While it can be argued that the most important aspect of photography is everything that happens up to the point the shutter button is released, in many ways equipment influences the photographer's creativity. While my equipment has changed over the years, at first I thought it was the vision and thought which happened before the shot which had the most impact. To be fair, I still feel that way, but I didn't realize (or more correctly, didn't really internalize) how much equipment enables that creativity.