by: Asif Raza
I have a firm suspicion that ever since photography evolved to a point where the average person could afford to purchase a camera and tote it around with them, the question “What’s in your bag?” has been around and will most definitely stick around for many generations to come. My theory about this is in today’s world, photography appears to be less and less about the image making process but rather more about bragging rights, crudely put “mine is bigger than yours” is used in an effort to gain legitimacy and be taken seriously, but let’s see……………….
During the earlier days of photography, there really wasn’t much of a choice for the average user and photo enthusiast, so perhaps the question then was more relevant to those who claim to be professionals and less to the amateur and enthusiast photographer.
Today, with changing technology and relative affordability of technology and perhaps a relatively greater ability to easily acquire photo gear, the question seems to have taken on a life of it’s own. There are blogs, Flickr, Pinterest, Google+ pages and who knows what else exclusively dedicated to this question. Out of curiosity, I did an online search for the term “What’s in your camera bag?” and within the next .76 seconds I felt as if I was drowning in a never-ending list of pages “66,000,000 results (0.76 seconds) “. You can bet that I was not about to go through any of these, but my curiosity got the better of me and soon I was salivating over some of the bag’s contents posted. Fortunately, I was pulled away from this deathly whirlpool by a phone call from a client. I was saved, at least for the time being.
So what is this fascination with what’s in someone’s bag? Should what is in your bag really not be dependent on what you photograph and who you are as opposed to just the type and variety of gear you carry with you in your bag?
The one thing I know based on my 30+ years of experience as a photographer, I do not wish to carry any more than what I need, which is completely dependent on what I plan to photograph. So what is in my bag suddenly becomes more a question about what needs to be in my camera bag.
So what’s in your bag???