Actually 4 parts, there is a 1A and a 3
Funny, after all that insistence on not getting obsessed with the gear, I saw there is another vid where he is endorsing a Phase 1 of some type. He seems like a man who knows how to get the bills paid :-)
(Funny in a way, he started off choosing between mathematics and art school. Art school was also my plan B if I didn't get into the mathematics PhD program I wanted... I went the other way).
Yes, I've corrected the post now.
He really comes alive when he tries to point out the difference betwen a job and being a photographer.
What he doesn't have to point out, though, by virtue of his success if nothing else, is that all photography is not equal any more than are all photographers equal. That first part, about the type, used to drive some members of my family crazy: they couldn't understand why I wouldn't do weddings but would do fashion stuff even for clients who couldn't pay much for it. This came to mind, in a way, at lunch today: the owner is French and a great chef, but as with everywhere here, struggling with the economic change and especially its effect on the Brits, both resident and tourists, of whom there are precious few to be seen right now, at least before Easter. The point that brings him into the photographic genre thing is this: as I eat, I was thinking whether I should or should not risk paying him a sort of backhanded compliment by telling him he shared my problem, which is that he is not capable of cutting his cloth to suit the clients. In other words, he's mentally incapable of cutting his high standards to stay within the price he has to charge, which means it's going to get tougher as everything rises in price - especially vegetables right now - which was exactly where I found myself at one stage during my fashion career: I couldn't bring myself to cutting corners because the client wasn't able to pay what others could. The only compromise was to stay studio-bound and not do exteriors. But whatever I did had to be done to the best of my ability to do it. Just like his cooking.
In the end, I eat and didn't try to broach the subject: I might not have been able to phrase it properly enough, quickly enough in French or Spanish and he could easily have flown into a rage and banned me! I don't need that!
Rob