Nick May paints a 35-foot-tall giant at Northstar Church in Panama City, Florida. The chicken wire and cellophane art installation is being used to promote a six-week series on the "giant" issues of life. (Andrew Wardlow/Panama City News Herald)
I don’t really believe in the “rules” of photography, but I do have my own personal photography rules.
Rule #1 – ALWAYS CARRY YOUR CAMERA. I can’t stress this enough. How are you going to take a picture without a camera? Don’t you dare say with your phone! It is a total pain, but 99% of the time I have some sort of camera with me. My wife and I purchased a Nikon Coolpix P7000 just for this purpose. It is small and not too much trouble to mess with.
While the Coolpix is nice, most of the time I have my REAL cameras with me. If I’m working at the newspaper, I have my trusty Canon SLR setup with all the good lenses. If I am doing personal photography stuff, I have two Nikon SLR bodies and some sweet & crispy lenses to match. (is anyone getting hungry for chicken?)
Me carrying my camera....as I always do.
What am I getting at you ask? Well, I’ll tell you. Last week I has to deliver a pocket wizard transmitter to a co-worker at his assignment. I could have left my camera sitting on my desk at work, but that’s not the sort of thing I do. (see rule #1 above) On the way to make the delivery I spotted something odd. A group of people were erecting a giant-multi-colored-man-looking-thingy atop a local Panama City church. I was intrigued, but could not investigate just yet. It would have to wait until I dropped off the camera gear.
After dropping off the transmitter (and eating a couple slices of free pizza), I hustled back to the church in the hopes of getting a photograph of the art installation. I searched for the perfect parking place, hopped out of my car, leaned up against the roof for stability and started firing away. It was great timing, too. Designer Nick May was in the perfect spot with spray paint in each hand painting the hands of the giant.
I sent the photo to the Associated Press and it got picked up by the MSNBC Photo Blog. To my knowledge this is the first time one of my photographs made the blog, so I was pretty happy about it.
…and that’s why you always carry your camera.
