I went to the
mountains to go to work. I needed stock images that someone might actually buy.
So I did what I have always done, I asked my hansom and successful friend if I
could tag along and learn a thing or two. A sideways glance with a skeptical
“ok” and it was game on. Soon after that I hit the trail, steadily falling
behind but nonetheless lugging my gear up and over the passes that guard access
to the high sierra.
It is worth mentioning that I am not an
experienced backpacker. More of an urban slacker who’d searched the web
thinking about what I would actually need to bring 7,000 feet up and ten
or so miles back into the peaks. Well I was not going anywhere without coffee,
a flask and a tent. The idea of going ultra light was never in the cards. The
important decisions out of the way it was time to bring a camera and the stuff
that goes with it. All that stuff being really really heavy. Added to this rudimentary
fact is that all decisions about what you will have at the shoot are pretty
much final after you leave the car.
Something about
putting that pack on your shoulders makes you think you can do with less gear
in the field than usual. I would not bring two tripods. Galen would use a rock
and come back with everything. Well that’s a difference between Galen and me. I
desperately struggled to make a shot come together, light fading and again my
flash tumbles to the ground.
Live and learn.
Two weeks later I was slogging up another series of switchbacks, this time with
two tripods. I think I may have been stronger and wiser. I know I was slower.
