#2003: The Beginning
I got my first real camera in 2003, freshman year of college — a Canon 10D. Six megapixels. Felt like magic.
I shot everything. Portraits of friends. Street scenes. My coffee. The light through my window at 6am. I didn't know what I was doing, but I was doing it constantly. The kit lens didn't matter. I was seeing for the first time.
#The Gear Acquisition Years
Then I learned about primes. A 50mm f/1.8 — the "nifty fifty." Suddenly: bokeh. Shallow depth of field. I could isolate subjects. My photos looked professional.
So I got more lenses.
A 35mm for street photography. An 85mm for portraits. A 24-70 zoom for versatility. A 70-200 for reach. Macro tubes for close-ups. Each one opened a new way of seeing.
Then the L lenses. Canon's red ring. Pro glass. The 24-70 f/2.8L. The 70-200 f/2.8L IS. Heavy, expensive, sharp as hell. I upgraded bodies to match — 20D, 40D, 5D Mark II, eventually a Mark IV. Full frame. More megapixels. Better low-light. Glass worthy of the sensor.
Then strobe flashes. Speedlites at first — on-camera, then off-camera with wireless triggers. I discovered Strobist, David Hobby's lighting blog, and fell down the rabbit hole. Learned about ratios, modifiers, the inverse square law. Built an entire portable studio setup — softboxes, beauty dishes, reflectors, light stands, sandbags. I could control every photon.
I became that person. Reading gear reviews obsessively. Checking Canon Rumors daily. Watching for the next body announcement, the next lens patent. The forums, the communities, the endless debates about sharpness and bokeh and ISO performance.
Then support. A proper tripod — not the $30 Amazon special, a real one. Carbon fiber. Arca-Swiss ball head. Then a gimbal for video. A slider for motion control. A drone for aerials.
There's a point where you don't have enough — where the gear is genuinely limiting what you can do. The kit lens really can't shoot in low light. The crop sensor really does give you less control.
And then there's a point where you have too much. I crossed it without noticing.
#The Cognitive Overload
I remember the afternoon it became visible. I wanted to go shoot — just walk around downtown, take some photos. I stood in front of my gear shelf for fifteen minutes.
The 35mm for street? The 85mm in case I found a portrait? The 24-70 to cover both? Do I need a flash? What if the light is bad?
I packed three lenses, a flash, and a reflector. Just in case.
I walked for an hour. I took four photos. I spent more time changing lenses than looking at anything.
Every additional option was another decision before I could start. The creative impulse got buried under logistics. The gear that was supposed to enable creativity became a tax on it. The activation energy to just take a photo exceeded my motivation.
I had become a photographer who didn't photograph.
#The Constraint Epiphany
One day I left the house with just my phone. No bag. No lenses. No choices.
I took more photos that afternoon than I had in the previous month.
They weren't technically better. The dynamic range was worse. The bokeh was computational fakery. But I was seeing again. Noticing light. Finding compositions. Reacting to moments instead of preparing for them.
The constraint freed me.
#Diverge, Then Converge
Here's what I came to understand: the wide exploration wasn't wasted.
I needed to try the 85mm to know I preferred the 35mm. I needed studio lighting to understand that I loved natural light. I needed the tripod to realize I shoot better handheld. The divergence — the casting of a wide net — was how I discovered my actual preferences.
But the divergence has to end. You explore, you learn, you narrow. You converge on the tools that match how you actually see.
The mistake is staying in divergence mode forever. Accumulating options without ever committing. Keeping the 70-200 "just in case" when you haven't touched it in two years.
Diverge to learn. Converge to create.
#The Software Parallel
I've been building software for twenty years. The same arc played out — and I can see it clearly in the tools I've reached for.
Frontend: static sites → jQuery → ExtJS/Sencha → Ember → React → Vue → SolidJS → and now… back to static sites. Backend: Perl → PHP → Express → NestJS → Hono/Bun.
If you squint, both arcs tell the same story as the gear shelf. Scrappy simplicity, then complexity accumulation — each framework solving real problems but also adding ceremony, adding choices, adding weight — then a return to simplicity. But a different simplicity. Not naive. Earned.
I remember the year I was evaluating frontend frameworks. I had a side project I wanted to build. I spent three months reading docs, running benchmarks, comparing bundle sizes, arguing with people on Twitter about reactivity models. I never built the project. I was doing photography-shelf logistics with JavaScript: standing in front of the options, paralyzed by the fear of choosing wrong.
The engineers I admire most converge fast. They pick tools, learn their limits, and work within them. They're not afraid to be wrong because they know they'll learn more from building than from deciding. A 35mm lens doesn't limit what you can photograph. It shapes how you see. A tech stack works the same way.
I know what React's reconciler is doing. I know what NestJS decorators are for. And now I can choose Hono or plain HTML knowing what I'm giving up and deciding I don't need it. The constraint isn't a prison. It's a frame.
#The Life Parallel
Maybe this is about more than cameras and code.
We're told to keep our options open. Explore. Don't commit too early. And that's right — for a while. You need to cast a wide net to discover what resonates.
But there's a trap. Optionality feels like freedom, but at some point it becomes its own prison. You can spend your whole life exploring, never building. Collecting lenses, never taking photos. Learning frameworks, never shipping software. Dating, never committing. Researching, never writing.
The divergence is necessary. The convergence is where life happens.
#What Cameras Taught Me
1. More options ≠ more creativity. Past a threshold, options become overhead. The activation energy to start goes up. The spontaneity goes down.
2. Constraints reveal preferences. You don't know what you like until you've tried the alternatives. But you only discover what you love when you commit to less.
3. Gear doesn't see. You do. A better lens won't give you better vision. At some point, the tool is good enough. The bottleneck is you — your eye, your attention, your willingness to show up.
4. The best camera is the one you have. Not because quality doesn't matter, but because presence matters more. The shot you take with your phone beats the shot you didn't take with your Hasselblad.
#The Kit I Actually Use Now
After all that — the lenses, the lights, the stands, the gimbals — here's what I mostly reach for:
- iPhone. For 80% of what I shoot. Always with me. Good enough.
- Canon EOS R5. Still a Canon loyalist after all these years.
- RF 50mm f/1.2L. My favorite focal length. Finally committed.
- RF 24-70mm f/2.8L. For when I need versatility.
- One softbox. When I need controlled light. Not a whole studio — one light, one modifier.
Okay, I have more than that. I'm still figuring out how to let go. The 70-200 is still in the closet. The strobes are "just in case." Old habits.
But I'm getting there. I take more photos now than I did at peak gear accumulation. And I enjoy it again — mostly because I stopped optimizing and started shooting.
I think about this with my daughter sometimes. She's three. Her whole world is divergence right now — trying everything, seeing what sticks. That's exactly right for her age. But someday she'll need to choose. Not because the other paths are bad, but because choosing is how you go deep.
The exploration shows you what's possible. The commitment shows you who you are.
#The Takeaway
Whether you're building software, building a photography practice, or building a life: diverge early, converge deliberately.
Explore the options. Learn what's out there. But don't mistake exploration for creation. At some point, pick your 35mm. Accept what it can't do. Focus on what it can.
The constraint isn't the enemy of creativity. The constraint is creativity — it's the frame that makes the composition possible. The choice that lets you finally see.
Twenty-plus years since that Canon 10D. I still think about that 70-200. Sometimes I miss the reach. But I don't miss the weight — literal and cognitive. Some tools are worth the tradeoff. Some aren't. The long way around is sometimes the only way to know what you actually need. The only way to know is to shoot.