Whats the worst that could happen..

Joshua Tree, November 2025

The only reason I take smartphone out of the car when shooting is in the event I fall down a hole. Even then, there would be no signal, but perhaps the emergency GPS would work, but how do we actually know without falling down a hole. I always liked the idea of a Breitling emergency watch, but not at those prices and the potential financial cost of using it. In short, whatever device one chooses, it will never make you any safer. In the old days you would just tell people where you were going and when you would be back, still the best policy and only one I really use. I once sat next to someone on a plane who had an Air Tag in there stowed luggage. Although a good idea should the luggage go missing, he spent most of the flight checking the App. Much to his dismay, the tag stopped working once the plane took off. According to him, it had either fell out of the plane on take off, or someone had snook into the cargo hold and stolen it.

(And another thing…) When I was working commercially, I was given a Blackberry Phone. The agency would get so upset when I turned the phone off while on a shoot so I wasn’t distracted. Secretly, I enjoyed how upset they got, but that was twenty years ago..

One of life’s simple pleasures is disconnecting from phone calls, texts and emails and be free from the distractions of the world. But I do have to admit to using my phone to make the image above rather than taking my camera off the tripod.