What’s in My Bag is Documentary’s strand of photo spotlights of the setups that help create the stories of our times. For these pieces, we ask cinematographers in the field for essential tools of the trade and the accessories that help us do our best work.
It’s 8:00 a.m., and the sun is already flooding the rugged, treeless world I’ve found myself in. The participants I am tracking, adorned with CamelBaks and rock hammers, are loading into a cluster of SUVs. I reach for my camera bag. It’s a Kata hip pack I bought in film school, back when my classmates and I traded roles regularly on each other’s films. I used it as an AC kit then, but now it suits me beautifully for handheld vérité. With my camera balanced on my right shoulder, I unzip the left side pocket of my bag and feel for something flat and smooth: a gray card. I do a quick white balance, repocket the card, zip up, and go.
With a supportive push from the producer, I climb into the front passenger seat of an ancient vehicle next to Scott Wing, a Smithsonian paleobotanist whose team is seeking fossilized evidence of the forests that blanketed this swath of Wyoming badlands millions of years ago. The ride is off-road and bumpy, but I hold Scott steady enough with a 25mm prime. As he slows down to park, I think ahead to the miles we’ll be hiking on foot. I reach for my bag again, a bit more to the left, till my hand hits the lens pouch I keep Velcroed to its waistband. I pinch the drawstring toggle lock to open the pouch and switch lenses, staying mindful of lens cap whereabouts and protecting my camera’s sensor from dust with the heel of one hand. Once the 24-70mm zoom is attached to the camera, I sink the prime into the case, tighten the drawstring, and go.
Outside, the sky is impossibly blue. It is already hot, and something is off with my stick mic. I hear a wiggle in my cans, probably the shock mount, and we don’t have a sound recordist, so I reach for my bag. The scientists are debating which GPS coordinates to use, and I keep my eyes trained on them as my right hand unsnaps my bag’s side-release buckle and feels for something cool and round: a multitool. I now use a bladeless one, after losing the special one my dad gave me to TSA. I tighten the shock mount’s single screw, slide the mic and the shock mount back into the camera’s hot shoe, return the tool to its pocket, click it shut, and go.
It will be hours before I think about my bag again. I’ll be too busy feeling for footholds in the slippery shale, tuning my ears to the sound of scenes taking shape in the dialogue, and looking down from imaginary overheads as I plot coverage and cutaways and matching shots, all to be captured on one side of the line. But inevitably, a battery will run low, at which point I’ll reach instinctively for my bag’s central pouch, where the fresh ones live. I’ll pull dried fruit strips from the slender back pocket to stave off low blood sugar. I’ll unzip the shallow front compartment to switch out camera cards, organized according to a simple and vital system I picked up along the way: clean cards face outward; shot cards face inward.
Simple and vital: that’s how I’d describe my camera bag philosophy. Simple and vital keeps my bag packed with clarity so I can grab tools without looking. Simple and vital keeps my bag light enough to carry till we run out of daylight.
Simple and vital is quite different from the general feel of capturing vérité, with its delicious unknowns and inclement weather. And it is utterly opposite to the rest of my life, with its chaos and clutter, its overabundance of things I do not need but cannot bear to let go of.
My partner and I own identical chef’s knives. When we lived in different cities, she doubled up on kitchen tools to make it easier to call her home ours. Now that we live together, the two knives sit next to each other. Hers is newer, shinier; the old one—a gift from my parents—contains memories of a thousand joyful meals made and shared with friends. Whenever I reach for a chef’s knife, I agonize for a split second: Whose do I choose, parents’ or partner’s? I tend to favor my partner’s, but I still use Mom and Dad’s on occasion. I’d never cut them off completely; I must keep both knives, probably forever. And I must take the time to think this choice through. Every time.
Imagine if this were my camera bag philosophy! Were it not for TSA’s ban on blades in carry-ons, I might miss shots—entire scenes, even—while agonizing over which multitool to use.
No, this sort of thing must never happen while filming. That is why, inside my camera bag—that singular, organized, I-know-without-looking place—everything is simple and vital. Maybe someday I will apply this philosophy to the other parts of my life. I think it might be a nice way to live.
Annotated List:
1. Think Tank portable lens case with rain cover
2. Lens cleaning pen
3. Think Tank rain cover
4. Lectrosonics L-Series lav
5. Athleta breathable cap
6. Low blood sugar fruit strips and high-fat, low-carb snacks
7. ITVS tin that I refill with Altoids
8. Wooden Camera multitool
9. Rechargeable AA Eneloop batteries
10. Band-Aids
11. Lens tissue
12. Gray card
13. Ibuprofen
14. Ursa tape for taping lav cables to participants
15. Sony lens hood
16. ProGrade CFexpress cards
17. Sony FX6 with Vocas handheld mount and wooden handgrip, Sony FX9 loupe, Sennheiser 416 mic with shock mount, Lectrosonics L-Series lav receiver with hot shoe mount
18. Kata AC hip pack
19. Naked running band
20. Business card (for use when I don’t have a press pass)
21. SD card carrier
22. Bongo cable
23. Sony batteries
This piece was first published in Documentary’s Spring 2026 issue.
