I am a photographer, sketcher, and watercolor painter. I offer training on learning how to use your camera more efficiently as well as on sketching and watercolor painting. In addition, I sell originals and prints of my watercolor paintings.
I bought the Vanquest SKITCH-12 Messenger Bag to use as my second bag when on trips or “everyday bag” at home. My plan, therefore, for my trip this week to Chicago to attend the third annual Out of Chicago Photography Conference was to pack all the camera gear I wanted to take in my Think Tank Retrospective 30 bag and take the SKITCH-12 in my carry on bag for use in Chicago.
A week or so ago I received a Facebook message from a gentleman in Brooklyn, NY. He had some Olympus and Panasonic gear for sale. I didn't know this gentleman, but in looking at his profile, he appeared to be legit. Long story short, I decided to purchase two of the lenses he had: the Panasonic 25mm, f/1.4 and the Olympus 45mm, f/1.8.
My newest bag, the Vanquest SKITCH-12 messenger bag arrived yesterday. Out of the box, my first impression was that it compresses nice and flat. That's good because I plan to use this bag on trips as my "2nd bag" for day use while I carry the bulk of my camera gear in my Think Tank Retrospective 30 bag. The empty SKITCH-12 bag will, therefore, fit nicely in my checked bag and not take up much room.
I have switched ISPs and opened a Squarespace account to host my new web site. I am excited about how easy it is to update the pages and add new content, But I am especially excited about how well my blog and web site now work closely together!
Whoa! It has been almost two months since I last made a video for my YouTube channel! Just as everyone says, starting a channel is the easy part, but keeping up the momentum and continuing to produce videos for your channel is the hard part. So true. Life does
Though I am looking for the "perfect" second bag to use for my camera gear when I just go out for a day of sightseeing (on a trip) or casual shooting, I do love that I'm pretty well set for anything with my tiny Panasonic GM-5 and three lenses in the small Mountainsmith bag.
Bags. Man, it really is a disease with photographers! Just when I think I have things figured out, something doesn’t work the way I had hoped with the bag or bags I have. Or, one of the prominent bag manufacturers comes out with a bag line that seemingly has all the perfect features. I recently went through the analysis of two bag lines to determine which bag I thought would be right for my desire to have a bag that would carry all, or very close to all, of the gear I typically want to take with me on a trip.
Yesterday I wrote about why I purchase new or used gear. I enjoy experimenting with such new pieces of gear (to me) to see if and how they change how I make images. I bought the new Olympus Air camera that looks like a lens but has a micro4/3 mount and will take any of my micro4/3 lenses because I wanted to see how I used it and how it worked. I loved the idea and was planning some interesting experiments using the Air remotely, but I eventually got so frustrated with connectivity and freezing up issues that I sold it.
