The perfect travel bag?
This was originally published in my Prime Lenses Newsletter. You can sign-up for a weekly update to your inbox here.
The last 12 months have seen a lot of travel in the Farrell household. I’ve been to Greece twice, Sweden and Germany, not to mention travel within the UK to see my Grandma on the south coast. Add to this that the studio I used to work for was in England while I live in Scotland and planes, trains and automobiles are a big part of our lives. This is obviously fantastic and a real privilege, but on my current trip to Australia I have realised something that to a newly frequent traveller feels fairly profound.
Any backpack that doesn’t just unzip all the way down the front, is doing it wrong.
A backpack will often accompany me on a trip to the village shop, never mind somewhere further afield and the issue with many backpacks is that the more you put in, the more that the order you put those things into said bag starts to matter. On a couple of occasions recently I’ve struggled to get to something in the bottom of my backpack at an important moment and it would have been much easier to just lay the thing flat. This Patagonia bag, the Black Hole Mini, might be perfect. It comes in a very fetching Prime Lenses-ish yellow. If you’ve used it, let me know how it went.
The North Face Jester bag that I use currently is wearing really well, it was a gift from work in 2022 and there’s no reason to replace it other than the better design of a newer bag. That being said, it has a party trick that has been very handy when moving between hot and cold climates. The webbing on the front is great for putting a jumper or jacket into. When you routinely fly from Scotland to … well anywhere now I think about it, it’s often warmer where you’re going. An in-built way to quickly store a warm/ waterproof layer has been super handy on occasion. Having said that, it’s super handy because opening the bag and shoving it in is hard when the bag’s fully packed. This would be less of an issue if I could, and say it with me, open the whole of the front and lay it flat! 😊
Rapha used to do this really well too, I’ve done a quick check of the website and it looks like they’ve moved away from this type of bag, but we have a small 20L and larger 30L bag of theirs in the house which I could borrow from Alice as she’s not using it anymore. I’m going to experiment, because the other factor here that has to be taken into account is whether the airline you’re using will let you carry it on or whether you have to pay extra for it. Often, we fly Easyjet, and their restrictions are rigorously enforced, I’ve witnessed folks at Inverness airport attempting to argue with staff while they will the cage at the gate into accepting their bag. It never works and is always awkward.
It also, annoyingly, looks like I’ve just missed out on a sale on the blue one for £108, curse the timing of epiphanies!
This bag would have been super handy when I was overpacked in Germany a couple of weeks ago. Speaking of which, today sees the release of episode 2 in my Leica 100 series. The second 25 minutes of 100. I hope you enjoy the conversation with Mark Shipard and Inas Fayed. They were lovely company and it was a treat to get to talk to them.
Living Art
Listener to the show Eric Vandrick got in touch with me a little while ago to talk about the show, and also mentioned a zine he was working on. Well, the exciting news is now finished. Not only that but Matt Day looked at it in detail on his YouTube channel and you can thumb through it online here or DM Eric on Instagram to get hold of your own copy. Warning, shipping outside the US is eye wateringly expensive but we should support artists that ship, right? As an artist I know recently posted on Threads, don’t buy the work of dead artists, they don’t need the money anymore!
