visions and tools

I distinctly remember being impressed to the point of jealousy by those people who only had one camera --usually a Yashica rangefinder or TLR for some reason --and made pure magic with them. They would very confidently hold onto just one machine and that would suffice to create images of all sorts of beauty. I was impressed because they knew their stuff and their vision. I was jealous because they were so confident in it. 

It's a personality quirk on my part, I believe. I'm sure there are people impressed with the ease at which I grow and rotate my collection, and know how to operate all the different gear in it. Is my vision as clear and defined as theirs? Probably not. Is it instead informed by many different media that I'm using? Maybe. I bet all of us have fun with photography, regardless of the way we do it. There just isn't one right way to do it.

But I still feel that unwelcome pang of jealousy when I look at the Yashica Minister D sitting on my desk right now. I could potentially keep it, and sell everything else, and boldly go where I haven't gone before. But do I want to? Would I not stray from that narrow path? I doubt I'd stay on it for long. There's too much joy and satisfaction to be had with scouting down another great camera, and seeing what it can offer, how it renders reality around me in its own unique way, with bits of my own way of seeing glued on top. Perhaps I'm too focused on exploring gear instead of honing my own vision. 

Or maybe that indeed is my vision: happening in between different machines and a steady stream of curiosity.

How can one tell?

The vision can be paramount, somewhat disregarding the tool that is used to achieve it. What if the tool breaks, then, though? Can vision be sustained without it or will it demand that tool be replicated exactly to match it? It's then that the tool will come into focus with great strength, I believe. It's this exact camera or none at all! How hard would it then be to adjust oneself to a new piece of gear?

Or, on the other end of the spectrum, we all know gearheads who only collect for the sake of collecting. Then it's the item or object that's perhaps overvalued while vision is held unimportant. When would vision enter the picture though, with similar rage as the tool does in the other example? Perhaps with trying to find that one extremly rare piece of equipment, that 1 of 100 ever produced, because the vision of the collection is naggingly incomplete without it.

Or it can all be blended together: vision with tool, each giving the other's presence a reasonable reverence. 

I certainly hope I'm in the seemingly more balanced latter group. But while I wouldn't be drawn to the excess of collecting (I already feel like I'm doing too much of it as things are and am trying to keep myself in check), I still find the singularity of vision both inspiring and aspirational. It won't ever be me but it echoes something true and real that I can't quite grasp or name.