An expensive professional grade camera and lens are wonderful tools, and a big help, when it comes to making pin prick sharp, well exposed, pictures that will enlarge huge and still look great. However, just as an expensive stove is not the secret behind a cook’s delicious meal, the indispensable key to making a zinger picture of a nude [or anything] is a photographer’s passionate drive, commitment, skills, preparation, and strategic vision—especially “vision”—of an image, with true originality.

For a “photographer’s vision” to be a cut above “average”, the photographer must have A) a discerning awareness of light, quality of light, direction of light, design, patterns, space, composition, lens choice, and proper or creative exposure, B) the ability to discern, isolate, and capture, assuredly and quickly, brief fleeting moments, that reduce chaos to stunning simplicity, that results in a zinger picture, and C) a genuine, deep, strong, passionate, sensitive, and curious love for life, nature and people.

BOTTOM LINE: A photographer who has the above qualities, with an ultra simple, cheap, rudimentary camera, will assuredly consistently make far superior pictures than another photographer who lacks those qualities but takes pictures with the most expensive, most capable, ultra professional camera and lens.