Carry it with you all the time!

Alien Sky. Longmont, Colorado, 2012

Your camera, that is. You never know what you might find, what the day’s weather may bring, what unusual sunset lighting you’ll see… (or even, on the negative side, what riot, crime or traffic accident you might witness!). Of course, just about all of us have cell phones with cameras these days and that will certainly do in a pinch–indeed there is a whole genre of cell phone imagery and some of the work is amazingly creative. But, it is always nice to have the flexibility of your good kit with you whenever you can.

I generally always carry my main camera, tripod and three lenses whenever I go anywhere in my vehicle. When we walk around, my wife and have our cell phones as well as a good quality, pocketable point-and-shoot.The above image was one of those catch-it-while-you-can images I saw along a street in downtown Longmont, Colorado just a few days ago. The sky was loaded with a spiderweb of contrails and a strange variety of clouds–and I thought that alone was interesting–when I happened to drive by a business that rented bucket cranes. The relationship of these many strange crane creatures reaching up toward such an alien sky really attracted me, so I pulled over and dug out the camera.

There is an oft-repeated saying among photographers that the best camera is the one you have with you…but the key is to have it with you! It’s great to have that nice 30-pound 8×10 view camera, but if it’s not with you when the magic light happens, it does you no good. So carry something relatively portable with you all the time.

Happy creating!