Artists don't care about equipment? Bulls--t!

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Chriscrawfordphoto

Chriscrawfordphoto

Real Men Shoot Film.
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One of the silly lies that keeps cropping up on photo forums on the net is that 'real artists' (that is, everyone but photographers) don't care about equipment. This is bulls--t; I have a fine arts degree and remember my classmates and professors obsessing over brushes, easels, pencils, etc. as much as we do about our cameras, bags, and tripods. Read the article below:

http://blackwingpages.com/no-ordinary-pencil/

The linked article is about the Eberhard-Faber Blackwing 602 Drawing Pencil. They were discontinued a few yrs ago after more than 60 years of production, and artists are paying INSANE prices for them on eBay! The author says they often go for $55 PER PENCIL. He has a screenshot of an ebay sale that brought a winning bid of $365 for a box of FIVE of them! That is $73 EACH.
 
Well, one can have one's preferences, even strong preferences, but making the work is not about that. If you can't have your preference you work with what you have, what you can afford, etc. I don't know any artists or photographers who don't care about what they use to make work, but making the work is not about what equipment you might prefer.
 
Amateurs drive secondhand markets because of their desire to find something that makes them as good as the pros and there are far more of them. For example, if only pros bought Leicas the price would be maybe half of what it is now because there wouldn't be that much of a demand for them. I don't think your example of pencils is a good one. Anything that is rare will get a high price if it is in demand whether it is pencils or books or cameras. The fact that they stopped making those pencils means that the demand wasn't high enough for new ones. If all of a sudden you couldn't buy a new Leica film camera the prices would shoot up.

Most pros don't care about equipment past what it can do for them. If you doubt this then you haven't known many professionals.
 
Mr. Fizzlesticks said:
if only pros bought Leicas the price would be maybe half of what it is now because there wouldn't be that much of a demand for them.
Click to expand...

Production costs decrease as volume of production increases. If only "pros" bought Leicas, the number of units sold would be far lower so the per-unit cost would be much higher.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
One of the silly lies that keeps cropping up on photo forums on the net is that 'real artists' (that is, everyone but photographers) don't care about equipment. This is bulls--t; I have a fine arts degree and remember my classmates and professors obsessing over brushes, easels, pencils, etc. as much as we do about our cameras, bags, and tripods. Read the article below:

http://blackwingpages.com/no-ordinary-pencil/

The linked article is about the Eberhard-Faber Blackwing 602 Drawing Pencil. They were discontinued a few yrs ago after more than 60 years of production, and artists are paying INSANE prices for them on eBay! The author says they often go for $55 PER PENCIL. He has a screenshot of an ebay sale that brought a winning bid of $365 for a box of FIVE of them! That is $73 EACH.
Click to expand...

Man...so freakin what.

This is you:

duty_calls.png

(via xkcd)

I really could care less. Same with anything else out there, some people will obsess over the technicalities and others won't. I know a lot of professional artists who do not obsess over equipment, and others who do. Just do your thing and make some good photos however you want. Obviously, as an internet board, people will come here because they ARE obsessed about this stuff so that is the general consensus. That is not how it is in the real world. Sure, there are plenty of people like that, but who are you to say that all artists obsess over equipment. That's simply not the case, as much as you'd want it to be. Heck, there are plenty of photographers (I don't understand why you don't consider us artists?) who don't care about equipment.

So, you're preaching to the choir here, on this online photography forum where people come to discuss 50-year-old manual-focus film-eating rangefinder cameras. But at the same time, don't tell people how to make their art, especially if they're not asking for your advice. Let them do it their way.
 
Chris's thread and original post: good point. Period. Sure if I was a professional and loved shooting Leica I would get over them and be pretty happy right now with the X100 and maybe the X-Pro 1. And my daughter's F3HP or my old Olympus will do almost everything I wanted to do with Leica and more. But the original point made here is different and still stands. We are meant to be ashamed for liking our cameras and lenses, supposedly just a manifestation of a shallow fetishism or some other failing. Chris says no. I say I agree with him. Why the aggro?
 
I have a pal who makes very large scluptures using huge pieces of granite. The granite bolders are trucked in to his outdoor studio. He owns a huge construction crane (the boom must be 25' or 30' long) which he uses to move the bolders.. I don't know that he loves his crane, but, he really, really likes it. It's tough to move bolders without his crane..

I like my film gear - can't get too excited about the digital stuff as it changes so often that we don't have time to become friends.
 
keytarjunkie said:
Man...so freakin what.

This is you:

duty_calls.png

(via xkcd)

I really could care less. Same with anything else out there, some people will obsess over the technicalities and others won't. I know a lot of professional artists who do not obsess over equipment, and others who do. Just do your thing and make some good photos however you want. Obviously, as an internet board, people will come here because they ARE obsessed about this stuff so that is the general consensus. That is not how it is in the real world. Sure, there are plenty of people like that, but who are you to say that all artists obsess over equipment. That's simply not the case, as much as you'd want it to be. Heck, there are plenty of photographers (I don't understand why you don't consider us artists?) who don't care about equipment.

So, you're preaching to the choir here, on this online photography forum where people come to discuss 50-year-old manual-focus film-eating rangefinder cameras. But at the same time, don't tell people how to make their art, especially if they're not asking for your advice. Let them do it their way.
Click to expand...

"I really could care less"

It certainly looks otherwise..
 
I worked with a very talented modern sculptor for two years who does public art on a fairly large scale. The tools were welders, steel cutting gear, drills etc and some equipment to work with timber ... not to mention his very high tech CAD drawing program on his Mac where his ideas came to life. He only cared if it all worked properly and the important thing to him was the final product ... I never saw him getting excited or obsessive about the tools we used.

So to me, Chris's comments are a generalisation based purely on his own observations!
 
Oh, man, reading about the $70 pencil freaked me out, as I took a toolbox of drawing class supplies to Goodwill recently.

Looked up the Blackwing and there were definitely no 602s, though. Phew.
 
Having been through similar establishments on the other side of the pond, I can only agree with Chris's observations. In two fine art departments there has been talk of brushes and far more particular than any of the photographers talk of cameras. Talking with some they will buy brand x over y for its shorter or softer or harder bristles. The adage of a poor work man blames his tools is a nonsense the good workman gets the right tool for the job. I have known students buy brushes that are £30+.
 
I have artist friends that are not obsessed with equipment as mentioned. They usually improvise and customise what they have to suit their needs. Even if they had expensive tools, they are usually gifts from their friends.
 
Just like Christ I went to Artschool and I have the same opinion as Chris, Artist care about their tools and talk shop just as much as anybody else. They (not all) can talk for hours about the quality and merits of using Brand X versus Brand Y. I started out in the sculpting class and one of the main topics was which clay to use and where to buy it. Not every artist is obsessed about their Equipment neither are photographers.

Both artists and photographers are simply looking for the best tool for the job.

Dominik
 
As an illustrator I will never spend $50 on a single pencil like one from Graf von Faber-castell - nor could I ever imagine a project that justifies such cost, even one from which the final product would sell for millions.

Tools are tools as long as they are handy. A $50 pencil won't come 50 times as handy as a $1 one, nor will it produce black 50 times as fine. And both the handiness and fine black are hardly criteria for good work.
 
I guess the engineers parallel to this is the venerable HP-15C calculator.
Born in 1982 and discontinued in 1989 then reintroduced this year after a 7 year campaign and 15,000 signatures:

The HP-15C achieved a similar cult status to that detailed for the Blackwing pencil, with e-bay auctions hitting $485

One of theses helped me through my degree exams thanks to it's complex number handling and matrix maths.
Later it fell out of use as more sophisticated calculators such as the HP-41CX and HP-48 took over.
But as computers became common-place, the advanced programming of a calculator was largely redundant.

Now 30 years later, a small easy to use calculator is making a comeback for those pencil ( see this is relevant ) to post-it pad quick calculations.
HP did a limited run of 10,000 units which were frantically snapped up , as they struggled to meet demand.

http://hp15c.org/

hp15cLE_800.jpg
 
Haha, I am currently finishing a fine arts degree as well.

However I don't often hear about the "artists dont care about equipment" deal though, School is full of people that obsess over paper, brushes, and various other tools like we do to our lenses.
 
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