Hunter S. Thompson’s Advice for Aspiring Photographers: Skip the Fancy Equipment & Just Shoot

Image  via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Musi­cians can often become con­sumed by GAS—or “gear acqui­si­tion syn­drome”—obsess­ing over equip­ment for years instead of mak­ing music with what they have. This is dri­ven in part by the intim­i­dat­ing snob­bery of gear elit­ists, and in part by con­sumer mar­ket­ing seek­ing to con­vince us that we nev­er have enough. It seems that the pho­tog­ra­phy world also suf­fers from GAS, and, as a 1962 pitch let­ter to Pop Pho­to mag­a­zine by Hunter S. Thomp­son shows us—writes the pho­tog­ra­phy blog Peta Pix­el—“the land­scape of the pho­to world half a cen­tu­ry ago may not have been too dif­fer­ent from what we see today.”

In such a land­scape, gonzo jour­nal­ist, “exis­ten­tial­ist life coach,” and hob­by­ist pho­tog­ra­ph­er Thomp­son became a stren­u­ous advo­cate for the spar­tan art of snap­shot pho­tog­ra­phy. He wrote his pitch let­ter to Pop Pho­to in response to an arti­cle by Ralph Hat­ter­s­ley called “Good & Bad Pic­tures,” and to pro­pose his own essay on the sub­ject with the pos­si­ble title “The Case for the Chron­ic Snap­shoot­er.”

He first describes the feel­ing imposed on him by the New York pho­to world that “no man should ever punch a shut­ter release with­out many years of instruc­tion and at least $500 worth of the finest equip­ment.” In such an elit­ist envi­ron­ment, he became “embar­rassed to be seen on the street with my rat­ty equip­ment” and “stopped tak­ing pic­tures alto­geth­er.” Hattersley’s piece, however—which “cites Weegee and Cartier-Bresson”—convinced him that “snap­shoot­ing is not, by def­i­n­i­tion, a low and igno­rant art.” He revis­it­ed his prints, he writes, “and decid­ed that not all of them were worth­less. As a mat­ter of fact there were some that gave me great plea­sure.”

That’s my idea in a nut­shell. When pho­tog­ra­phy gets so tech­ni­cal as to intim­i­date peo­ple, the ele­ment of sim­ple enjoy­ment is bound to suf­fer. Any man who can see what he wants to get on film will usu­al­ly find some way to get it; and a man who thinks his equip­ment is going to see for him is not going to get much of any­thing.

The moral here is that any­one who wants to take pic­tures can afford ade­quate equip­ment and can, with very lit­tle effort, learn how to use it. Then, when the pic­tures he gets start resem­bling the ones he saw in his mind’s eye, he can start think­ing in terms of those added improve­ments that he may or may not need.

You can read Thompson’s full let­ter here. His advice to would-be pho­tog­ra­phers not only offers inspi­ra­tion to ama­teurs and hob­by­ists; it also gives us a phi­los­o­phy of pho­to­graph­ic art (and art more gen­er­al­ly) as an exten­sion of our nat­ur­al sen­si­tiv­i­ties, or “mind’s eye.” His “moral” might apply broad­ly to any cre­ative endeav­or like­ly to be stymied by GAS.

Thomp­son makes the case that what­ev­er we can afford can get us where we need to go: “Why give up because you can’t afford a cam­era with a 1.8 or 1.4 lens?” he writes, “First push 3.5 to its absolute lim­it, and if it still bugs you, you’ll find some way to buy that oth­er cam­era. If not, you don’t need it any­way.” He acknowl­edges that his the­sis “will rub some of your high-priced adver­tis­ers the wrong way,” but writes that shut­ter­bugs who can­not get results on low­er-priced gear will only be dis­ap­point­ed when they fail sim­i­lar­ly with the high-priced stuff.”

The push to shop instead of cre­ate com­pels us to obsess over what we don’t have—Thompson urges us to learn to make the very best with what we do.

You can see some of Thomp­son’s pho­tographs here.

via Peta Pix­el

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thompson’s Ball­sy & Hilar­i­ous Job Appli­ca­tion Let­ter (1958)

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son

Read 11 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness