The Great Camera Gear Cull: Why I’m Selling off most of my Kit

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the impact that the latest Google updates had on my website traffic and, in turn, my income. As some of you may have also seen, it’s been a turbulent time since moving from the Philippines to Scotland at the beginning of the year. Huge financial stress, as well as marital issues, combined with that slicing of my income virtually overnight, have left me asking some deeper questions about what I’m doing, what I believe in, and what direction I want to head in.

The reality is that this website and writing gear articles has allowed me to continue with—and in fact has motivated me to get out and explore—my passion for photography again. After years of thinking it was a distant pipedream that a father of two girls couldn’t possibly pursue (“the income isn’t there, it’s too risky, I should face facts that my time to dream has passed and just get a job”), I kept going.

The problem is that I don’t just like taking photos. It’s rooted deep within me to question the world, what’s happening, to ask questions and find answers, and photography is my way of doing that. So I can’t just shake it off. I can’t brush it under the carpet and simply get a job.

But here’s the issue: I love sharing what I know with others in the hope that it may help someone on a similar path discover their passion for photography. I have 20 years of mistakes that I can call on and share so that perhaps it can stop the next photographer from making those same mistakes.

However, I am, ultimately, anti-consumerist.

As I approach 45 years old, I look around at the world and I hold a certain level of disillusionment for the materialistic, self-indulgent culture that we seem to have created around us. Us photographers have always been somewhat geeky, outside the norm. I still remember my college photography lecturer being nicknamed by students and teachers alike ‘Darkroom Dave’, with its slightly sinister connotations.

But since the advent of smartphones, Instagram, and social media, photography has become hip, cool, and popular. Usually, though, the camera is pointed in the opposite direction to how I learned. My face is too tired, currently too hairy, and too self-deprecating to think that 1,000 selfies of me in different locations would interest anyone other than a psychiatrist.

The flipside to that is this has vastly increased the popularity of gear, as a flow of phone photographers look to move up to proper cameras to improve their photos. Which is great. But actually, as I’ve looked more and more into it, it’s not photography that has become popular so much as being seen in the performance of photography. Having the right camera, image, and being seen in the right place is still a thing. I am in no position to criticise it or think I’m above it, but I don’t enjoy it, and I don’t want to be part of it.

As someone who is naturally introverted, with a preference for eating camping food over Michelin-star cuisine, drawing attention to myself is not something that comes naturally. Even in my family albums, I notice that I’m often missing because I’m behind the camera—exactly where I’d prefer to be. I’m not shy, and I’m not socially awkward; I’ve just got to the age where I am very selective about who and what I spend my time on. And time is the one thing that I simply can’t make more of.

That’s why, over the coming months and years, I will be transitioning the website to be much more photography-focused. I will be getting out with my camera as I did all those years ago in the Outer Hebrides and simply being a photographer again, not a reviewer.

The Gear and How it Came to be

Because of this realisation about where I want to head, I’ve been looking at my bloated shelf full of gear, all picked for a purpose, yet somewhere along the way, the financial pressure to provide for everyone meant losing sight of that purpose. This website started out as a way to record my thoughts about gear and share them—starting at a time when I had stopped earning my living from selling landscape photography (somewhere around 2013-14) and felt somewhat lost, but knew I wanted to still have a camera in my hand.

Over the next decade, I occasionally added an article, but it slowly faded. Then, last year, I got a notification that the website had been hacked. It was riddled with malware, and GoDaddy wouldn’t help, demanding I pay to fix it. I had to make a decision: let this old friend of a website take its natural course and die, or actually do something with it.

I chose the latter. And since June 2025 until now, it’s grown beyond what I thought possible. I’m genuinely grateful that so many of you took the time to read my articles, opinions, and personal story along the way. Some of the comments and emails that I have received in the last year have genuinely restored my faith in humanity.

But this is not what I dreamt of the website becoming: talking endlessly about gear, being at the mercy of Google and trends, and part of the marketing machine (even if honestly and unwillingly) that in the rest of my life, I am trying to move away from. I don’t believe in endless gear upgrades. I don’t believe in covering every single camera or lens release just for content. To continue this website and keep it competitive and actually earning money in that way would require me to do exactly that, and it would be disingenuous.

So how did I end up with so much gear? Well, if I’m brutally honest it was a combination of factors. I still dreamt of being a photographer again but was stuck in a job I hated simply to pay the bills and fund my children. Every next camera purchase would be the one that got me out, made the difference, made me finally realise my dream. Secondly, I will be honest and say that the last decade has personally been very difficult for reasons I wont go in to here but I guess I was still looking for something in life, happiness is the crux of it. Like many people, I got a short burst of happiness when I added another camera or lens to the collection.

When I re-started this website, I found myself in the position of having so much gear it was enough to create years worth of reviews, comparisons and the like. And as it started to become sucessful, It became self fulfilling. I could now justify yet another camera purchase as it was for the website. But this last 3 months changed everything, I want to step off the gear hamster wheel for the final time.

The amount of gear I have sitting next to me right now not only clutters my room, it clutters my mind. Instead of thinking about what I want to photograph today, I’m left thinking about what camera and lens to choose or what part of the site needs new content. That combined with deeply stressful family issues has left me very low on inspiration, creative energy and motivation for the last 3 months.

The move to Scotland started out incredibly positively, I was motivated, excited and content. It slowly became a nightmare but I am determined to resurect the initial feelings because I know I am so fortunate to be living in a place of such natural beauty, to have Sofia (my eldest duaghter) with me, thriving with a great future ahead of her. It’s just going to take a while for this numb, flat feeling to leave me after Izzy (my youngest daughter) left. Clearing out my gear, focusing on what I actually want and enjoy, and using what I do have to the fullest is part of that process.

I genuinely believe we have reached the stage—or at least I have—where I could pick any of my system cameras and use them for the next 10 years and be perfectly happy with the results, as long as I simply ignore the constant upgrade/release cycle.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate a good camera as much as the next photographer. But I want to use my camera to create, to get out and see, to capture life’s moments, places, and meaning in my photos. And so, that is what I plan to do, and that’s the direction this website (and my personal one) will be heading.

Less gear, more photography.

So in the last month or so, I’ve been looking to cull my now extensive gear collection down to what I actually need and enjoy using. Bearing in mind I’m now living in Scotland, the weather is unpredictable (well, we’re sure of lots of rain), and I hike in the mountains, glens, and rivers a lot. My passion is for nature photography, with interesting people and stories too.

I’ve made my final decision as to which gear I am going to keep: just two systems, both ideal for the type of photography and environment here.

I’m often asked which camera I would choose if I could only have one, and the answer is always the same: the Nikon Z8, which I’m pairing with the Z6III.

For times when I want to be more discreet, carry less, yet still shoot with something very capable and a joy to use, I’m keeping the camera system that I’ve never been able to quite shake—the one that nags at me if I don’t own it: OM System, with the OM-1 Mark II and OM-3.

The rest will be leaving next week, off to MPB, and a new chapter for me and this website will start. I’ll still occasionally talk about gear, but it will be after serious use and won’t be as frequent, because I’ll actually be out shooting for projects and for a living.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to see if this is even viable in this day and age of AI creation, but ultimately, if I don’t try, then I will never know.

So how do I plan to do this?

Well, firstly by being me. Now, people who know me may advise against that, but I think genuinely being yourself, documenting your process, your progress, and your struggles is infinitely more interesting than projecting perfection. Through a combination of articles on this website, YouTube videos focusing on the experience out in the field here in Scotland (once Sofia is back at school after her summer holidays), and my personal website showcasing the images that I make, I hope that some of you will come along for whatever the next chapter in my life has in store for me.