Buy a trip, not more gear

Should I buy more gear (probably a camera or lens) or a trip to a far-flung location? I remember pondering this once myself, and have recently been asked the question by another photographer.

There is a malady amongst photographers affectionately known as GAS, or Gear Acquisition Syndrome. Photographers, especially amateurs it seems, are inveterate shoppers. You can see the logic in this: if I don’t have a 24mm lens, pictures with a 24mm field of view I will not make. The tendrils of consumerism do their dark work, and gear research and online shopping are a fact of our photographic lives.

I will simply answer that when I plumped for far-flung location (India, actually) over the camera I was pondering, my decision proved to be a sound one. Looking back, the best possible one. Suffice it to say, I made some of my best work on that trip and cannot now conceive of trading the experience - and the shaking up of my photographic vision it provided - for a camera I may, or may not have needed, that I certainly wouldn’t have ever used in India.