I went from carrying around a backpack full of camera bodies and lenses everywhere to slinging a compact Fuji with a small prime lens over my shoulder when I leave the house. Apart from having dramatically less back pain, the primary result is the pictures I take when I go to events have become about the experience of going to the event rather than the event itself. Shooting the action on the field gave way to people-watching in the stands, keeping an eye out for the strange and interesting. I liked the former because the predictability meant guaranteed pictures, the latter I am enjoying precisely for its randomness and spontaneity. To paraphrase Cool Lester Smooth, if you shoot baseball, you get pictures of baseballs and baseball players, but if you start to just look around, you don’t know what the fuck you’re gonna see. And that is infinitely more interesting.