Why Non-Professionals Need Professional Stuff

Have you ever noticed that once you get your hands on some professional equipment you yourself magically become better and what you do?

Take photography for example, a truly impressive art form in it’s mastery, seemingly reserved for those who have spent years studying the form, endowed with a superb eye, the perfect lighting setup and crinkle-less canvases.

But if you’ve ever laid down your point and shoot and taken a few shots with an SLR you’d see that taking a pretty incredible looking photo isn’t as mytical as you thought.

Not to discount or devalue the immense talent that professionals and their equipment exhibit. (surely their in a league entirely their own). But in many case I have found that sometimes it’s the non-professionals that need professional equipment the most.

Over the years, I’ve formally studied many instruments, guitar was always the most challenging. I never invested in a decent one because it wasn’t something I was “serious” about learning, just something I wanted to riff on for fun. It wasn’t until I picked up my brother’s custom Paul Reed Smith that I realized “Hey, this is kind of easy, I’m better than I thought”. The perfect balance, low fret noise and weightlessness of the instrument made it feel like it was playing itself. I mean even Satriana might have trouble making the music store fender with free amp combo sing like an angel.

Another perk to investing in professional equipment right off the bat is the elevated potential for discovery. Many of us tend to feel limited by the things we use instead of liberated, but I also think that has a lot to do with what things we choose to have around us.

The age old Mac vs PC debate is another fine example. Naturally, any PC user will duel you to the death to defend their OS and even with all of the evidence against them they would still rather continue using a mediocre machine (yes, I said it) than venture into the realm of the different or unfamiliar.

I know because I was one of them. “But my bootleg windows programs won’t work on a Mac”. That’s because on a Mac, you don’t need half-ass bootleg programs, the legitimate Mac programs work and work really really well.

It’s a matter of our own conceptual and imaginative complacency that keeps us stuck in the same unproductive and self limiting patterns.

Not a professional photographer? Perfect! Go out and buy a $400 SLR. I give you 2 weeks before you’re selling your prints on deviant art and your point and shoot on ebay.

When you’re PC gets a virus (which invariably it will) go out and buy a mac, live with it for the return policy period and then try to think of a single reason why you shouldn’t keep it.

Unfortunately though, the fact is that in many cases, ease of use of a thing is in direct correlation to its price. But chances are you’ll spend less money in the long run and a lot less time learning how to do something if you have the right equipment spurring on your creativity and imagination.

9 times out of 10, you’ll find that the reward far outweighs any preconceived risk about purchasing top-of-line gear. Faced with a new world of possibilities you might just find that you become better and more productive at what you do. And hey you never know, you might even end up a professional.