Build a relationship with your gear

Like with many things in our life your car probably has a name like the ‘Hoonigan’ (ok maybe only if you’re Ken block, R.I.P), but the point is relationships are an important factor of our lives. Without relationships, our life is less rich and can become pretty boring.

So why is it then that you should build a relationship with your gear? Well, for the curious let me explain. When I started in photography I got very frustrated whenever I forgot to change a setting back or when something didn’t work. In most cases, I lit my short fuse and started screaming and kicking non fixed objects. And it stressed me out and didn’t make me any happier. Fact and truth is, it happened because I was an idiot and it was only me to blame. But I didn’t stop there. You see, like Sebastian Vettel who named one of his F1 cars (Geili Kyle <— German way of writing it!) I started to name my camera Nikon.

Wow pretty original right? Anyways, besides the fact that I build a relationship it helped me to calm down more as I treated my camera as my coworker. And that in return helped me to have a conversation with the camera. No, I wasn’t talking to it, don’t be ridiculous! But it helped me to go through the settings in my mind and it would go like this. OK, last night I shot with exposure compensation and the ISO was dialled up pretty high, right now it’s midday so I need to make sure that the settings from last night are not activated anymore, because that would make my photos look really bad.

Eversincethen I’ve never had an issue with forgetting to change any shooting settings back to normal before I shoot another thing. And that’s why you should also build a bond with your gear. And a tip at the end. If your camera has an issue, stroking and whispering sometimes seems to fix things ;)

Happy shooting everybody.