Materialistic Tragedy

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I have been working in retail for 4 years now as a part time job. I have been selling cameras and camera equipment for three years. I have seen a lot of people. Some very interesting, others very plain, some funny, some not that much, happy, angry, sad, rich, poor, but we all have something in common.

We all behave very similarly when it comes to consuming. We are all tempted to get every single bit and piece that could make us feel secure and "complete" in our own little bubble. We often search to identify ourselves to certain type, group, specialty with our material and we don't feel like we belong there until our materialistic needs are fulfilled.

For some people it is really difficult making choices. I see clients everyday that put a lot of thought into their choices and find extremely hard to settle their mind on something. Those people eventually give up to their insecurities and end up purchasing everything just to make sure that among the complete kit they made some right choices. And you can't really blame them, technology brought so many advancements on a lot of fields, but there is so much information out there and for some people, filtering that brings a great deal of stress. The ironic thing, from what I have noticed is that these same people that treat equipment choices with such importance are also the ones that end up using it just for comparing their tests with the internet tests they've read about to reassure themselves. I find it very sad, these people never find that satisfaction they seek so much, and that equipment never gets put to its potential, it's a materialistic tragedy.

I had a great deal of fun with this project, I shot it for one of my only photography classes I ever took, it was a color film class. I shot both it with a film camera and a digital camera, the pictures below are the digital copies. This was a first for me in many ways. It was the first time I was shooting with a camera that I wasn't actually holding. The first time I was using a backdrop. The first time I was using a studio flash kit by myself (altough I did get some help from my work colleagues). I have to thank Simon Camera and my great boss for trusting and allowing me with all this gear. A great deal of it is mine, some of it is my colleagues' and the rest was floor stock. Yes I did paint the two longboards myself, I will upload those projects in the near future. I made the most with what I had, I know there is gear out there that could have made this project better. I would have loved to have a lot more gear to literally pile up and fill the whole background. And I would have loved to have a big glass table to light it up from underneath. But like I said, I had a lot of fun, it was a first step that opened a lot of doors for me and I am satisfied with it. enjoy!