By Wayne Cosshall 

We all fall into ruts sometimes or experience low points in our lives. Some of us self-medicate with retail therapy, enjoying the emotional lift that comes from buying something new, whether it’s something as small as a book or more expensive, such as a new car, camera, or printer.

We may be sad about the time we spend doing things we don’t like. So sometimes we seek a quick fix to our feelings by buying new toys. This is a trap, because there are some problems that spending money simply can’t solve.

To break free of this cycle, we must find ways to minimize the time spent on things we don’t want to do so we can maximize the time we can spend on the things we really love want to do.

I have found it worthwhile to sit down and list exactly what it is that I want to do. For me it is:

• Spend quality time with my wife and daughter
• Take pictures and make art
• Teach people and help them grow and develop
• Develop businesses
• Read on a wide range of topics
• Work on myself, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually

Combining some activities and accomplishing several goals simultaneously is the key. Sometimes, spending money offers a solution.

Once you understand your priorities, purchasing new technology can free you to do more of what you really want to do. For example, when I recently bought a new laptop to replace my old black Apple Powerbook, I discovered its built-in WiFi connection enabled me get a lot more writing done late at night after everyone else had gone to bed.

If one of your goals is to take more pictures, what equipment would you need to buy to enable you to take pictures on more occasions than you do now? Would it be a more versatile single lens for your dSLR so that you could take your camera more places, more conveniently? Or, maybe you’d prefer a tiny, compact camera with a decent resolution and a good lens to carry all the time.

Years ago, when I was starting to plan an exhibition, I researched the cost of having my images printed as Cibachromes. I soon realized that I could easily buy a Cibachrome roller transport processor and add a color head on my enlarger, and still have change left over. So I bought the processor and did that exhibition, as well as the next few exhibitions plus a lot of other prints.

Later, I did the same with my first large-format inkjet printer. With the cost of prints at the time, it was easy to justify buying the printer because I could continue to use the printer for follow-on commercial jobs and other exhibitions.

There will be times when it’s not smart to try to do it all yourself. But if you understand your goals, sometimes it is. A side benefit of both the darkroom purchase and my first (an subsequent) large format printers is that I spent more time working with my own images, which greatly assisted in making my photography better.When you look at the cost of something you’re considering buying, try to determine the equivalent cost to you of not buying it.

If you’re thinking of buying a printer, this might be pretty easy.

• Calculate the cost of the printer, media and the value of your time to learn how to use it efficiently.
• Find out how much it would cost to have someone else output your prints at the size and quality level you desire.
• Do the math to see how much you can save by buying a printer to output your own prints.

If you’re thinking about buying a compact camera, you can try to put a value on each good image you produce and make a conservative estimate of how many good shots you’ll get from the camera in a reasonable period of time.

Giving more thought to each new device before you buy it, moves you away from retail therapy and into the realm of careful investment. Investing in yourself can be a smart thing to do.

This shot of reflected trees in a pond with coins at the bottom wouldn’t have been captured if I hadn’t invested in a compact camera to take with me when it’s inconvenient to carry a full camera kit. For this shot, I used the Pentax K10D that was in my briefcase when I was taking some of my students to a gallery.