All day Saturday, during the very small moments that I had to think about anything other than photos, I promised myself that I would write a blog post about Black Rapid camera straps.  I know, it’s weird.  I should have been using my small moments to be thinking about food (which is totally normal) or what’s next on the list of things to do, but I wasn’t, I was thinking about blogging.  And here’s why:

Casey, you all know her, right? Well, she went to Outer Banks, NC for a week to shoot her friend’s wedding.  And I let her take my Black Rapid camera strap with her.  Yes, I love her a lot 🙂  I knew I had a couple of weddings to shoot while she was going to be out town, so I just told her I’d borrow our friend Amy’s strap – she lives close by and has the exact same strap.  Easy, peasy.  And it was.  Amy said, sure borrow my strap, that’s fine.  So I did.  

Friday, as I’m sitting in my car in the mountains of Dahlonega, getting my camera ready to go shoot a wedding with my cousin Kim, I realize that Amy didn’t give me the base of the strap that secures the strap to your camera body.  I realize right then that I was going to have to use the old-fashioned-wear-around-your-neck camera strap for the rest of Friday and all of my 10 hour wedding day on Saturday.  And at that point I didn’t think it was that big of a deal.  

By the end of the night, Friday, I was SO annoyed with my camera and old-fashioned camera strap get-up.  Here are my reasons:

1. I couldn’t move without worrying that the camera was going to fall off my shoulder.  When you’re wearing the Black Rapid strap, you can put your camera down (near your hip) and jump, or squat or quickly help the bride with her dress.

2. The strap kept getting in the way of my view finder.  I’d put the camera to my eye and there was the strap.  Agh!  So then I had to take the camera away from my eye (miss a shot), move the strap and recompose.

3. The weight of the camera gets heavy after many hours – the Black Rapid strap nicely distributes the weight of the camera, so it’s not digging into your neck or your shoulder.  And you know without a shadow of a doubt that it’s not going to fall off your body.  

So, end of story? I will NEVER, NOT EVER SHOOT A WEDDING WITHOUT MY BLACK RAPID STRAP EVER AGAIN!

I do have to say that I’m glad this happened.  I’ve been using my Black Rapid strap for several months now and I totally forgot how awesome it is!