I heard, or maybe read somewhere, that “Amateur photographers talk about equipment. . . Serious photographers talk about photographs!” Personally, I am much more interested in photographs than cameras. A camera is just a light-tight box that holds the lens and film.
Certainly it is important to have the proper tools in order to be successful at anything you attempt. Matters not whether you are building a bookcase, fixing a leaky kitchen faucet or making a photograph. But to obsess endlessly over your tool belt is not necessary. Think of it this way. You take your dream vacation to some really far away place you have always dreamed of visiting. Would you come back and tell everyone all of the details of where you visited, or would you go into excessive detail about the airplane that flew you there?
I defy anyone to look at a framed photograph hanging on the wall and tell me the camera, lens, film, or paper that was used. You would have to be a mind reader! Is the equipment necessary? Certainly! But equipment is only an apparatus necessary to reach an end. The camera is a tool, no more, nor no less, important than a wrench. All you really care about is that faucet in the kitchen stops dripping. Do you care about the name on that wrench?
What I care about is the finished photo on the wall. . . well. . . I have to admit that being out in the field searching for something to point the camera toward is also very important. But everything that goes on between those two moments is really of little interest to me, other than I having what I need to bridge the gap.
Time to start processing the film from the last trip to Utah. We spent 30 days on the road and photographed 20 days. That kind of working schedule generates a lot of LF and ULF film. Now comes the time to head to the darkroom for a little developing. Should take about 30 days to finish all of the film. Then we have to catalog and file, then proof to see what we have. Soon we will have some new film to start looking at with an eye toward making prints.
