As we were wrapping a South Pacific shoot this past year, the Costa del Mar team ensured most of the photo sample sunglasses stayed with Anaa locals. It was fantastic to watch these islanders — who live so happily and so simply — try on sunglasses, ask their friends for opinions, and laugh. There was a lot of laughter. Kudos to the Costa team for giving an awesome example of how it should be done.
I came away from the shoot with my new-favorite sunglasses, a pair I’d shot on anglers most of the week. (I still laugh when I see my images of the exact same pair in Costa marketing materials.) The gold frame was a little glitzy for me, but they were just so damn comfortable, and offered excellent eye coverage — crucial when teaching new anglers. The green lenses were showing no wear after a week of being tossed around and worn, and the fit was perfect. Without a spare case, I flew the three days of travel home with these perched on my head, balanced with a gifted hand-woven straw hat I obnoxiously carried all the way back to Vermont.
Fast forward a week later, and I was processing through the Albany, New York, airport, preparing to board a plane to South Carolina. I was on an assignment for Orvis, my already well-traveled sunglasses happily along for the ride. I nestled them into the TSA bin and after haggling my camera gear through, waited on the other side. I was less than impressed to see the bin had been dumped by a TSA agent, and my items were now loosely rolling down the conveyor belt.
Caught between a computer and a Pelican case, my sunglasses ignominiously came off the conveyor belt, met the rolling bars, and were crushed, falling to the carpeted ground. Somehow the lenses survived, both falling free of the mangled frames. I gathered the pieces, looked to the TSA guy who shrugged, and moved on to catch my plane. It’s rarely worth it to stand there and bark at someone, and I had a plane to catch and a shoot to get to.
Sitting at the gate I slowly twisted the frames back into some semblance of glasses, fully expecting them to break. To my surprise, they didn’t. A bit of careful finagling and I had the lenses back in place, and after some more adjustments they would rest reasonably on my face.
Fast forward nine months and the mangled glasses are still rolling. They’ve survived a few more intentional trips, and are about to go back to the South Pacific with me for an exploratory fishing shoot. They’re a little wonky — the frames morph now and then — but they get the job done and are still just damn comfortable. I like to think we’ve got a bit of an established rapport.
Various companies often talk about the tenet that “good gear matters.” It does. In the past few years I’ve finally realized I’d rather save up and purchase a quality piece of gear — camera gear, clothing, outdoor equipment, whatever — that will be with me for years to come. Hell, I still regularly wear an old Patagonia fleece that was my mom’s well before I was born. Invest in good gear, take care of it, and odds are when the time comes it won’t let you down.
