So... I've lost my camera.  That's it.  Gone.  Lots of people have been asking me how.

I went out on Saturday to Ben Lomond National Park to meet up with a mate and find some lizards, frog, etc.  We missed each other there.  Instead I stayed shooting landscape at golden hour, and then headed home.  Once I hit mobile coverage he rang me, so I hurried to catch up. 

Once I got to the next spot (Hollybank forest), I started swapping my lens etc. for night macro work (frogs).  While I was doing this, a heap of unrelated crap fell out of my car.  I think I sat the camera down while repacked the scattered items.  In a hurry I zipped up my camera bag and headed out.  We walk for about two hours, but didn't find anything to shoot so we moved onto the next spot where we intended to get some birds in the morning.

When I got up and went to put my tele zoom lens back on my camera, it wasn't in my bag.  I quickly realised I left it behind and hurried back.  I got back to Hollybank around 7am, but the camera was gone... along with the campers that had been nearby.  I searched for a few hours, and have checked with police etc., but so far nothing.

Not having a camera is not a good place for a photographer to be.  It's not the end of the world, but it feels like part of me is gone.  I keep seeing the camera as sleep approaches, and hearing birds and almost reaching for it, or working on post-processing and remembering the settings I was using etc.  I've put an ad in the local paper offering a reward for its return.... but it feels silly, and potentially painfully disappointing, to hope.

I'll have to replace it with a less-capable, crop-sensor body and that will be a big step backwards.  Hopefully approaching that as a challenge to step up and still produce good work will get me through. Though I must admit, there's a voice in my head telling me to just pack it all in and go do something else.  I used to spend a lot more time making music, and I still love that.

Finding the appropriate "feelings" is hard.  I've done: panic when I realised it was gone; anger that someone took it, sorrow when I think about.  Mainly though I'm confused about how to feel.  It's not like I lost someone I love, and I'm not at all a "things" person..... But my camera....  we captured the world together.

Image related: one of the last shots I took with it.

Malurus cyaneusMalurus cyaneus (Superb Fairy-wren)

IUCN Status: Least Concern

There are six subspecies described. Now, given the "species" concept is grey and flexible, you can imagine how fluid "subspecies" is. Regardless, this is the Tassie version, and it's the original, described by Ellis in1782 on Captain Cooks voyage of discovery.

This is a male in mating colouration. As I write this in March, the males are all malting and losing the "look at me" blue and black, and changing into a drab cream/brown affair.