I love the 16-35mm Zeiss. Since I bought it, I had a burst of creativity with it, making a deluge of wide-angle shots that look as if they were queued up somewhere for years. Its perfect image quality helps, since everything turns out as I envision it, as long as I keep the flare in check.

Which makes me think: why didn’t I get it before? I knew that I wanted it, since 2016 when I bought the Sony camera. It was kind of expensive, that’s true, and I already had the 17-40mm Canon which is very similar, and I used it with an adapter. But since Biljana used it so much with her Canon system, I very rarely shot anything with a wide-angle anymore, and it was not a good thing. I should have bought the Zeiss earlier, but I was putting all the money into gold, and I cut all the “unnecessary spending”, which included photography.

I think that was a mistake, however. To me, photography equipment is not just another gadget that essentially does nothing, like a fancy watch. It’s a creative instrument, something that allows me to produce and develop my photography. Similarly, a computer is not a gadget, it’s an extension of my mind. I was, however, smart enough not to skimp on computers – that’s something I use every day, and if there’s something wrong with how it works, I feel it. I think I put a pause on photographic spending quite a while ago, when I was broke and in debt, and I basically just used what I had, and this continued as things got better; I simply didn’t revisit the concept, and I had other things on my mind as well. But then, the reaction I had when I recently bought the 50mm f/1.8, and much more when I got the Zeiss, pretty much surprised me, because I didn’t expect that kind of a creative outburst connected with getting the equipment I needed, because I thought it would be like getting some gadget that does nothing and you get tired of it soon and don’t even notice that it’s there. No; this is not like getting a new car when you already had a decent car; it’s like getting a car when you didn’t have a car and you really needed it, but you kept arguing against it to yourself – cars are expensive, they are just another thing to worry about, you’re better off without it, the less things you have the better and so on, and then you finally get the car and the whole world of possibility opens up before you. Suddenly new places are in reach, and when you go to those places you find out whole new things that open up your mind to things you didn’t think of before. In this case, it’s things that were in my mind but I couldn’t create pictures from them because I didn’t have the adequate gear.

And then I decided: fuck it, I’m going to get the rest of the stuff I know I need, but I kept myself from getting because it’s expensive, and I was being rational with money. I’m getting the FE 100-400mm GM and the A7RV body. Something clicked – buying the gear you use for creative purposes isn’t excessive spending or buying gadgets you projected desires into, only for it to become empty and meaningless a week after you bought it. It’s more like respect being paid to important things in your life, and if you don’t, it’s going to die from neglect. It’s not just relationships with other people that need respect in order to flourish, it’s also parts of your own life – ability to write, create visual art, and so on. Also, there’s a difference between stupid ideas like “if I only had that lens/camera, I’d be taking better pictures”, and “if I only had a wide-angle lens, I could take the wide-angle composition that I have queued-up in my head”. The latter is actually a manifestation of a genuine creative impulse.

I’ve been thinking about the telephoto shots I took with borrowed equipment, and it’s not like I don’t want to take that kind of pictures. It’s just that I didn’t have the money for it, because telephoto photography is one of the most expensive technical parts of the craft, and even when I did have the money, I still blocked it off – nah, that’s a money pit, let’s just steer clear. At some point, this stopped being financially responsible and realistic thinking, and became a sign of disrespect to myself.