My email signature has said for a very long time, “Make Art, Not Content.” And it’s something that I still think about and adhere to every time that I pick up a camera. In 2024, I had two eye surgeries that stabilized my vision well enough so that I could get contact lenses that would make me function normally instead of being legally blind. So with that said, I wanted an optical viewfinder camera: specifically a Leica M11D. I’ve always shot with mirrorless cameras like they’re glorified DSLRs — but I know many people don’t. And the way that many folks shoot these days seems like people who are suffering from brain rot and letting the camera make so many decisions for them instead. But after a lot of consideration, I bought the Nikon D850 instead.
Essentially, I’m sick of staring at screens. And I’ve been saying this for years. I think that editing photos to be photojournalistic in interpretation is revisionist history as opposed to getting it right in-camera instead. I also think that we shouldn’t be spending more time in front of screens and instead be at a place where we’re looking at the world as it is instead of through how screens and algorithms are filtering it to us.
A good example of this is how everyone tells me that NYC is burning. I reinforce that idea to people I don’t want coming here. But in truth, we’re living just fine. They say that idea because of what they’re seeing on the media and on social media. Call it gatekeeping if you wish, I think of it more as keeping the rent prices down.
But the point is that it’s just a way of seeing the world. And with many modern digital cameras, you’re instead conversing with a camera to do something for you instead of truly telling it what to do. The exposure preview setting that most people use is a great example of this. Where I tend to read the light meter, most photographers are using the exposure preview function.
With a DSLR, you’re losing that functionality totally because you’re looking at the world as it naturally is.
Mirrorless cameras are doing too much of the thinking for us, and that’s why photographers are all making the same images. We’re also basing our ideas on movies and social media algorithms instead of imagining things. That’s why it feels like there are no new stories and everything original has already been made. But trust me, it hasn’t.
And it’s waiting for us to make something different.
When I say I bought the Nikon D850, I mean that yes, I spent the money on it. And that I want my creativity back. Photographers are wolves who willingly took out our fangs and curled our ears to fit into a society that has ultimately thrown us away. And it’s time that we become wild again.