Photography - The Gear, The Craft, and The Voice - Part One

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Photography: The Gear, The Craft & The Voice — Part One

Every photographer inherits a definition of good before they've earned one. This episode is about where that definition actually comes from, why gear ends up being the evidence of it, and why the real question was never which camera to buy.

Patrick walks through camera store tribalism, the teachers nobody asks to have (YouTubers, algorithms, magazines, the guy at the counter), a British portrait photographer who rewired how he thought about images during a COVID-era Clubhouse call, a viral coffee photo he's since made peace with, and why he was wrong to blame Canon for any of it. First of a three-part series on gear, craft, and voice.

In this episode:

• The quiet neurosis of buying a new camera, and the specific lie it tells you
• Why brand loyalty (Canon vs. Sony vs. Fuji vs. Leica) is never really about the gear
• The trend history nobody wants to own: shallow depth of field, HDR, orange and teal, drone reveals, LUTs, AI skin
• Tom Hoops and the conversations that happened on Clubhouse during lockdown
• A photo Patrick made that went semi-viral, and what he now understands about why
• Why "gear doesn't matter" and "gear matters" are both the wrong question
• What actually changed his relationship to his own cameras, four to five years in the making

Mentioned in this episode:

• Tom Hoops, portrait photographer — tomhoops.com / @tomhoops on Instagram
• Peter McKinnon — YouTube
• Casey Neistat — YouTube
• Jared Polin (FroKnowsPhoto) — YouTube

Resources

APA (Advertising Photographers of America) Find your local chapter at apanational.org

The Book Lessons From a Terrible Photographer

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Podcast written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore.
Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions.
Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.