What a Photographer Wants

Word is out on the street that some of us are venturing out and doing a bit of shopping. Dedicated gear-head photographers are always lusting after something or another anyway, even if it takes months of internet research to find the best deal. Here are some suggestions for photographers (and everything here can be found on Etsy).

Vintage camera love.

This one is a 1950's Beacon, from Whitehouse Products of Brooklyn, NY, and discovered for us by SuzisCornerBoutique. It takes 127 film, which is available from retailers such as B&H Photo. There are also some great sellers of toy cameras and film on Amazon.

Vintage vegan vinyl camera bag

There's no need to look like everyone else while you're out shooting. This unique bag lets you travel light and nimble. Check out this find from Porchlight Vintage.

Enlarging and Darkroom Technique books

Photographers never stop learning, and it's hard to resist the foray into the darkroom to play with the lights off. VintageBookNook has this set and quite a few other interesting books about photography.

Old Ruler Easel

Whether you are thinking about gifts this season for mom's, dad's or graduates in your life, or if you are gearing up for outdoor art shows, you may find this handmade easel from SalvagedBeauty to be just what you need.

Photographers are cool

The backside of this shirt from makristababy says "Honor Your Vision." This tee is already soft and worn in just the right places. Check out this shop for more great tee-shirt graphics for all ages. That's a nice cap, too, although it's not included with the tee.

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What a Photographer Wants is compiled by Ann Wilkinson. A world traveler and self-taught photographer, look for Ann wandering around city streets and tromping through woods and hiking trails with her camera. After owning an international transportation business for many years, Ann has found her creative spirit again through the lens. See more at Ann's shop and her website, and say hello to her on her blog too.

Tips and Tricks: Your Most Important Piece of Equipment

The following is one of the tips that Mason Resnick, a photographer and editor of the Adorama Imaging Resource Center, contributed to the 100 in 100 feature on the Adorama website. We've peppered Mason's points with a few fine examples from some of our team members.

Science - lightleaks

Nowadays, sophisticated cameras offer many options. We are dazzled by artificial intelligence-based metering, exposure focusing, and autofocus. We have long-reaching zoom lenses, face recognition, fast burst rates and seemingly infinite image storage on cards that have so much space our "shots left" readouts say 999 because our cameras don't have enough digits to reflect our 16MB memory cards' capacity. We have image sharing web sites with millions of photos, and tens of thousands of new images added daily.

And yet, one of the most successful photographers of the 20th century, Henri Cartier-Bresson, had a single camera--a Leica rangefinder--and a 50mm lens. He didn't even have a light meter. He shot black-and-white film, hand-holding for every frame. He stopped every 36 exposures to rewind and reload. He had to wait until that night or the next day, or perhaps longer, to process the negatives, make contact sheets and study them with a magnifying loupe to see the results. And with that simple set-up, he built a body of work that would influence generations of photographers and help to define photojournalism.

What piece of equipment did HCB use that we should use more?

To the Last Drop - Paintedwithlight

acrobat - emporium51

In these days of technical marvels, we tend to forget to use our brains. A camera can't compose, see how colors, light and shape interact, and yet we rely on its sophistication to "take great pictures" for us when all it is capable of doing is making a technically correct exposure. It's up to us to modify exposure to fit a mood or situation, find a good place for the camera relative to the subject, and decide what to include within the frame, and what to leave out. What was HCB's most important piece of equipment? His brain, of course!

Fuzzy - EverydayKumquat

Milling About - ELBfoto

So whether you're using the latest high-end DSLR, a sub-$100 compact, or an old all-manual film camera, don't forget that the most valuable piece of equipment you own is sitting there, right between your ears.

Use it wisely.

Yellow Walls, Morocco - PPDesigns