Five Things That Photographers Gripe About That Drive Me Crazy

Warning: tongue in cheek rant coming your way--but not THAT tongue in cheek.

I don’t know if it’s just that I’m getting old, but it sure seems like there are a bunch of whiners out there lately. Here are five things that I constantly hear from photographers that drive me crazy.

1. My new camera is broken. It back focuses.
   No it most likely doesn’t--YOU back focused. 99% of all cameras are better than 100% of all photographers. Don’t blame the camera. Learn how to focus. (For those of you who are about to e-mail me swearing on your mother’s grave that YOUR camera really did back focus – no need. I know that it does actually happen – only it actually happens 1% of the time.)

2. I’ll never buy (BRAND X) backup drive again. Mine crashed!
   ALL drives fail eventually. All of them. Each and every one. Period. Everything man made has an MTBF: 'Mean Time Between Failure'. EVERYTHING! Even man fails eventually. Get over it. Every brand will fail at some time or another. As long as it’s a name-brand drive it was probably a safe bet when you bought it and would be again. Then again – YOU could do some drive maintenance once in a while – or would that be too much to ask?

3. I can’t believe that (BRAND X) just updated their camera bodies. I just bought a brand new one yesterday. I’ve been ripped off!
   Ripped off? Should the manufacturers never update their camera bodies just to make sure YOURS is the most recent? Is there a chance that you could use some common sense and not buy a body that’s been out three years in a Photokina year? Or should they call you to make sure that it’s okay first?

4. Did you see the picture that won that contest? I could have taken that.
   Yeah maybe--but you didn’t. And if you did, you didn’t enter. So stop whining. And start shooting. PROVE you could have taken that picture.

5. I won’t be buying the new (BRAND X) camera because my sister knows a guy, whose cousin is a mailman, and he walked by a bookstore that looked like it had a bad review in one of the photo magazines that he delivered.
   PLEASE, if you want to waste time formulating opinions about cameras you’ve never seen, touched, used, or even been in the same room with--go for it. But spare us from hearing those opinions. If you’ve never used the camera, touched the camera, seen the camera or even looked at images it made *with your own eyes* then your opinion doesn’t count. Sorry--your mom lied when she told you that you were special. You need to have actual experience (of some sort) to be able to accurately formulate an opinion about a camera.

Folks it’s simple. As photographers we spend too much time grousing and complaining and not enough time shooting. So in honor of making that point I stopped this list at five when it was originally going to be 10 things. So I can go shoot now.

(Scott Bourne is the founder of Photofocus.com, an online photography magazine. Visit Photofocus for a variety of interesting and entertaining articles, photo product reviews, and the Photofocus podcast, released on the 5th, 15th and 25th of each month!)