Silêncio fantástico... a beautiful photograph of autumn leaves floating on water, from Joe Tarunga, posted on Flickr.
The photo was taken with a Canon PowerShot A70 3.2 megapixel camera.
It's interesting to consider how great that picture is, even though it was taken with a camera that is relatively old (came out in 2003), relatively inexpensive, that has relatively few megapixels.
I think the lesson is that it's not so much the tool as the user, which reminds me of a story...
I played trumpet for a few years in junior high and one year of high school. Didn't practice much and I wasn't very good. I had a used Old's trumpet that my parents had bought me. Old's trumpets are good instruments, and the one I had was in good condition, but at the age of 11 it seemed logical to me that if I only had a new (more expensive) trumpet I'd be a better trumpet player. It wasn't my disinterest in practicing that was holding me back, it was that old Old's trumpet. I told our band teacher about my theory. He took my horn and blew some really nice music out of it (he was good). I was sort of flabbergasted that my trumpet could make all those notes so fast and pretty. The moral of the story to me was it's not so much the tool as the user.
That reminds me of something I heard or read somewhere about Vietnamese boat builders. The story was that some of them could build a functional, aesthetically pleasing, seaworthy, working, fishing boat with a string (for measuring), a hammer and a saw. They had learned boat building techniques, passed from generation to generation, by working as apprentices, which resulted in highly skilled craftsmen. It's not so much the tool....
It's interesting to think of the T.V. shows about woodworking, cabinet making, or house renovation, and the focus on specialized tools vs. the aquisition of skill by plain old hard work, experience and perseverence. I have a friend that makes and installs custom cabinets, who has occasionally helped me on small home projects (like cutting miter joints). It's always amazing to me to watch him do something that would take me 3 or 4 times as long to complete. He has skill and the right tools...perfect.
