ulfie wrote:
I used to carry a tripod to make my shoulder(s) stronger. As an added bonus, you get those "Oh, a professional!" stares or whispered comments.
Yes, I have found myself at times being something of a "looky-lu". The expenditure of capital resources on sexy and black expensive-looking apparatus (especially if it appears to be constructed of exotic "carbon fibers") truly does (in some) elicit a sense of awe (and a silly, yet nevertheless present, illusion of a certain "virtue" attached to the mere acquisition of shiny material objects).
Some imagine that such mere trifles somehow confer substance and assumed expertise upon the holder of such mere objects. As mere slaves of the consumer-state, an instinctual drive (at least, in industrialized societies where "disposable income" is even a concept) exists to treat such persons with a certain deference and awe reserved for any such "higher priests" in the cathedral of wealth.
I have found that I (as well as others) have sometimes felt a sense of compulsion to stop and stare, and to perhaps engage such a so equipped "brujo" in some dum conversation about what it is that they are doing with their virtual phallic extensions. Early on in my brief career as a photo-hack, I sometimes felt and did the same (perhaps sometimes to the slight irritation on the part of the oft-busy and otherwise already engaged photographer). Likely a bit irritating at times ...
It was only when I personally experienced people sometimes stopping, staring, and asking the absurdly unenlightened question, "what are you doing" of
me that I fully realized what a thoroughly stupid question that is. "I'm taking pictures, ... what do you
think that I am doing", I have on occasion responded somewhat curtly, or simply with some friendly amusement in my mind.
Nowadays, when I see someone with tripod and some "money-pit" mounted thereupon, I usually have a look at their seemingly intended subject-matter, how (usually) supremely uninteresting the natural lighting is on the subject-matter at the time, and imagine how uninteresting the result would likely be to my eyes, and quietly chuckle (only to myself, and in my own mind), "Geez, what a moron". There's nothing like a bit of experience at failure to "wisen" one to the failings of others.
Upon first purchasing a mono-pod (that is fairly thick in construction as mono-pods go, which thankfully imparts some mechanical strength to the mechanism), I could not help but notice the primal emotions that seem to accompany (both carrying, as well as being observed as carrying) such a "blunt instrument". I found myself imaging how I might perhaps use it as a weapon to defend would-be-thieves of my gear -"take that, you ingrates, ya wanna piece of this?" ... as a bit childish primal visions of battle's to the death over one's precious material objects dance in my head
To my amazement and some wonder, I found that passing pedestrians (and even people in the relative safety of their passing automobiles) sometimes respond themselves in a primal way to a person carrying such a "blunt instrument". One day, the passing cars at an intersection (where all pedestrians waiting to cross the busy street are largely completely ignored by the hurried traffic), miraculously stopped for me to cross - as if (deep in their primal minds) perhaps imagined that I might take up my "axe" and bludgeon them in their automobiles if they did not treat me with a certain newly-imbued deference. Wow! (Perhaps) we are not nearly the "advanced and civilized creatures" that we often so imagine ourselves to be ... The archetypal "club" is an ancient symbol.
Once I put my LX3 on the tripod, walked away a few meters for something, turned around and thought someone had stolen the camera behind my back. Looked carefully and it was still there ... small as a fly on a camel.
Though I usually wander
quite alone in the relative solitude of the muddy riverine bogs surrounding my favorite creek, searching for beautiful perspectives of the ancient and floral creatures therein, when my relatively tiny LZ5 (and my LX3) was/is mounted on my mono-pod, I (still) sometimes experience a primal sense of self-consciousness - as if it might seem somehow seem odd or silly to other persons who I might encounter why such a "big stick", yet such a tiny little object so "extended" on my "rod" ... (Of course), when my more bulky FZ50 is so mounted on the same, no such self-conscious sense of any perceived "inadequacy" even crosses my silly yet primal mind ...
(Perhaps, and particularly in the case of the males of our species), the metaphors of "bigger, heavier, thicker, meatier" may register more in our collective unconscious than we might concede. A modern equivalent (for some of the more fortunate on this spinning rock) includes "
wallet-size "
