Sometimes we get too caught up in having the latest and greatest and forget that the at the core a lens and a camera are what we use to create images. I refer to it as minimalist shooting, and I do it occasionally to bring me closer to the base… find my center, so to speak.

I wanted to do something like that… not a lot of gear and assistants and such. Christina and I started out around 6am and headed east to Superior and Miami Arizona. One Canon, an 80-200mm zoom, 50mm and a strobe with a stand. As it was, I didn’t need a stand as we met a guy named Ben who was out that early on a Sunday and I had him hold the flash. I didn’t want to use my fill boards, but I admit to having them in the car with me.

We shot for a couple of hours and we drove a lot of that time… looking for cool places to shoot that had good natural light going on.

By 9am it was getting pretty hot and the sun was really getting high, so we packed it in and came home.

A couple of weeks ago I watched a shooter do a headshot with similar results to mine. He had 4 assistants, a ton of equipment and seemed not to be having as much fun as I do. Sometimes you need all that equipment, and I have a ton, but every now and then try the minimalist approach to shooting.

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