I recently came across a YouTube channel produced by a photographer that made me think about photography and why people get engaged with it in a completely different way than I have previously. I have always known that some people get into photography because they like cameras. The technology, the physicality, the functionality. You know this and it doesn’t need to be discussed. However, my revelation was broader than this.

The YouTuber in question (and I am sure that there are more following this approach to photography on YouTube that I haven’t seen) makes landscape images, which I have to say to me are boring and generic. His images are shown on screen after we see him make them with full technical details acting as captions. Lots of water, trees, mountains and post-production. You literally get the picture. I have no problem with this, lots of people do not find this work boring and want to know how to make similar images. I don’t understand it, but I don’t need to.

However, I think it would be a mistake to see this particular channel and others as photography channels. Yes, they are produced by photographers who go out and make photographs, but to me they are about buying, and buying more than just cameras. The photographer on this particular channel has a small motor home (he has just got a new one to replace his old one evidently), which has all of the latest ‘kit’ anyone who wants a motor home could desire. Smart kit, designed to be efficient, clever and ‘cool’. Pockets and spaces for everything you could want, need or buy. He fitted the van out himself adding some DIY content to the channel. We get talk about travel, snow, tyres, camping, cooking, in fact everything that could be described as the ‘single-man’s-adventure-lifestyle’. In short it’s about plaid shirts, big boots and beenie hats. In affect it allows those men ( I am guessing here that it has a mjority male audience, but I could be wrong) watching to live a vecarious life of outdoors freedom with photography being the reason for all of the additional spend and time spent alone.

I get this. I used to have a school friend who was obsessed with kit. The latest, newest, the most efficent in performing whatever it was purchased to achieve. He had to have it, and spent hours reading about it even if he couldn’t afford it. Kit for every aspect of life, even if life does not need it. However, this YouTube channel takes kit purchasing to the next level. I have no problem with consumerism or with the photographer who makes this channel, but as someone who loves photography I do see a certain dishonesty in this approach to the medium. In my opinion, the implied suggestion is that if you do not buy into his approach, his lifestyle, then surely you will never achieve images like his.

No mention is given as to how the YouTuber in question earns a living. It would be rare indeed for such landscape work to provide a large enough revenue to support such kit spending and travels. So how is it funded? I can only presume that he has a well-paid job outside of photography or that his channel is making enough money for him to make that his main source of income. If so I take my beenie hat off to him. He’s playing the game and playing it well. What he has identified is this connection between photography, kit and being alone in the wilderness. The holy trinity for many landscape and wildlife enthusiast photographers.

What do you buy when you have enough camera bodies, lenses and tripods? You buy outdoor clothing, hiking boots and a motorhome. Once you have these then you can start spending on your new vehicle and maybe on tools to work on it with. The options to spend are endless, but none of them will improve your photography. However, they will encourage YouTube sponsorship as MPB and Squarespace surely can’t fund every YouTube channel.

I don’t know how much of the kit the YouTuber has is given for free or at a discount in return for ‘influencer’ exposure. Maybe some, maybe none. However, you can be sure that it is all given a good review when mentioned by brand name. There are lots of ‘thank you’s’ for help and support handed out. Basic influencer behaviour. Again this is not an issue, photography is a business and he has worked out a way to live the life he wants off the back of it. However, the motorhome and the channel contains no referance to inspirational books by other photographers of the past or present. It doesn’t talk about why images work and why they don’t. There is no discussion concerning the importance of narrative. It doesn’t explain why certain photographers are important and why others are less so. Every channel needs a unique selling point, an identity, and no one channel can do everything. I know this. However, in essence this one is an entertainment and that is fine, just as long as it is consumed as such. It is an idealised representation of the world and life that photographers lead, nothing more and nothing less. One in which photography is as important as an AeroPress coffee and a RAB coat.

Dr.Grant Scott
After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work as a photographer for a number of advertising and editorial clients in 2000. Alongside his photographic career Scott has art directed numerous advertising campaigns, worked as a creative director at Sotheby’s, art directed foto8 magazine, founded his own photographic gallery, edited Professional Photographer magazine and launched his own title for photographers and filmmakers Hungry Eye. He founded the United Nations of Photography in 2012, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a BBC Radio contributor. Scott is the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019), What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020) and Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, (Orphans Publishing 2024). His photography has been published in At Home With The Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.

© Grant Scott 2026