Shoes. Good shoes. Okay, maybe even GREAT shoes.

These are mine, photographed moments before they were shucked and torn apart and then rebuilt by a master craftsman in Santa Fe. A man who has been doing this EXACT thing for sixty-five years.

I get the question at lot. “I want to be a photographer…what camera should I buy?”

Don’t buy anything. Somewhere out there is an old film camera that someone in your family no longer has any use for. Get that. You can get it for free, most of the time with a sigh of relief from the giver. “Finally, I can get rid of this stupid thing.”

The new cameras are mostly crap. Too expensive, too fragile, too toy-like, too outdated the minute they land in the market, and designed to get you to buy into the buying cycle and continue to buy, buy and BUY. It normally goes like this. “I could have never made this photograph without my Zupperflex 5000.” “The Zupperflex 4999 was a total piece of shit, but THIS one is the tits!” Then, 90-days later the SAME person says “I could have never made this image without the Zupperflex 5001.” “The Zupperflex 5000 was a total piece of shit.”

Forget all this. Buy shoes. Or boots. You will use them more than anything else because being a photographer (documentary) is about BEING IN THE FIELD. Light, timing, composition are the ONLY things you need to buy, or at least buy into.

Nothing else really matters.