A few months ago, I reluctantly took the plunge into Instagram reels, like many other still photographers. My most popular reel by a wide margin was a joke comparing “amateurs” to “professionals.” And, although my point was not so much to make a distinction between two classes of photographers, but rather to comment on photographers’ common obsession with gear, sometimes at the expense of fundamentals, I touched a nerve with some people who took exception to what they saw as an insult to amateur photographers.