Life Hacks From the Road: It's the Sunglasses

Sunglasses and sandals outside monastery in Gonder, Ethiopia. 2011.

I pouted when, on sunny days, I couldn't see what was on my new camera's LCD monitor if I turned it for a portrait view.

In the horizontal view, I could see the LCD monitor fine. 

It made no sense at all. What the hell was wrong with my camera?

I did my research.

Well, fuckity fuck.

My sunglasses.

Remove my sunglasses and voila! I can see the monitor! Put 'em back on and the monitor is dark.


Other crazy hacks from the road:

• My mouse lost consciousness. 
• I had a headache that just wouldn't go away. 

Guatemala: The Almost Pack Fail

Canon SD600

I learned my lesson about camera backups in Ethiopia.

After that experience, I bought two used, vintage Canon Powershot SD600s to replace the exact model I lost in Ethiopia. Redundancy of peripherals and all that. Plus it was a good travel camera.

These days, I have three used cameras plus a pissant phone camera. The backup system has served me well in the four years since Ethiopia, although cracks have appeared, and a change in the future looms.

For my trip to Guatemala, I packed these cameras:

1. Primary: One of the Canon Powershot SD600s
2. Secondary: A used Canon Coolpix that daughter handed down to me last summer
3. Tertiary: My Moto G phone camera, a last resort only, due to its miserable photo quality

I chose the Coolpix to bring instead of my backup Canon because I am down to only one Canon battery, the two that I'd had having finally died of old age. I only bought one replacement battery because the things are pretty expensive, and I am on the fence about when I'll buy a new camera, which will certainly use a different model of battery. With the Coolpix, I'd have a spare, charged battery on hand when the Canon's battery needed to be recharged in Guatemala.


The morning of my departure, I inserted the cameras' SD cards into my primary laptop so I could upload their contents, thereby giving me clean slates for the trip.

Oh, wait.

Do I have an SD slot in the little red toy laptop that I bought for the trip? Why .... no.

Jeez, OK. Where the heck was my camera-to-device cable that fits into one of Little Red's usb ports? Oh thank goodness! Found it! Worked just great for the Canon. Would it work for the Coolpix? No. Nooo. Who'd've thought? 


This almost-fail fell into two categories of travel mishappery: 

• Complacency, or more accurately, just plain sloppiness of thought and preparation
• Too smart for my own good

Close call.

I left the Coolpix at home and replaced it with the second Canon. 

The Camera Sitch

The three rechargeable batteries I've been using for my two identical, used Canon Powershot SD600 cameras, are in the terminus of life. I've been relying on my Android phone camera, and that's OK, but it's not entirely satisfactory. I just received a replacement battery that goes by the name Canon, but frankly, I'm questioning its paternity and thus its efficacy, so things are up in the air til I see how it performs. At which point I'll decide if I want to invest in another battery and therefore keep the two used cameras (that I bought for about 55 bucks apiece) or do I rev up the research engine and buy a new camera?

While this story unfolds, I present for you an article I first published in June 2012.   

5 Secrets of Great Travel Photography

Rustavi, Georgia. Rotting watermelon on landing. 

1.       Take your camera with you at all times, even if you're only walking to the corner market from your base. If you've got a big-buck camera that you hesitate to carry with you everywhere you go, fine, but in that case, also bring along a point-and-shoot that fits into a pocket.

Lost Creek, Missouri.

2.       Have your camera easily accessible. In other words, not at the bottom of your bag, making you think twice about taking an impulse shot.

Rustavi, Georgia. This woman gave me this loaf of bread. Just because.

3.      Have duplicate batteries, chargers, and SD cards in case of theft, loss, or sad demise. Carry an extra battery with you, always. It’s damn frustrating to run out of juice just before some potentially great shots present themselves.

San Francisco, California. Hayes Valley.

4.       Like the big fish that got away, your fantastic travel photographs didn’t happen if you never uploaded them to an external source (i.e., laptop, tablet, Facebook) before your camera got ripped off, dropped into the pit toilet, or was stepped on by an elephant. Upload photos regularly, by which I mean at least every 2 or 3 days.

Nazret, Ethiopia. English Alive Academy. 

5.       Set the review time for your camera to “off.” You want to be able to take photos as quickly as possible, not wait for interminable seconds before you can catch the next shot.