Deardorff38
Mentor
I'd guess most of us here have more gear than we need. Spinning off Benjamin Marks' question "What gear would you buy with a $15,000 gift?"
I'd ask, "How would you best use a gift of $15,000 USD, to further your photographic dreams......without buying equipment?"
I'd ask, "How would you best use a gift of $15,000 USD, to further your photographic dreams......without buying equipment?"
Mute-on
Well-known
Since I am most interested in photographing architecture, cityscapes and landscapes, there is only one possible answer … travel.
Europe, Japan, UK to start. Keep some $ for prints and framing. Done.
Europe, Japan, UK to start. Keep some $ for prints and framing. Done.
Benjamin Marks
Mentor
I
Deardorf: If gear were excluded, I'd go with travel too. The cost of travel is one thing. The cost of not working, though, that's another.
neal3k
Well-known
I am getting too old to do much travel other than the local area, but I would love to give the full amount to photography programs for young people. The hobby has meant so much to me that I would like to enable others to experience the joy of photography.
JohnGellings
Well-known
That is easy for me. Publish a book. Either my work, if I can edit a project well enough. Or even, maybe someone else's and try to start a little photobook company. It is one thing to spend $300 on making a nice run of zines. It is another if $15,000 is available to directly support the dream. A bit more serious. I'd love the chance even if only to fail.
Deardorff38
Mentor
Travel is the obvious one (& one of my favourites), other options could be: print and frame for an exhibition, attend a printing workshop (Alan Ross?), attend a photographic workshop w/ (Peter Turnley? Cuba/Paris/New York)...... others? I'm heading back to the Dolomites at the end of August even without the $15,000.
tcmx3
Established
I'd spent 45 dollars on a copy of Larry Towell's Mennonites and 14,955 dollars on new Leicas.
tcmx3
Established
forgive me for my satirical post, for I am still awed how some people simply refuse to play the game in front of them.
my real answer is that I don't need almost any of that money to improve at photography. one needs a library card and access to the internet. improving at photography involves looking at photographs, introspecting about them, developing your theory as to why theyre good or not, reading other people's theories, looking at more photos, so on and so forth. by repeating this cycle, you expand your understanding. add that into taking photographs and applying the same scrutiny to them, and one day you might take some good ones.
travel, workshops, printing your work, etc. are great and all but I'm skeptical to their value when it comes to improving ones photographs. they do enrich your life and maybe if you want to catalog that your photographic dreams would come true but real talk for me personally I like taking photographs as an activity and the cataloging life part is just an externality.
my real answer is that I don't need almost any of that money to improve at photography. one needs a library card and access to the internet. improving at photography involves looking at photographs, introspecting about them, developing your theory as to why theyre good or not, reading other people's theories, looking at more photos, so on and so forth. by repeating this cycle, you expand your understanding. add that into taking photographs and applying the same scrutiny to them, and one day you might take some good ones.
travel, workshops, printing your work, etc. are great and all but I'm skeptical to their value when it comes to improving ones photographs. they do enrich your life and maybe if you want to catalog that your photographic dreams would come true but real talk for me personally I like taking photographs as an activity and the cataloging life part is just an externality.
agentlossing
Well-known
Put it in my savings account, so I'd have a bit less apprehension about the future and ask for more time off to enjoy photography.
boojum
Mentor
I am retired, twenty-five years now, and can get by on my resources meager though they be. I could travel. I'd like to gather more images of the fishing business here in Astoria. I started making a book and sent an early proof to the harbor master as a courtesy. His response was to lock as many gates as he could in the harbor. Rather than seeing a book of images as a possible plus he saw it as a definite minus. We have had a run of folks like this as harbor masters. One cost the harbor a million dollars for his foolishness in a lawsuit with the federal government over his faulty dredging. He eventually pleaded guilty and the town was still "good old so and so." It gets even worse when you drop down a level. Small town politics and chicanery. Unpunished so it goes on.
As for the $15,000 not to be spent on cameras and camera gear, the usual: black cigars, loose women and strong drink. LOL
This is a lo-fi PDF of the offending and subversive document.
As for the $15,000 not to be spent on cameras and camera gear, the usual: black cigars, loose women and strong drink. LOL
This is a lo-fi PDF of the offending and subversive document.
Attachments
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DownUnder
Nikon Nomad
Traveling. It's by far the best education one could ever want, in every area of life. especially photography.
Tomorrow I am off to Southeast Asia again. I stay several months at a time in Indonesia where I work on volunteer projects (where I pay entirely my own way) and do occasional travel around that country and in neighboring places as well. What I do - animal rescue and English teaching to underprivileged kids - is not directly involved with photography, but it ranks high on my personal satisfaction rating, and it gives me many fine opportunities to do photography. I do all this on a limited income, from my pension, savings, a frugal lifestyle, and an understanding partner who keeps the home fires burning while I'm away. So for me, life's as good as it can get.
In July I will be in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) to look at new things, mostly Dayak longhouses which are now vanishing from the landscape at a dizzying rate. With maybe a side trip to the big hole in the rain forest where the new capital, Nusantara, may someday see the light of day. In August I will visit Solo and Yogyakarta in Central Java with friends, and maybe the Dieng plateau to see old mountain temples.
I try to do all this on a reasonable budget, and so far I seem to have succeeded. But in Asia, like elsewhere in the world, costs and prices are going up, living is more expensive, and the travel industries become more adapt at picking our pockets.
If I had that S15K - which is more like AUD $22K when one factors in the exchange rate with our criminally undervalued South Pacific peso) I could do some wonderful things. Like rescue more poor domestic animals (even horses) being abandoned to die in the streets and teach more poor kids who often as not get barely enough to eat, let alone go to school and learn a useful second language to improve their chances for better work in the future.
Photography and talking about gear and what we would buy with a big gift of $$$, is fun and good but being me I believe it's also positive to think laterally about other things. Like others here.
Good on you, tcmx3 for thinking much as I do about these things. And thank you also Mr Marks and Deardorff38, for keeping us on our mental toes with your posts.
Tomorrow I am off to Southeast Asia again. I stay several months at a time in Indonesia where I work on volunteer projects (where I pay entirely my own way) and do occasional travel around that country and in neighboring places as well. What I do - animal rescue and English teaching to underprivileged kids - is not directly involved with photography, but it ranks high on my personal satisfaction rating, and it gives me many fine opportunities to do photography. I do all this on a limited income, from my pension, savings, a frugal lifestyle, and an understanding partner who keeps the home fires burning while I'm away. So for me, life's as good as it can get.
In July I will be in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) to look at new things, mostly Dayak longhouses which are now vanishing from the landscape at a dizzying rate. With maybe a side trip to the big hole in the rain forest where the new capital, Nusantara, may someday see the light of day. In August I will visit Solo and Yogyakarta in Central Java with friends, and maybe the Dieng plateau to see old mountain temples.
I try to do all this on a reasonable budget, and so far I seem to have succeeded. But in Asia, like elsewhere in the world, costs and prices are going up, living is more expensive, and the travel industries become more adapt at picking our pockets.
If I had that S15K - which is more like AUD $22K when one factors in the exchange rate with our criminally undervalued South Pacific peso) I could do some wonderful things. Like rescue more poor domestic animals (even horses) being abandoned to die in the streets and teach more poor kids who often as not get barely enough to eat, let alone go to school and learn a useful second language to improve their chances for better work in the future.
Photography and talking about gear and what we would buy with a big gift of $$$, is fun and good but being me I believe it's also positive to think laterally about other things. Like others here.
Good on you, tcmx3 for thinking much as I do about these things. And thank you also Mr Marks and Deardorff38, for keeping us on our mental toes with your posts.
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wlewisiii
Just another hotel clerk
I was already mostly looking at a long trip to Europe, not buying any gear would simply extend the trip a month or two longer depending on how much or little of the local adult beverages tempt me in the evenings 
Probably not quite as much as when I was 20 & stationed in Illesheim, FRG!
Probably not quite as much as when I was 20 & stationed in Illesheim, FRG!
Deardorff38
Mentor
It's interesting that you see books & internet high on your list. I spent years and thousands of sheets of paper getting to the level of producing quality silver exhibition prints, but I picked up a few things from spending a day in the darkroom with Jay Dusard, whose prints admired. I bet i could learn a few things printing my negatives under the watchful eye of Alan Ross. I'm sure i'd learn a few things about both portraiture photography and platinum printing from spending some time with Ray Bidegain as well.
Deardorff38
Mentor
that wouldn't really be one of the offered options.....
tcmx3
Established
Sure.
Having access to mentors/mentorship definitely shortcuts things. But as a matter of necessity, and having lived in places for times without any real ability to access that stuff, I was trying to think about the absolute minimum necessary to develop ones skills. To me, that feedback loop can be established very inexpensively. Whether that's ideal or not is a separate matter.
I'd also state that a workshop in my mind involves a group of people where youre not getting undivided attention.
DownUnder
Nikon Nomad
Respectfully, my rescuing small animals abandoned in the streets or teaching impoverished kids English probably wouldn't fit well into your options list either. But I do it, and it gives me great satisfaction. $15K in extra money would move my two projects along wonderfully.
If we must stay true to our intended photo-objectives, then I would probably go with buying up small, inexpensive digital cameras (both film cameras and film nowadays being all but unobtainable in the first part, and unaffordable in the second) and trying to teach them the basics of photography. Which would give me both pleasure and satisfaction as well, and I hope also get me back on that options list.
Also, since this is all in the realm of "I just think that..." anyway, I would love to go back in time to do courses with the late great Minor White and Gary Winogrand, which would surely improve my (badly needed) perspectives and intentions in photography.
I hope this will be satisfactory to some. Different folks...
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wlewisiii
Just another hotel clerk
Would be fine to me. But we all have differing priorities.
My idea of travel is all that would matter to me at this point in my life. My back and knees are sh*t but I can still move well enough to make a run for the money without too many strings attached, just a big ass bottle of ibuprofen
There's a couple of people I only know via the net in England & Europe I'd love to meet in person. There's a lot of places I'd love to see and shoot.
When I'm too decrepit, there are three "Old Soldier's Homes" in my state where they have to take me in because I am a veteran. Meh, won't be a luxury life but it won't be starving on a corner either. If I can party with some young folks in Europe while maybe getting one or three really _GOOD_ maybe even master work photographs that I might be proud to hand down to my descendants?
That's 15k well spent in my book
Deardorff38
Mentor
Of course those first ones are great choices, but seeing as how RFF is a photo forum that's why i gave the question the photographic angle.....rather than a general philosophical spin.
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nikon_sam
Shooter of Film...
I think my answer in the other thread would work better here as I don't think I'd be buying anything photographic.
I'd use the money to build a permanent Darkroom in our house...I already have the gear...
I'd use the money to build a permanent Darkroom in our house...I already have the gear...
Gordon Moat
Established
Probably go on a few workshops in cities I don’t know, with a little saved to put into some printed books.