In December I flew to New York because I was tired of fighting my camera.
I had just finished photographing an event where too many frames missed focus for reasons I still couldn’t fully explain. My Nikon Z7 II never really felt trustworthy to me, even paired with lenses I genuinely liked using. Instead of thinking about the photographs, I spent most of the event thinking about whether the camera was going to cooperate. By the end of it I was done. I booked a flight, packed my 100-400mm to trade in, and headed to B&H hoping I would leave with something that finally felt right.
While I was in NYC I rented a Mamiya 7, one of those bucket-list cameras I had wanted to use for years. I loved parts of it immediately. I also hated parts of it immediately. The shutter release was so sensitive that brushing against it could cost a frame before I even realized what happened. It felt delicate in a way that was exciting right up until it wasn’t. It also helped me make one of my favorite 6x7 frames ever.
I also spent time with a friend going through the small mountain of cameras in his apartment. We passed around an Olympus XA, a Fujifilm X-E5, and a handful of other cameras that all seemed to promise a different way of working, a different rhythm, maybe even a different version of photography itself.
I didn’t end up buying anything while I was in New York, but within a couple months of getting home I bought a Nikon Z6III anyway.
By March I was already second-guessing the decision. I found myself looking sideways at Fujifilm bodies, Sony rangefinder-style cameras, Sigma lenses that made me drool. The cycle had already restarted. Around the same time I bought not one but two Olympus XAs because apparently one tiny rangefinder-shaped distraction was not enough.
Now it is May and I am digging through every corner of the internet looking for vintage lenses. Adapting old Minolta glass to the Z6III. Hunting for good copies of the Carl Zeiss Biotar and all of its strange descendants. Looking for swirly rendering, bubble bokeh, imperfections that feel more alive than technical perfection.
And in all that time I have barely made any photographs.
That has been the uncomfortable realization sitting underneath all of this. I kept treating the next camera, the next lens, the next rendering style like it might finally make me feel ready. Make me feel something. But readiness was never really the problem. The problem was fear. Gear acquisition gave that fear somewhere to hide.
I have a portrait project in mind called Critters, something small and personal, and I still have not started it. Every excuse sounds practical when I say it out loud: I do not know exactly what I am doing yet. I need the right lens. I need a better approach. I need more time to think about it.
But none of that is really true. I just need to make the work and let myself be bad at it for a while.
The strange part is that I already know most photographs fail. That has always been true. The photographers I admire made thousands upon thousands of frames to arrive at the handful people remember. Bad photographs are not evidence that you should stop. They are usually evidence that you are working. That you’re trying something novel. That you’re learning. And that you’re present.
I need to let the bad photographs happen instead of trying to purchase my way around them. Gear Acquisition Syndrome was never about the gear. It was a way of hiding from the fear of making bad photographs.