Disappointment and the Bag of Holding (aka ZEN and the Art of camera bag packing)

  So, this started off as a pretty disappointing weekend. I had a sunset shoot scheduled for Friday afternoon with a really amazing model I have been waiting a while to work with. A few hours before the shoot she texted to ask if I had left yet, because apparently she had a really rough day and had been crying for hours. She still would have come out to shoot because she's a trouper (according to another photographer, she actually sat in a tree getting stung by ants repeatedly with no complaints until he got the shot) but we decided to reschedule because we both wanted her to be her best. Turned out to be serendipitous because once again the clouds rolled in and a totally clear day wound up with a useless grey in stead of a good sunset.

  What hurt worse was that Saturday I was supposed to do a pretty lucrative corporate gig, the start of a multi shoot arrangement. Or so I thought. We had talked on the phone, agreed to a rate and set yesterday as the first day. So this week I left a couple of emails and a voice mail to confirm and get the address of the job site I was supposed to shoot on and....... nothing. Client just evaporated. Guess I should expect this to happen more as I go on, once I don't have the Navy and a regular paycheck to rely on maybe I will have to start requiring deposits, because I did turn down some other opportunities for this one.

  So pretty much I had the entire weekend off, which is strange for me. I took some of the time to see if I could reorganize my Airport Accelerator, which - if you missed my review a while back - is my primary kitchen sink bag. I had just been keeping Excalibur in it, the D3200 was living in my car as a ready camera just in case, but now that I have the D800 as a second body and some more toys, I needed a better storage solution. I was debating buying a larger bag, but decided that since I had some time I would play with the dividers and structure and see what I could do. At first I was stuck because I wanted to keep the cameras ready to shoot with a lens attached, but between reading something about keeping lenses attached being bad for the mounts and having my 70-200 fail because of a bent mount, it was pretty easy to let that go. Once I was past that, options opened up, and I am happy to say that now not only can my current bag of holding hold all of my gear it needs to, I think I have room to also add the next pair of speed lights I will be adding my lighting arsenal.

  So, financially and artistically the weekend was a downer, but practically I got a lot done and emotionally it was awesome, because I got spend a lot of time with my two favorite people in the whole world. Took the D800 out to capture the fun on Mothers' day, and even though they seemed to find every shadow in the universe to hide in, had fun shooting my favorite people. I really think I need to see if I can sell my son out as a model, he's cute as heck and totally photogenic. So overall, despite the initial disappointment and loss of potential revenue, it was still a productive weekend and a good Mother's day.