Shutter Bug

Another thing I haven’t really started up yet this year is the photography stuff. There’s a lot I want to do there, and some ideas I’ve got for a (potentially) big series of images to work on, but as yet I haven’t done it.

The new camera bag, though, is fantastic. One of my continuing concerns (concern isn’t the right word, but for now I can’t think of the right one) is always about bags etc. that make it look like you’ve got important/valuable equipment with you. I never use a laptop bag for that precise reason – yes, sure it makes my laptop look a bit rougher, to have had it in a backpack instead of the perfect case, but that’s a small price to pay. I don’t understand the people who carry their super-expensive laptop all nice and protected in its case, hanging off one shoulder. It’s so easy for some scrot to come alongside, grab the bag, and run like shit. I’ve seen it happen – the victim doesn’t expect it, the ever-present “it couldn’t happen to me” mindset firmly in place, and then bang, gone and away down the road.

Obviously I feel the same about pro camera-bags. The one I got with the camera for my birthday falls into this ilk – it’s a great bag, but at the end of the day it looks like a camera bag. And for wandering around, I don’t want to advertise “Hey, look, there’s this camera bag here – the likelihood is, it’s got a grand’s worth of gear in it.” . The crumpler backpack fulfils my requirements on that score just about perfectly – at a glance, and even on further inspection, it’s just another backpack. Different styling, sure, but nothing special or obvious about it.

It’ll get its first really heavy-duty outing in a couple of months time, when we’re up in the Lake District. Obviously the camera will be going, and the backpack will be the best way to do it. So that’s the plan.

But there’s other stuff over the year too – and it’s all filed at the moment under “Ideas to Try”. I’ll get there, and there’s the ideas and thoughts, but at the moment it’s all “to try”, rather than “in progress”.