I was just reading a post on Kirk Tuck’s blog where he took himself to task for being a Curmudgeon, stuck in his ways and not willing to try new things.  If you follow Kirk you know that nothing could be further from the truth.  He tries lots of new things, and sometimes tries some old things just to see if they are as good now as they used to be.  Usually they are.  But when the money is on the line and he’s doing a job, he is always very careful to select the right tool for the work he’s doing.  Sometimes it means he can use an 8-year old Kodak SLR and sometimes he relies on the trusty 5D Mark II.

The subject of this specific rant was that he had recently allowed himself to use Topaz to process one of his swimming images, and he thought the image was interesting and that “I really like the tones and the colors I ended up with after playing.”

I find myself feeling like a bit of a curmudgeon at times.  I like the way I do things and it’s hard for me to change.  I know that I should probably try new things, if for no other reason than to say that I tried them and didn’t like them.  Sort of like you can’t complain about the election if you didn’t vote, right?  And I suppose it’s good to learn new things, even if it’s just so I know how to talk about it when I’m teaching a Lightroom class.  But I worry so much that the “gear” will get in the way that I tend to not do that.

I think the main thing for me is that I like the tools I use because I like the results I get from using them.  It’s part of the pre-visualization process.  Yes, there is probably some merit to knowing how to use other software, but in many ways isn’t that just like buying another lens?  The more lenses I have the more time I spend thinking about whether or not I’m using the right lens and the less time I spend thinking about whether I’m pointing it in the right direction.