From being influenced by Elliot Erwitt’s photography and visual puns to his early work as a Pulitzer-prize photojournalist and sports photographer to the cameras and lenses he relies on and why he chooses to shoot with Sony, Brian Smith talks with AlphaMirrorless’ Juan Pons in the latest edition of the TWiP AlphaMirrorless podcast.

“When I was in high school I wanted to something new every 3 weeks or so. I got interested in photography and I think my parents figured that I’d be done with it after about three weeks What I love about photography is it’s not something every 3 weeks, it’s different every day.”

Smith is one of the original Sony Artisans On Imagery and he’s been shooting with Sony cameras since the early days of Sony’s full-frame system. In the interview with Pons he describes how pleasantly surprised he was that Sony was genuinely interested in his feedback and Smith’s thoughts on what the engineers should be doing next. That attitude and constant drive to make products that are better and more useful for photographers is one of the reasons Smith is so devoted to Sony.

“I got one of the first working A900 bodies to shoot with. About a week later I sat down with one of the engineers at Photo Plus Expo in New York. I expected it to be like every other manufacturer who said tell us how awesome our wonderful camera is and how brilliant we are. And that’s not what hapened. I still remember what he said because it’s the best thing any manufacturer has ever said. He said tell me what we did right, tell me what we did wrong, tell me what we should do next. And that has in a nutshell been my experience in dealing with Sony since 2008. They are leading the field in terms of cutting edge innovation but they really are looking for how are they serving our needs and are they serving our needs.”

Listen to the full podcast at ThisWeekInPhoto.com