ShotKit shows you the gear professionals use, and the pictures they take with it

Gear bag shots are a popular pastime with amateur photographers, and they usually comprise a camera bag, at least one camera and lens, and then an armada of daily accessories such as iPhones, laptops, watches, notebooks etc. Many online fora are overflowing with pictures of this kind, and there are endless discussion threads where troll after troll goes on to complain about the choice of bag, lenscap, polarizer filter, energy bar, etc. So besides the gratification that showing off your goods on the internet will give you, there is little to gain from this activity.

But taking and sharing pictures of gear bags is not entirely futile. In fact, it does make sense when the person showing off their daily setup is a professional photographer, and when they actually have accompanying pictures that show what kind of results they are achieving with their gear. That's probably what Sydney-based photographer Mark Condon was thinking when he created ShotKit.com, a website that lets photographers share their gear bags and accompanying pictures they took with that gear.

Say, for example, you're a huge fan of photographer X and always wanted to know what kind of gear they use to take their pictures. Not each and every photographer has been interviewed by a publication such as ours about their gear choices, and even if they have, it's not always easy to find the respective articles. But chances are they're featured on ShotKit.com, where besides a picture of their camera bag and its contents, you'll find samples of their work as well as a couple of paragraphs worth of background information that might help to put things into perspective.

Because, you know, it's not all about the gear. While yes, technicaly, it's all about the gear, and we can absolutely relate to GAS ("Gear Acquisition Syndrome"), there's a lot more to great photography than owning the latest and greatest in technology. A lot of it has to do with practice and experience, with creativity and a vision, and with knowledge of the basic skills involved in the craft: lighting, exposure, framing, and almost always post-processing. But taking a look at not only the work but also the tools of others can be highly inspirational, and ShotKit does a great job of offering inspiration in a beautifully designed format.

(via SLR Lounge)