Imagine someone handed you a computer from 1994 with the latest version of Photoshop on it. Would you take it?
The illustrator Bob Staake definitely wouldn’t — and not because he can’t use the software. He already has a perfectly good computer running Photoshop 3.0, and he has no intention of changing that.
Thirty years have marched on, but Staake is still using the same setup he started with, back when very few illustrators were even touching computers, let alone Photoshop. In an interview, he explained his reasoning plainly: “I was looking for something that would let me scan in my pen and ink drawings and colour them.
An art director friend told me Adobe Photoshop was just what I was looking for. When I open up Photoshop 3.0, it’s there and ready to go in four seconds flat. Believe me, I am anything but a technophobe — I rarely ever upgrade because I’m usually inundated with work and simply don’t have the time to learn new versions. For me, it is simply a matter of pragmatism.”
That pragmatism is something we could all stand to embrace.
We’re constantly bombarded with new software, new upgrades, and new information, and it’s easy to feel like you’re falling behind if you’re not keeping pace. But the reality is that you often don’t need to upgrade at all.
A magazine publisher once looked at my cameras and asked me a question.
His question was: how do you know when to upgrade, and when do you leave well enough alone? My cameras are Leica Q2s — not cheap, and not new, but they do exactly what I need them to do.
My answer was simple: you stop upgrading when people start saying wow.
Not once, but consistently. My photographs went from average to good, and from good to genuinely impressive, and somewhere in that arc people started reacting with real enthusiasm. That’s the point at which the tool stopped being the limiting factor — and therefore the point at which upgrading it stopped making sense.
This principle goes well beyond photography.
It’s easy to spot a beginner, in almost any field. They scramble. When I started with watercolours, I wanted a dozen brushes and a full array of tubes. Designing a layout, I’d throw in as many fonts as I could find. Even a few years ago, I bought ten different language-learning apps trying to find one that worked.
All of that scrambling is a necessary phase.
You need to cast a wide net before you know what to keep. But it has to be a phase, not a permanent state.
If we were to slip back to the topic of photography we know that some of the world’s most iconic photographs were taken with extremely rudimentary cameras. Film, no autofocus, no computational processing — and yet the results were extraordinary. The benchmark was never the equipment. It was always the outcome: consistent results that made the photographer proud and made audiences stop and look.
Using his limited palette, Staake has done well for himself.
He's authored over 40 books and illustrated for clients ranging from The New York Times to The New Yorker, whose cover he has appeared on multiple times, alongside work for advertising campaigns, games, and Hallmark greeting cards. Not bad for someone who hasn’t updated his software since the mid-nineties.
Yet, sometimes you have to upgrade so you move towards less, not more.
My Leica Q2 was, in one sense, a step back. Before it, I had a more complex Canon setup with multiple lenses and dozens of configuration options. The Leica has fewer features and a fixed lens.
It also costs more.
But it removed friction. It let me focus on making photographs rather than managing equipment.
That said, convenience is also a legitimate reason to upgrade.
We had a perfectly good slide projector for years, until I spotted one that was a third of the weight and barely bigger than an iPad. My wife wasn’t keen — the old one worked fine, after all. But once we made the switch, she was delighted. Sometimes the result isn’t better; it’s just easier to get to. That’s why we have lighter umbrellas, slimmer phones, and faster laptops.
But these are the exceptions. In most cases, less genuinely is more.
A single well-chosen tool, used deeply, will outperform a cabinet full of options used superficially. A limited palette forces mastery. If you want to get good at something, give yourself permission to scramble at the start — try things, explore, make mistakes. But set a time limit on that phase. Then narrow down, commit to a small set of tools, and go deep. Your goal is to create the wow with less, not more.
That’s the real difference between beginners and seasoned professionals. Beginners accumulate while professionals pare back.
If you want to get really good, avoid the buffet. Choose less and look for the “wow” factor, instead.
