they are never very good.  Mostly however, I’ve only played pitch and putt for the last couple of years, so maybe I should just keep the pitching wedge and the putter and sell the rest?  Or is it just simpler to sell the full set and rent the 2 clubs when going to play pitch and putt.  In the past I would keep the clubs in the trunk of my car, but for the last two years I didn’t have a car so they sat in my house.  Now, I have a car again, but the trunk has a stroller in it most of the time, and we’ve added a baby backpack to the trunk as well.  I also have a bit of camping equipment stored underneath my bed.  I have a 2 person tent, a sleeping bag, a Thermarest, and an internal frame backpack.  Most of this stuff I use maybe once a year, so I think it is worth keeping, although with the addition of my daughter, it might be best to sell the 2 person tent, and get a bigger, more “family” sized tent next time we go camping, unless I can borrow one.  I’m very conflicted about what to do about these last few items.  But the good news is, these are the last couple of decisions i have to make.  The house is much much cleaner now, and there is just less crap lying around.  Removing the clutter has felt like removing a weight from my shoulders.  In the future, we might move to a smaller apartment, but I think we’re relatively well prepared now.

Can minimalism and photography mix?

From what I can tell, most professional photographers have a large set of equipment.  Most have one or two camera bodies, many lenses, many flashes, stands, tripods, and a bunch of other gadgets.  So, can someone be a successful photographer and not have a huge assortment of equipment?  I’ve been thinking about what would be my optimal set of equipment.  What would it contain?  I think for the most part, a photographer could get by with:

• One quality camera body
• One quality wide angle zoom lens (around 12-20mm, something fast, sharp)
• One quality standard zoom lens (in the 35-85mm range, fast, sharp)
• One quality telephoto zoom lens ( 85-200mm, fast, sharp)
• One light, stable, and compact tripod
• One or two good flashes, as they are relatively small
• One great bag to store all that equipment

I don’t think this is such a big set of equipment.  I have most of those pieces already and most of them fit in my Crumpler camera bag.  I don’t have the highest quality lenses or camera by any means, but they are a good starting point. Now of course, acquiring all of that quality equipment will take a LOT of cash.  But I think you can build the set out over time.  Pick up one piece at a time.  Start with a decent body, then buy one nice lens at a time.  For me, I think my next step is to pick up a flash since I don’t have anything other than the on-camera flash.  I need to have one to play with, and experiment with. After that, I’d like to pick up that quality wide angle lens.

I think it can.

I think this is a fairly limited set of equipment for a professional photographer.  I understand the desire to have backup equipment in case something breaks.  For the most part, I think you’re better off with just the one camera body.  Maybe if you are doing a shoot with a model, and a rented location, and things of that nature, you might need backups on hand.  If your only camera was to break everyone would be left sitting there, and you’d be out a lot of cash.  That’s not at all the type of photography I want to do.  I prefer being out in nature and traveling.   I’ve seen some photographers use two camera bodies so they can quickly switch between wide angle and telephoto.  I do admit this is by far faster, and keeps you from having to switch lenses so much.  In my mind, minimalism requires you to make trade-offs like this.  If you don’t have a car, you have to walk more places, or take public transportation, or ride a bike.  You make the trade-off between convenience and saving money.  This is the trade-off between convenience and compactness.  Sure it would be convenient to carry all that in the case that you might need it, but it also limits the places you can go.  If you are carrying twice as much stuff, how far do you really want to hike?  Can you quickly carry your equipment onto the plane? Or do you need your assistant to help you out?  I’m willing to make those sacrifices.

Todays picture is of my mother, and my daughter.  It was taken with my kit lens, the 18-55mm that came with my D5000.

42mm, f5.3, 2/5 second, ISO 200