I could never understand why people had to carry so many suitcases when they went on vacation. I suppose most of the space was occupied by "what ifs"; what if it rains, what if we go here or there, what if its hot or cold, what if ... Its obvious that insecurities occupy a lot of space in people's luggage.
When I was younger, much younger, I was always impressed by the amount of equipment around the necks of reporters. Ahhh... the old heavy Nikon FM2 bodies with lenses ranging from a 24 to a 600mm and those big motor drives... It all looked so cool. Their bags filled with rolls of film: Tri-X, Ilford HP4, Agfachrome, Kodachrome, Ektachrome, ready to be loaded, underexposed, pushed...Magic and mystery at its best. As they run around, you could hear the clinking of the equipment. They were ready and prepared for all the "What ifs".
I believed that it was the only way to be a photographer; wear that suit, the same way a doctor wears a lab coat.
I was a kid then; bathing in the peace and love atmosphere to the sound of Sargent Pepper's Lonely..., Hendrix, Joplin, Baez, Crosby... the images of Kubrick, the spaghetti westerns, the injustice in Easy Rider and the cultural revolution or should I say evolution that came along with all of it.
I was reading Camus, Sartre, Flaubert, Zola, Hugo, Rimbaud...trying to understand the socio-politico-cultural climates of the past and their relation to the present.
I was fascinated by the images of Avedon, Penn, Bailey, Bourdin and of course Jean Loup Sieff, the inspiration of the black & white French generation(s).
The whole world seemed to be Nikon at the time. Maybe that is why I wanted a Canon. All my parents could afford at the time was $250.00 for my birthday, Christmas...gift, even so I don't think that they could really afford it but they did.
I bought a Canon FTb QL, with a 50mm, f1.8 lens (the 1.4 was way more expensive) and a couple of rolls of Tri-X. I still remember the smell. What an amazing camera. You could load film so fast, just because you didn't have to slide the film through any spool. That was the QL (quick load) feature.
My daughter Luna Malka (Young Travel Photographer Of The Year), shoots film with it today.
For a few of years, that was my luggage. There were no "what ifs". If I wanted a long lens, I found a way to move closer to my subject, and if I needed wider, I just moved back. If I wanted to shoot color while I had a Tri-X roll in the camera, I use to roll the film back with my ear stuck to the back listening for the film as it came unhooked. I wrote on the cassette the frame number I was at...Nothing was lost.
I learned right there and then how to live without any "what Ifs", how to travel light, and the real magic of photography, passion, guts and lots of heart.
After all, do we really need that much luggage to enjoy a journey?
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