Making the Most of What You’ve Got
I love creativity and talent. The great thing about both of these characteristics is that while good equipment and the right “stuff” can really enhance them, both can shine through no matter the medium.
Photographer Chase Jarvis has a book and an iPhone app named “The Best Camera,” as in “The best camera is the one that’s with you.” He spends a lot of time actually shooting photos with his iPhone even though he has a full lineup of high-end cameras as well. And the pictures still look great because Chase really knows what he’s doing.
I like to do the same thing with photography (and I am not a photographer). We’ve got a few DSLR cameras but more often than not, I like to walk around with my trusty 7MP Canon Powershot and take pictures of things that interest me. And some of the pictures actually turn out nicely because I’m focused on the actual shot and not so much on the technical aspect.
It’s the same with music: More often than not, I prefer the early albums of my favorite artists over the big-budget, professionally-produced later albums. For example, while I enjoy all of David Gray‘s music, my favorite album is still White Ladder. It’s a super low-budget album but contains some of his best songs. The content over-rides the fact that he didn’t have access to the “biggest” and the “best.” Artists do more with less.
Often times low-budget, independent films have better storylines than $100 million epic adventures. And some of my favorite videos on Vimeo are those shot with the HD camera that I’ve got: A Canon HV30, consumer video camera that dwarfs in price and features compared to what the pros use, but people are squeezing amazing creativity out of it.
There’s something fulfilling about knowing you are getting every possible ounce of usefulness out of your existing equipment. This is especially relevant to do-it-yourself entrepreneurs and freelancers because we don’t have the budget of a large corporation.
Squeeze everything you can out of your Photoshop CS2 software instead of feeling paralyzed because you don’t have CS5.
Push the boundaries of what you can do with iMovie since you can’t yet afford FinalCut Pro.
Make the most of what you’ve got and focus instead on what you are doing. Take note of the current limitations but don’t dwell on them. Someday you’ll be able to afford bigger and better, but right now you’ve got what you’ve got and what’s important is that you continue to evolve your craft.
