continued
My long-term choice for most on-bike work
is a LowePro backpack with side-accessed camera
compartment. The current model is the Photo
Sport BP 200 AW II (RRP £159.95). Mine has been
going strong for many years and I know I’m not
the only OWPG member to use one; it’s a solid
choice for climbing and cross-country skiing too.
With practice you can extract the camera without
unslinging the sack, but if there’s too much other
gear on board the camera compartment can get
compressed.
However, the LowePro isn’t brilliant at staying
put during technical mountain bike descents. For
this, the best pack I’ve used is an Osprey Zealot. It
isn’t a dedicated photo pack and the camera just
rides inside, with or without extra protection,
so I have to allow extra time to stop, dismount,
unsling the sack and extract the camera – and
then reverse the whole process after shooting.
Everything’s a compromise.
In the wet
If it’s rain you’re worried about, pro cameras
have excellent weather-sealing. In showers,
all you need is a soft cloth to wipe drops off the
lens (a good lens hood helps to reduce the need).
Many holsters are waterproof or have waterproof
covers, but both Paddy Dillon and Chiz Dakin
point out that a simple waterproof stuff sack does
the job at minimal cost.
For long wet shoots, camera rain-covers aren’t
necessarily heavy or expensive; prices start just
over £5. In emergency cut a hole in a carrier bag
and secure round the lens with a rubber band.
It’s better if the front element of the lens doesn’t
rotate.
For properly wet activities such as gill
scrambling, canyoning, coasteering and kayaking,
waterproof cases like those from OWPG Associates
Aquapac are very aff ordable – especially with
Member discount! Their range covers most
cameras. Most are rated to 5m, which serves
snorkelling but not scuba diving. If you do get
unlucky and drop the camera, they will usually
fl oat, though this depends on the exact camera-
lens combination vis-a-vis how much air is
retained. It’s always a good idea to check in a safe
place fi rst!
An Aquapac SLR case doing its job in the Yorkshire Dales.
10 Outdoor focus | summer 2019
The Raw and the
Ronald Turnbull extracts photographic insight from some
T
he idea of content, as applied to semiotic discourse,
is invalid. One should spend one’s time and one’s
research grant in study of the formal structure of the
discourse, wherein its only claim to ‘meaning’ must lie.
More rigorous application of Structuralism says that the
concept of ‘meaning’ is itself meaningless. Or at least
it would be if there were any such a thing as ‘meaning’
for it to not have any of. So it doesn’t matter what your
photo is actually photographing, so long as it obeys the
Rule of Thirds...
And this is how handsome Frenchman Claude
Lévi-Strauss reduced 187 Native American myths and
legends using a simple set of sliders:
FRESH
PARCHED
CASSEROLE
RAW
and of course
ROTTEN
MOIST
GRILL
COOKED
Anthropologists like Claude L-S reduce all the three-
dimensional richness of the lived experience down onto
a fl at piece of paper. And us photographers – we’re in
exactly the same game. We just use a diff erent set of
sliders...
A good photographer shoots it right straight off .
Color/colour balance, exposure, framing, timing, all of
em spot on. Accordingly, a good photographer shoots
in jpeg format. Well, that’s what they tell me. I wouldn’t
know myself: I’m a bad photographer.
And wouldn’t it be nice if there was a morning-after
pill for photographers? For when you got over excited