FOMO – Taking my Favourite Image of the Year

Fear of missing out as a photographer comes in many guises, shall I take colour or black and white film, primes or zooms etc etc. In this case I was planning to shoot a specific scene I had stumbled across on a walk the week before but this time in infrared, but what or should I take for “normal photography”.

I could just concentrate on what I had in my minds eye, stick with just taking my full spectrum converted camera but there was that nagging feeling what if I miss out on something great. I had a couple of options of course I could just take two bodies and be done with it, I’ve done it before and it has worked out well but sometimes I just end up lugging an extra camera around for no reason.

Looking at the weather it was predicted to be a clear blue sky day, great I thought just what I need for a bit of infrared photography no need to take the other camera. But still the FOMO, I was planning on heading out for sunrise to avoid the crowds so what now I still needed a second camera.

In my last article I wrote about the joys of the Panasonic LX3 it would have made sense to just take that. But after getting that camera I was lead down a bit of a digicam YouTube rabbit hole and I ended up seeing a video by KingJvpes about a $10 sleeper camera. The camera is a Canon IXUS 70 from 2007 which has a 35m to 105mm f/2.8–4.9 lens that I generally use at 35mm, no lie, I purchased it purely for it’s looks nothing else it’s so small and cute. Side-note I paid £30 all boxed as new condition I would not recommend buying one at current prices but this is not a review article so on with the story. So it was decided I had my second camera to alleviate my FOMO just in case I needed it.

On arrival at the car park after a short walk up a hill I was sure glad I brought that second camera because it was not as the weatherman had said I was greeted by a cloud shelf with a gap on the horizon and the colours were already starting to pop. It was a few miles walk to my primary goal for the day but I knew there was a farm on the way that I could try and make to most of this sunrise.

This is it, my favourite image of the year

Yes it’s only a 7 megapixel jpeg that I then cropped to 16:9 but it’s better than nothing and yes writing this I suppose I could have used my phone but that’s a cheap one from 2018 and the cameras not to clever I also just prefer to use a dedicated camera. In the end the fear of missing out worked on this occasion even if that is a janky old camera.

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