I’ve heard myself say before that “a camera is just a tool”, usually in response to someone commenting on the seemingly careless way I use mine (perching it in precarious places, bombing down scree slopes with it in my hand, shoving it in a bag with other things, using it in the rain), but I realise I don’t think that’s quite true. My camera isn’t just a tool, it has a personality all its own, it brings with it a set of constraints that serve to both limit certain efforts and liberate others. I like these constraints, this character, I’m not interested in the relentless pursuit of optically perfect lenses, they seem to me to kill photography. That’s why I sold all my Sony kit, it was so clinical.

A pure tool is as unobtrusive as possible, tries to get completely out of your way, but that’s not what I want. I want a tool that is fun, that has quirks, faults. There’s a pleasure in using a tool like that, a pleasure that you wont find in just any tool. Not just a tool, a medium.

And perhaps this seems like pointless semantics, but I really do think that the relationship that emerges between artist and tool — the ways in which we anthropomorphise our tools — have a significant effect on how effectively we can use them.