Old advice: Always Carry a Camera

Photo op!I remember the first time I read, that you should always carry a camera with you. At the time, I thought it was kind of silly, to be honest. Surely, I can be a creative soul without being enslaved by such a device? Even though photography is my thing? Wasn't it enough that I carry a notebook? I am sometimes a little stubborn that way, going against the grain just to be different.

This one sort of stuck with me though, and I started reading the same piece of advice over and over, on blogs, in books and everywhere else, I turned my reading eyes. The more I read it, the more stubborn I became.

One day, I passed a totally awesome photo opportunity, and guess who didn't have a camera on him? That's right, stubborn old me. I just stood there, feeling like an idiot, knowing that no amount of note-taking could ever recreate this moment. And then it happened again. And again. And suddenly, I was really ticked off at myself for having to be so damn different from everyone else. Sometimes, apparently, it's best to go with the flow.

I have a number of cameras that now take turns living in my messenger bag. For a while, I carried around a Polaroid. Then I switched to a point and shoot digital, then a Holga, then all of them at the same time. Three cameras were two too many though, and I ended up missing more photo ops while trying to figure out, which one to pick. It's all about finding the right balance.

No matter how cool you are, how much you want to stand out from the crowd, listen to me: Don't be stupid like me. Carry a camera with you. All the time.

Rasmus Rasmussen is on loan from iStockphoto, where he is part of the image inspection team.

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