Welcome to Pro Tips – a feature where I answer a reader question about pet photography (and photography in general). If you’ve got a question you’d like answered, click here to email me.

The most frequently asked questions I get are about the equipment I use. Nikon or Canon, PC or Mac, etc etc. I always feel a bit funny telling people what I use, because I am a huge minimalist when it comes to most things, and photography equipment is no exception.

• A Nikon SLR D700  + backup (my previous cameras were a D7000 and a D60.) I have also shot with Canon and I absolutely cannot tell the difference. There are entire websites dedicated to arguing the differences but my advie is to pick one that’s light, easy to handle, and that feels right to YOU. Don’t get caught up in the megapixels, nobody cares.
• A 50mm f1.4 lens and a 28mm f2.8. The 50mm lens is on my camera 99.9% of my time. This lens is super sharp, fast to focus, light to carry,and best of all it’s small – pets don’t feel intimidated by it.
• My HP laptop. It’s almost sacrilegious as a photographer to not work on a Mac, but I’ve never seen what the fuss is about, and I’d prefer to take the money I saved on sticking with a PC and spending it on important things like cat bow ties and trips to IKEA. Desktop computers make me sad, I like to be able to work on the couch, in a cafe, or by the beach if I can – for tricky editing I have an external monitor. Getting a laptop with a built in SD card reader is amazing, no more cables to download your photos!
• Sandisk 8GB memory cards. I’ve never had one fail me yet (runs around the house knocking on multiple pieces of wood)
• Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. I cannot stress how amazing this is. For $30 a month you get access to all of Adobe’s Creative Suite. No more paying for upgrades, no more paying $3000 for software – LIFE CHANGING.
• Seagate portable hard drives. I have backups of my backups, which are then again backed up online to Dropbox. Dropbox is $11 a month for 1TB of space, it’s fantastic.

So there you have it! The best part of having minimal equipment is how easy it is to pack up your stuff and work from anywhere – all my gear fits into a small backpack and laptop case and can be carried onto a plane!

Thanks so much for reading – if you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments below.