This search for fusion and opportunity has taken Brown in some unorthodox professional directions. For the first six years of his photography career, Brown was a wall-to-wall Apple user, just like nearly all creative pros at his level. However, he increasingly grew uneasy with Apple’s direction on iOS and found it "limiting." Another big problem with Apple was that seemingly every photographer relied on iOS and OS X. Meanwhile, Google’s Android was rocketing in popularity despite being ignored by the photo community. This gave Brown an opportunity to start talking with people at Google, and soon he was dialoging with product line vice presidents and consulting for them. He even helped Google refine the HDR functionality for Google Glass.

With one contrarian door blown open, others followed. After finding Windows ME and Windows Vista “not a pleasant experience,” Brown was hesitant to give Windows another shot. But with one of his larger sponsors having just released a Windows-based tablet designed for creative professionals, Brown doubled down and built himself an Intel Core i7-based PC for a quarter of the price of a Mac Pro at the time. He embraced Windows 8 has "and has grown to absolutely love it." He even notes its stability as one of its strongest suits, which is contradictory to the Windows of the past.
 

Colby Brown is the only G-Team member we’ve yet discovered who uses Windows systems and Android devices rather than platforms from Apple. Admittedly, this has made him "feel like the black sheep of the photo industry at times, especially near the top end of the spectrum." Clearly, the creative professional market tends toward Apple. This is even evident in G-Technology storage products, which ship from the factory pre-formatted under HFS+ for out-of-the-box Mac compatibility.

That same drive plugged into a Windows system won’t be recognized...immediately. However, as Brown quickly discovered, preparing a G-Technology drive to work on a Windows system requires only a handful of steps listed on the included instructions, and the change can be done in under two minutes. It’s a slight inconvenience but one Brown is willing to accept in order to use the Thunderbolt storage products recommended by so many of his friends and colleagues.

"I've always heard phenomenal things about G-Tech from a customer service standpoint," he says. "Also, it comes down to the professionalism and build quality that the hard drives project and demonstrate compared to all other hard drives. I have a drawer full of external hard drives, regular and rugged. Most of them work decently here and there, but anytime you get into any serious situation, they’re not built to truly handle my travel workload or the extreme locations I work in. I’ve had nothing but incredible experiences with the G-Tech stuff — not one single issue. To me, it relieves a huge burden not having to worry about the hard drives I’m putting in my bags."

Brown notes that he relies on G-Technology drives for the same reason as any other brand on which he comes to rely: efficiency and effectiveness. "Whatever makes me a more effective and efficient photographer, creative director, or entrepreneur, those are companies that I want to work with and the products I want to use," he adds. Because now that he has a young family to care for and at least five months out of the year spent on the road, every increase in efficiency and effectiveness means more minutes playing with his son or planning his next bold (and probably contrarian) move as a creative visionary.