“Letters from a Recovering Camera Addict” Step 1: Admission

Seoul, South Korea.
Seoul, South Korea. Last week.

This article is written by Josh White, originally posted here. The views posted here are his and his alone and may or may not be shared by the website as a whole ;)

Hi.

My name is Josh and I’m an addict.

No, I never did drugs. I don’t smoke. I hardly even drink.

I’m addicted to something more pricey than any of those. I’m addicted to cameras.

Any kind of camera. I don’t discriminate. I don’t care anymore if it is expensive. I don’t care if it is new. I don’t care if I’ve tried it before. If it is out there to be bought, I probably want to buy it.

I get angry at other addicts. This stems from a strong denial of my affliction. Stems from the inability to admit my own flaws.

Some say there isn’t anything wrong. This ISN’T an addiction. I’m here to say, they are wrong. Addiction by definition is the inability to stop a habit.

There are many symptoms. First, the morning coffee. The coffee, a different addiction, is just a means to sit in front of a computer and feed. The first thing you may check is ESPN or the news. That makes the addiction feel less real. Next though, the reality of it.

The next part depends on the “drug” of choice. Maybe you go directly to the newest gear news. If you prefer the old stuff, you check used shops for their newest posts. I used to be the prior but have migrated towards the later. “Wow, that is interesting” or “I took one of my favorite pictures with one of those.” The starting thoughts to a chain of events leading to getting a fix.

At this point, “you” still don’t feel there is a problem.

“I’m just looking..”

At work during free moments you check forums or reviews. Listen to other addicts talk about why they needed that fix. If you’re like me, you look at the old photos you took with the current “mark.”

“I remember when I took this. I really loved that camera…”

Other people need to latest and greatest. They aren’t the nostalgic type addicts like myself. They can forget the past easily because it will never be as good as the future. I was like this before. I remember the feeling of not wanting to use my current because I knew I would get the newer. The “lame duck” mentality.

“What if I take the picture of my life with this? How can I get something else then?”

This leads to another problem. Hoarding. The inability to let go because at some point something may be needed. Some day, you may want to fondle or hold. I’ve never really been a hoarder, but addiction is unpredictable.

Justification. The crux of the matter.

“If I only had that camera I could take the shots I want.”

Weirdly, that thought is very rarely followed by:

“I wonder how I can take interesting shots with the camera I have?”

At least not in the mind of an addict.

In our hypothetical day, the addict will then spend the rest of it daydreaming about what they could do with the new camera. They will dream of the inspiration. Somehow, when looking at forums and reviews they don’t seem to see the negatives. Either that or ignore them.

Finally before the day is over the website is checked one last time. Some small part of your brain wants it to be sold.

Not because you want the addiction to stop but because you want it to continue.

“It wasn’t really that good anyway. Tomorrow, there will be something better.”

Seoul, South Korea. 2014.
Seoul, South Korea. 2014.

When I look at my favorite photographers, there is something interesting about them. For the most part, they have a very specific style. Their photos have a “look.” They have a clearly defined “feeling” to their photos. Something that isn’t easily explained aside from with another hypothetical situation.

I open flickr and I see a photo without the name because, I am of course at work and the browser window is minimized. Even so, I know right away that photo was taken by Junku Nishimura ( a friend from Japan and probably one of the best contemporary street photographers in existence). I don’t need his name to know the photo is his.

People will argue this point. Most of the people that argue will be addicts. I know because I did so myself. They will say that if you have a style you can take photos of that style with anything. This is true, on some levels, but not all. Not because of specifications or technical details but because of the vision of the artist. Their camera is just their tool. It is a method to expose a frame. A medium on which to capture.

Anyway, I digress. I am slowly recovering. It is hard, I still fall back into the routine of addiction. Maybe I will always be an addict. In fact, I think I will be. I just want to learn how to deal with it better. I NEED to. I want to be proud of the work I’ve made and want it to be consistent. This addiction doesn’t allow for that.

So, I’ve decided to start with the 12 steps. 12 steps of my own invention. Consider this, step one.

Admitting I have a problem.

Step 2 is maybe the first on the actual road to recovery. A pact. A pact to use one camera and one lens for a year. 365 days. More on this tomorrow.

Tokyo, Japan.
Tokyo, Japan. 2011.

Josh’s blog.

Josh’s flickr.

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