When I travel, I ususally two cameras, one with better picture quality which is usually bulky to carry and the other which is small and handy to carry with me all the time.

As I travel frequently, taking camera becomes burden when packing. In additin to the camera itself, I need to pack telephoto lens, wide angle lens, macro lens, lens adapter, a battery charger, an extra battery charger, a mini tripod and cleaning set.

I don't pack a flash and a tripod intentionally, which is a burdensome to carry around and which bothers me occasionally in enjoying the area or objects I travel for.

When visiting a certain place, the main goal for me is to see and feel it myself. It takes a little bit of time to see it myself and hang around there a while before I feel it whatever that might be.

Once I imprint on my mind or heart whatever the objective of that travelling, then I try to take pictures of the surrounding, which will function as a remind of the situation later on when I look at those pictures. From that point on, I try to be like the photographer clicking shutter of the camera.

For a while, I carried a tripod and a flash all the time, to get the best of shot. It sure does capture the best shots whenever possible, as with a tripod, you won't get shaken pictures especially at night. And with a flash, you can secure more light to your lens.

But once I started to carry heavy and bulky tripod, flash, and various lens', seeing and feeling became difficult to the added-weight of the things I had to carry. As I travelled to see and feel it, and taking picture was a secondary, I found that carrying too much camera equipments bothered me physically.

So, I started to carry minimal camera equipments which lighten up my packages significantly. Yes, the quality of some pictures are not great with lots of shaken pictures, but it's better than nothing.

If I were making a living by selling pictures, I could not have changed the attitudes.

Taking pictures is one of my hobbies, I try to record the moments of life around me, and carrying a handy camera helps me achieve that goal. As the camera was bulky, if I could not carry it all the time to capture the moment around me, then that tarnished the goal of picture taking.

The more I take pictures, the more I have a desire to take better pictures, which I try to achieve by improving trying different compositions or varying values of the camera settings.

Although without a flash and a tripod, almost all night shots are horribly bad, but I don't miss those much. And although I travel alone most of the time, putting me in the frame is impossible without a tripod, I still don't miss much, as long as I see and feel it.

(May 22, 2005)

Copyright© 2005 Daniel SW Kim