Big Decisions

Deciding what clothes to take and packing the suitcase is easy compared to figuring out which photography equipment to take on a trip. If you are traveling by air, you are pretty limited but in the car you could take it all....if you want to carry it around. Now with digital photography you must be sure that you have batteries, charger, computer, card reader and an alternative storage device besides the camera stuff. But part of the process of deciding which equipment to take is also thinking about what you will be seeing and how you want to photograph it. So packing up is a good process for getting ready to photograph.

I should know me well enough by now to know that I don't like carrying extra equipment with me during the day and I don't like changing lenses in the field. I say that even though I've realized that, at least for me, there doesn't seem to be a "perfect" lens. I always wish that the lens on the camera was faster or focused closer or had a wider angle of view or was more telephoto. It is some kind of rule that the lens I wish I had is back home or back in the hotel room because I didn't carry it all with me.

You'll see in the assortment above that there are two Holgas as well as film and tape to try to stop light leaks with that camera. If I decide to Holga (pretend Holga is a verb) all of those concerns about lenses are gone. There aren't more possibilities. It is what it is. There is no wishing, no changing lenses. You just work with what you've got. Maybe since some of the background noise about other possibilities is eliminated, I stay focused on what is possible in the here and now.

Or I can add to my confusion and take both digital camera and Holga. Or have a split personality with the Holga lens cap for the digital camera.