well duh……

Some say that the ability to laugh at oneself is a sign of a healthy intellect.

If the above is the case where does a slap on the forehead (by your own hand no less) and a few self deprecating utterances followed by a nervous giggle while looking around to see if someone has noticed how daft you might have just been, leave you on the mental health scale?

Ok, admit it we’ve all been there? Especially persons who use tools to get stuff done, be it in the workshop or kitchen or photography or computers or mowing the lawn or __________ (add pastime here), and before you brag that this has never happened you, are you absolutely sure that you’ve got the words of that favourite song you’ve been singing along with, correct?

I’m avoiding telling you what I did, but here goes.

I am shifting my business activity on-line and part of this is doing more video which I hope will translate into some training courses down the line. One of the recording tools that is fast becoming a favourite is my cell phone, this is in spite of having access to relatively decent camera gear.

Having the camera stuff also means I have access to a selection of tripods and stands but in the case of the cell I needed some way to attach the phone to a ball head. Enter the much maligned selfie mount that is typically seen on the end of sticks all over the world, especially in places well frequented by tourists. The one I got works by clamping the phone into a U-shaped bracket that has standard threads on two sides that is used to attach the bracket to the quick release plate of the tripod head.

Apparently this is the easy part! It’s when you clamp the phone into the bracket that things get complicated.

Not ideal, shall we say?

The first picture shows how I did it the first few times I filmed from a tripod. You may clearly see that the bracket obscures some of the cellphone screen. I honestly thought that this was a poor design on the part of the bracket, especially considering that I could not get to all the functions I needed to while recording.

Of course I tried to work around this serious design flaw by moving the phone up and down the bracket to allow the most efficient access the the most oft used functions of the particular video app I use, but it remained a frustration. That was until I decided to take the bracket of the tripod and fiddle with the position of the recording device within it.

After staring at the resulting puzzle in my hands for a bit - no stated claims for how long - it finally dawned on me that I may be putting the phone in backwards when mounting to the tripod and a few thousand lumens of lightbulbs went off at the same time in my head. The realisation of my mistake started to sink in soon after remounting the bracket onto the tripod in the correct orientation, followed by opening the video app, followed by a slap, then some choice words, then a soft giggle while looking over my shoulder which was promptly followed by a sigh of relief upon having found a solution to an infinitely irritating problem.

I only started laughing at myself later in the day after completing some recordings but honestly I still feel a bit daft, even after a week or two.

Is there a lesson here though, or was I just too thick to figure out the obvious?

Well, I did mention that I am also a photographer and generally lenses find themselves roughly in the middle and front of most cameras out there and thinking about this unfortunate occurrence I came to realise that in my mind I considered this to be the case with my phone as well. Resulting in me mounting the “camera” in a manner that would not obstruct the lens i.e. backwards!

I think that assumptions informed by what I’m supposed to “know” based on previous experience, together with the lack of some form of instruction included with the bracket, teenagers and tourists alike are able to figure it out after all, conspired to get me into this embarrassing situation.

But isn’t it true that we sometimes think we know better based on past experience or get so set in our ways that when a new tool or technique comes along that we en up using it completely wrong, resulting at worst in some risk to ourselves or possibly others and at best a slight warming of the cheeks and an uncomfortable giggle.

Something to think about?

One of the things in the world I enjoy the most is learning, one of the least is learning at my own expense! At least when learning does come with some personal expense involved, it’s sometimes also somewhat amusing down the line, unless the expense involves the breaking of one’s skin as is never the case when sharpening by hand or using when edged tools…….