Why are we never happy?

One thing I know to be true, yet I still wander off on a tangent every few years, is that I'm more happy shooting with cheaper, less capable gear. Truth. I enjoyed my Canon EOS M1 a lot more than my 6D. Even though it was a bit of a shock to the system to begin with. With much worse DR, high ISO noise performance, AF speed & accuracy, an so on.
I also had more fun with my Panny GX8 than my 6D. Love my Panny G9, bought it at release, it went everywhere with me pretty much on a daily basis. But out of curiosity mainly, I picked up a brand new sub $500 Panny G100 about 8 months ago, and had an absolute blast. I still love my G9, it's a fabulously capable body that doesn't do a thing wrong for my purposes, I just have more fun with the DPreview rated worst camera of the year. So much so, that I bought another one a few months back, in case I damaged the original, or it failed to proceed for some reason. Go figure. There's no real tangible reason I can think of, it's just fun.
Sometimes I get the urge to pick up a Fuji GFX of some description, they're entirely affordable for me, but past experience tells me I'd end up enjoying my most despised cameras on the interwebz more. Strange but true

I think you're confusing experience with training

You can buy better gear to make better pictures. Buying better pencils won't make any difference.

I don't know. I think being able to lose billions of dollars and have it not mean crap to you vs not having food in your kitchen to eat today, might suggest there's a notion of life being a game you can win and lose before your game ends.

OK, you go ahead and lose your game then. I'm going to enjoy my life.

Interesting documentary to watch about certain aspects of this conversation- well worth the effort:
nnn.ng/andrew-lloyd-webber-discovers-musical-roots-on-genealogy-show/

I've been a teacher for a number of years, and I have seen, many times, how a craft can be learned. It's certainly easier for some people than others, but as far as I can tell, this manifests itself in motivation, not innate ability. The ones that are enjoying the process, learn the most. They think about the problems outside of class, as the topics are interesting to them, and spend more time and attention on the assignments. And in that, they improve their craft.

There were always a few students, however, who claimed they lacked some innate ability. It was then this defeatist attitude that prevented them from learning. Sometimes I could snap them out of it, show them that things aren't as hard as they seem if they let go of that asinine notion of "talent".

It's the same thing with kids. Kids suck at everything. But where they apply themselves, they get better. Modern pedagogic theory recommends to reward effort, not results. They can get better at anything if they put in the effort. If you instead tell your kids they "lack talent", you take away their chance to improve, or set them up for failure of they don't like your goals. "Talent" is a terribly harmful notion for kids.

I firmly believe that the same principle applies to photography. If you're motivated and interested, you can learn to take decent photos. Not everyone can become an world-renown artist, of course, but certainly good enough to satisfy business demands and personal satisfaction.

The reason not everyone can become a "world-renown artist" as you say, is because they don't have the talent. While you are being dismissive of the context, talent is very real. There is a reason some people are math whizzes, some people are wordsmiths, some people can effortlessly do back flips and some people can draw.

It's talent. Not training, but natural God given talent. When I was ten years old, I had a friend who could draw cartoons better than anything you would see in the newspaper. At ten years old. No training. I have a couple friends who runs rings around me in the photography sphere with no training. It just is. I have another that draws his own Christmas cards that Hallmark would kill for, no training.

I think you can train somebody from being a lousy photographer into an average or above average photographer, but the gift is the gift. No amount of training makes that happen. I get it, people should make the effort. I could spend 10 years trying to become a decent singer. Not gonna happen. Talent is talent.

...because it is easier to buy new gear than to improve personal skills!

Do you think Peter Lik's success as a photographer is explained by his amazing photographic eye? Not my explanation. I happen to think his photography is extremely ordinary with absolutely no evidence of any obvious artistic talent that stands above anyone else's. He clearly has extraordinary business talent, on the other hand.

How does anyone even decide whether someone is a talented artist? Is there some kind of test, like brush strokes/sec or imaginative inventions/hour? I doubt it. It seems to me that it's all a bit random. Someone gets represented by a top gallery or something and suddenly they are the talk of the town and making a comfortable living from their art rather than doing the honest thing and starving like any self-respecting artist. Is Dan Brown a great writer, the modern Shakespeare? Hmmm....

Bruce Percy recently wrote a piece about great artists stealing from their idols, their muses. He used an example of Michael Kenna who he says frequently pays homage to his inspiring photographers. In this case it was Kenna's version of Bill Brandt's "Snicket". I happen to think the Kenna image is much the better of the two, but I like some of Brandt's work as well. Which one of them is the talented one?

I think a more reasonable interpretation of the nature vs nurture thing is to say that perhaps nature places a ceiling on an individual's potential (remember, my cat can't paint) but in reality most people don't get anywhere near their potential. It takes a lot of dedicated hard work as well as natural talent to really deliver. A lazy talent can easily be outdone by an obsessive but less talented individual. Mostly they are. It's a different game when talent and motivation co-incide. But in general there is too much assumption that achievement is always the result of talent and the talented just walk it without effort. I reckon there are a lot of talented people who fake lack of effort, but who secretly work on and think about their skill all the time. They just like to make it look easy as a party trick.

Check their waste paper bin....

Of course it is. That's what I mean. Given the same level of effort, talent always wins. Well, maybe usually is the better word, but I know the way I would bet.
Many may assume that the talented are mostly just walking it, but I am not one of them. I have seen it first hand too often it was just pure natural talent over effort though to make me believe people just have different ceilings for different things.

I spent much of my misspent youth "blowing the horn." I started on the trumpet at about age 6. I played in my mother's jazz group in red neck bars around Evansville, IN from about 14 until I graduated from high school. I made some nice change doing studio gigs and some club gigs in collage. They put a hat on me and told me to work my way to the back if the cops walked into the bar. i could play just about any horn, including trumpet, cornet, flugelhorn and French horn. I was viewing myself as being the next Miles Davis but academics and mathematics won out. I tell this to tell the following story.

I was in a music store in Chicago. I was picking up my trumpet that had a valve replacement job. I had a Martin Committee Trumpet and Flugelhorn. Martin went out of business in about 1958. They were incredible instruments and more importantly I knew them - I knew exactly how they would respond and in reality they became an extension of me and never got in the way when I played. So I'm picking up my horn and talking to the store owner. This guy comes in wants wants to see his "best professional trumpet." He said that a lot of people like the Bach Stradivarius and asked him how long have you been playing. The guy answered, he just started but he knew the best trumpet would immediately make him better.

The owner looked introduced me and asked me if that was true. I had to pretty much tell him that he would be very sorry if he dropped a lot of coin on a Bach and expected to sound any better than a run of the mill Benson & Co student trumpet which was a standard entry level descent trumpet of the time. He looked at me like I had to be crazy. The owner put a used Benson on the counter along with a top end (expensive) Bach and asked the guy to turn his back while I played something. So I whipped up a bit of "Round Midnight" and "Birth of the Cool" on each. The the owner asked which trumpet was which. He could not tell. I could and the store owner could but the difference was very subtle and without the years of training and the ear they sounded alike. The owner explained that he would sell him anything he wanted but for his level he was probably wasting his money.

So it is not just cameras. It is the hard work that goes to get proficient with any tool.

Interesting read thanks and that applies for sure with photography, experience and technique trumps all. Then it's worth the top gear and the results can be very subtle and hard to see sometimes.

I do marquetry (inlaid veneer work) and disposable blade knives are the thing. I can work with any knife and have done, but you can't beat Tajima knives and Tajima black hardened blades. Nothing even comes close and they feel right. Same for anything really, most tools can work, but there's a feeling with the best that makes it simply work better. The same goes for cameras and lenses.

Exactly. One has to have the developed the skillcraft to take advantage of the best tools and that takes a lot of "grinding." 😎 In fact the Bach trumpet I mentioned is a difficult trumpet to play - especially for a beginner and intermediate. It is not forgiving. A minor screw up is magnified. But in the hands of a master is where it would shine.

"Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration." Thomas Edison

Aside from the thoughts of issue of death, war, illness, or financial catastrophe, I am always HAPPY!

I do photography for a living- it's my day job and business. If my present gear performs up to par- I am happy. If any of my gear becomes obsolete, beyond usefulness, or can not address my real requirements, I am HAPPY to replace them. After all, in business, investments have to be justified- one can NOT just purchase equipment willy-nilly! It has to pay off in efficiency, reliability, quality improvement, and performance. If there's a one-time gear issue one has to work around it and make do or rent something.

If I am dissatisfied f with any of my results, my first inclination is not to throw money at it but FIRSTLY, I examine my technique. I am HAPPY when I can solve the issue and have LEARNED from the expereince.

Many enthusiasts spend too much time, energy, and money on amassing huge inventories of gear. They are so busy buying and selling and fiddling with endless gadgetry, that has no time or energy left for creative shooting. I know a guy who has, easily, $150,000 (CDN) worth of photographic equipment and editing hardware and software. He cannot shoot his way out of a wet paper bag. His wife, meanwhile, shoots little masterpieces with her cell phone!

Speaking of wet paper bags. I have seen so many folks post online, asking technical questions about setups for portraiture or still life, whatever and they are posting test images of shopping bags, newspaper print copy, and test charts to test targets. I mean fine a human subject, or a flower, or a piece of pottery for heaven's sake! Some folks are insanely concerned with a sharpness to the exteny that their images look like cutouts. One would think they all exhibit their pictures on the Jumbotron at their local arena! Ths is why so many folks say they are not HAPPY!

Something my, and probably everyone's music teacher would quote!
But I knew musicians that had more than that 1% in their DNA.

My sister is a psychologist who ended up as a FBI trained profiler who worked for years supporting the Indiana State Bureau of Investigation as an independent profiler. We had the very conversation about technology addiction. The current view in the psychology circles is electronic gear GAS is an addiction similar to most other addictions, alcohol, drugs, shop lifting, sex, etc. with the same underlying causes. It can also closely related with anxiety, depression and other conditions. It also turns out that people with these types of addictive behavior are more likely to become involved criminal activity that those that done suffer from these conditions. She said such that predicting a profile for a given unknown suspect such types of behavior is often part of the profile.