As a photographer gear is important. It came mean the difference in making a shot or missing a shot. And like most photographers I have a budget and I have preferences.

I can not afford a 10k lens no matter how hard and how much I wish I could. It just isn’t realistic and frankly mastery comes from practice, better equipment makes it easier to get a shot but knowing your gear and developing your abilities allows you to make the shot with whatever gear you have.

My favorite lens to shoot horse shows isn’t what most would expect. It is the Tamron Auto Focus 70-200mm f/2.8 Di LD IF Macro Lens.

A Macro is a lens that specifically allows you to focus extremely close to a subject so that it appears large in the viewfinder (and in the final image).

So why would I use it to shoot horse shows?

The answer is I love how hard it makes me work, and how sharp my images come out. Yet, I couldn’t help but listen to all the equipment snobs speak about how the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS III USM is a superior action lens— so I bought one and I have used it the last two years.

I like it but I love my Tamron and there was a drastic price difference in the two lenses by thousands of dollars. My advice is find what you like and do not take much stalk in gear snobs. I shoot with one lens mostly at horse shows and if push comes to shove it’s a macro lens that was under a thousand dollars for my 2k plus action lens.