Shooting in Style, Baby

It has been so long since I was here, I doubt anyone is still lingering around… In fact, I can hear the echo as I type and the dust on this blog is making it a bit hard to breathe. So I figured I should stop by, take the plastic off the verbal furniture and basically spruce things up for spring.

The reason I haven’t been writing so much? I’ve been shooting pictures like a mad man and that means spending less time on the Internets and the Google. Yes, I do still spend an obscene amount of time doing the Facebook dance, but Facebook fits in my pocket. Have you ever tried to write a blog on an iPhone? Oh, and I did create my very own website to show my very own photos that will help me become my very own Annie Leibovitz. If you work for Vanity Fair and you need some images, please stop by www.robbselander.com - And even if you don’t work for Vanity Fair, you can still totally check it out…

But yes, I have been spending a lot more time with my camera. So much, in fact, that my camera might just file suit against me in a case of domestic abuse. Not that I slap it around, but it has been working day and night. But how naïve was I? I thought that when one was a photographer, all one needed was a camera. Well, that is just so not the case and now I find myself carrying more stuff around town to take pictures of a flower than I would need if I was going to climb Mount Everest. And then the unthinkable happened… I arrived home one night and realized I had left some of my camera stuff at a restaurant. Luckily for me, I left it there and not someplace in Old Delhi or on a train or bus, but it made me panic and I realized I needed to streamline and yesterday I finally got a new camera bag. And just because I can hear you asking, here is a list of the things I carry with me almost all the time:

• 1 Canon DSLR
• 1 18-55mm lens (with attached UV filter)
• 1 75-300mm lens (with attached UV filter)
• 1 Extra camera battery
• 1 Battery charger
• 1 MacBook
• 1 MacBook charger
• 1 USB modem for Internets on the go
• 1 250GB external hard drive
• 1 Polarizer filter
• 1 remote release (for those moments when movement just won’t do or when I am trying to take pictures on the DL)
• Connector cables of all shapes, colors and sizes to connect all sorts of things to all sorts of other things
• Lens cleaners and brushes
• 1 pair of Tom Ford sunglasses (Well, the sunglasses are usually on my face, but their faux velvet case is in the bag)
• 1 Tripod

I need my camera for pictures, I need my computer for the occasional bit of tethered shooting (If you have ever seen America’s Next Top Model and seen that the pics from the camera immediately come up on the computer screen so someone can “oooh”, “aaah” or put a finger down their throat… That is tethered shooting… I can totally control the camera from my laptop, and that makes me feel all powerful). I also need to be able to whip out my laptop and any time and share pictures with potential clients, and then there are the pictures people ask to see which invariably tend to be on the external drive. Of course, none of that works without the myriad cables needed.

But thanks to my handy, dandy camera/laptop bag from Case Logic, I am all set to go now. Instead of having my camera bag, laptop bag, tripod hanging off of whatever and my camera hanging around my neck, (which by the way would all swing around and shift position every time I leaned forward or kneeled own to take a picture and which I would have to reposition every time I was finished with previously mentioned shot) it is all packed away nice and neat and with lots of padding that makes my equipment feel it is on holiday and keeps everything in its place.

And did I mention it is black and grey with orange detailing? And we all know how much I loves me some orange.