The Expert’s Gun
I spent many a night in the darkroom of my local community college when I first started out on my (successful) quest to be a photographer, learning how to do black & white prints from 35mm negatives. The skill level in these classes would vary greatly. I wasn’t great (hey, I was just starting out), but I was sponge and soaked up knowledge from both my instructors and outside sources like history of photography books and art history classes.
Other students would slip into what I called AFA Syndrome, short for Ansel F******* Adams: They worshiped everything that ol’ AA did and wanted to shoot just like him.
With a Canon AE-1 Program set on Automatic Exposure mode.
Sigh.
What they weren’t willing to do is put in the time and money into buying a copies of The Camera, The Negative and The Print and a spot meter, then spend hours and hours in the darkroom trying to get the perfect tonality on a print.
For the record, I never wanted to be Ansel Adams. I wanted to be W. Eugene Smith.
Buying a view camera would not grant them the ability to take photos like Ansel Adams, even if they had a similar level of talent as him because they lacked the time Ansel put in to master his tools, which brings me to guns. The idea that you’d buy the same gun as a Navy SEAL or a JSOC operator or whoever is kinda silly. Your needs do not include shooting terrorist in the face during covert ops overseas. Your needs are:
- Make sure your defensive pistol is safe from unauthorized access.
- Have a gun with you whenever it is legally permissible to so.
- Be able to access it in an appropriate amount of time when needed.
- Put rounds on target sufficient to stop the threat without endangering others.
Will the latest super-duper blaster help you accomplish that last task better than other guns? Maybe. But if you don’t complete steps 1-3, step 4 is kinda useless…
