Last week I decided to do a giveaway for our Facebook and Twitter followers. The premise was simple: answer a question and if it matches ours, we’ll include your name in our drawing.

This was the question:

“What is the MOST important thing you should always carry in your camera bag? If your answer matches ours, your name will be entered in a draw to win! Hint: it’s not the camera…”

We got a good amount of clever answers ranging from memory cards to flash, and some funny ones that also apply. In fact, our friend Greg Johnson won a print too for his “pen and paper” suggestion. The one that made me smile wider was Emily Resling’s “kleenex”. Of course, our creative minds started to think about sentimental and/or affected by the heat subjects!

Our winner is Adrián Velázquez from Atlanta, GA. He won a 5×7 print on Kodak Endura Metallic Paper of the image above. Congratulations, Adrián!

Winner announced, our answer is batteries. That includes variations as charger (this answer was included in the draw), and extra battery. In all the years we’ve been teaching photography, dead batteries are always what will bring your photo outing or session to an abrupt end. Only if you’re lucky to have a camera that holds AA batteries, you’ll be able to solve this problem quite easily. But most cameras come with proprietary lithium-ion batteries that can’t be replaced with AAs or even batteries from the same brand you’re using. An example of this is Nikon cameras. A D700 will function with a battery different from the Nikon D7000, for example.

Memory cards is also a good answer to this question. The difference with the battery, is that you can pop in a drugstore and find extra memory cards to purchase. Of course, it’ll cost you more than buying them online but your problem can be solved if you have access to a drugstore or a discount department store. You may be lucky and find the proprietary lithium-ion battery for your camera but most likely, I won’t happen.

How do you solve a battery problem? These are our suggestions:

1. Buy one or two extra lithium-ion batteries. Make sure they are the right model for your camera.

2. Bring your charger along. Batteries drain slightly different depending on amount of photos taken, altitude and environmental temperatures. When you have your charger with you, it’s easier to solve a dead battery problem as power sources may be available. A charger can be plugged into a cigarette lighter on a car and/or an electrical outlet (easy to find in restaurants and coffee shops, for example).

3. If you’re traveling, make sure you bring an extra camera or a battery pack that works with AA batteries. Drainage is not the only thing that can happen to lithium-ion batteries. They can break, be stolen, lost, or just wear out over a period of time. I once saw someone opening the battery chamber in their camera only to see her only battery available “diving” into a puddle of water.

4. Another tip for travelers is to buy a travel power plug-adapter.

Thanks to everyone that participated. We love doing these giveaways and used random.org to pick our winners. Please stay tuned for more!

* Important note: I’m not endorsing or recommending any particular brand or product on this post. My mention of Nikon products is because I own this equipment and I have experience manipulating it. This is NOT a paid post or advertisement for Nikon or any other store/equipment/brand. When buying equipment, please do your own research.