The Best Camera Is the One You Have with You

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© Avard Woolaver

The Best Camera Is the One You Have with You (Day 17 of 31)

For anyone who loves photography, it’s easy to get caught up in all the tech details. Camera phone or “real” camera? (It’s this question iPhone ads are attempting to address with their gorgeous photo campaigns of people’s everyday lives.) Which camera? Which lens? Of course, the old saying is still apt: The best camera is the one you have with you at the moment.

I keep my camera with me an almost embarrassing amount of the time. (I also carry my phone, of course, though not quite as faithfully; I’m much more likely to be caught without my phone than without my camera.) Here are some of the times you’d see me carrying it, if you followed me around all day: into the grocery store. Into the gas station, when I go in to pay. Into the post office. When picking up my kids at school. Walking in the woods. Dropping in at my mom’s house. I’ve taken interesting shots in all these situations—photos I didn’t anticipate or plan for. This is true despite how ordinary most of these situations are.

For example, I go to my mother’s house every day; it’s a short walk. Every single object, twig, container, magazine, and potted plant in that house, and all the way there and back, is something I’ve already seen dozens, possibly thousands, of times. It doesn’t matter; there are still good photos to be had. Freshness can feel hard to come by sometimes in a daily life as filled with routine as mine is. That’s okay—it just means I have to concentrate a little harder.

I’d love to be seeing new sights and encountering new photo opportunities at every turn, but that’s not where I am in my life right now. This is my season of this daily routine. My family is here, and my mom, right now, needs me very close by. And I figure (I hope) it’s good for me, since I can’t travel much now, to concentrate on recognizing the uniqueness and beauty in this environment I’ve seen a million times before.

(For the month of October 2017, I’m participating in the 31 Days bloggers’ challenge. You can find out about it here, and check out the interesting work other bloggers are posting.)