If you buy an expensive camera with expensive lenses, you will be able to take such photos, won't you?
Irving Penn: What typewriter do you use?
There's a technical aspect around camera and photo settings. This is largely objective. In certain conditions, certain settings deliver certain qualities.
Then, there's a subjective side. Framing, composition, other artistic decisions.
Time and place matter. Your subject matters. Your composition matters. Your lighting matters. When it's done well, the viewer doesn't realize this.
While he shoots with the cheapest of toy cameras, he is very skilled.
> 1966, Ted enrolled in as a fledgling photographer in Ansel Adams' Yosemite Photography Workshop --an event which markedly changed the course of his artistic life. He returned to Yosemite as Ansel's workshop assistant the following year, and in 1970 moved to Carmel to work fulltime as Ansel's Assistant and printer of Adams' Yosemite Special Edition Prints. Ted also returned for fifteen seasons as an Instructor at Ansel's Yosemite Workshops.