Photo Expeditions: Traveling Abroad

Having recently returned from a trip through Italy and Spain, I wanted to put some thoughts out there to help others who are thinking of doing a photo excursion abroad.

Business Cards:

Perhaps the biggest lesson learned during this trip. Eat with them, sleep with them, go about your daily life with them... but ALWAYS have them with you because you never know when an opportunity will present itself to hand one (or several!) to new friends.

Hiking Boots:

About halfway through our 3-week Europe tour I sprained my ankle. My wife and I were enjoying the marble boardwalk along the Nafplion waterfront in Greece when my right foot happened to find the only missing tile along the entire stretch. Down I went, along with about 30 pounds of camera gear. As I lay there waiting for the exquisite pain to wash over me like a deranged Mack truck, I knew already that this wasn't a bad sprain. I've had severe sprains and the pain is unmistakable. Regardless, a decent set of hiking boots (Also good for walking) would have made the injury far less traumatic, if not preventing it altogether.

Padded Camera bag:

(...also see: "Hiking Boots" :-) My camera gear is heavy but carrying it in a padded backpack made each excursion much easier. The padding also protected everything when I fell and sprained my ankle.

Exercise!

Above all, get acclimated to carrying your gear around for hours at a time. You will be happy you did.

Learn Local Customs:

Learn about the countries you're going to, the local customs, sayings like "Thank You", "Toilet" and "How much?" Learn also what to do and what not to do: In Greece, it is an insult to wave at someone with the palm of your hand. In Italy, the word "Terrific" means "Terrifying", or "horribly bad", so it's best not to compliment the chef (...or a tour guide!) with "That pizza was terrific!".

Packing:

I debated long and hard about what to bring on the trip, always considering weight of what I would be packing each day. Bottom line: If you have a home base, pack all your essentials.. You can pack out whatever you might need that day. I brought all my lenses and used all but one. It's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

Memory Cards:

Almost immediately I discovered several problems with how I was handling my images after each days' shoot. My laptop was running low on drive space, and I only packed 2 32GB memory cards and I was eating about 5GB a day in images and using both cards in the camera in backup mode, meaning I only had 32GB of total space if I didn't use any backup scheme.

I adopted the following:

1. Become a LOT more disciplined in shooting. This saved me time and space with the knowledge I was only capturing the 'good' stuff. (Hopefully)

2. Use the 2nd 32GB card as a total backup for everything I was shooting. This approach made my workflow a lot more precise and saved a ton of disk space.

Overall I was able to use the 2nd memory card as a backup to the images I ported to my laptop. No matter what happened, I had a backup of everything.

Free Time:

Use this time to cull/flag/rate/edit your days' images. The excitement will still be there and the work will pay off when you get home for the final editing pass and eventual posting to your new galleries. Additionally I learned how to better sharpen images and streamlined my workflow.

Happy travels!

Scott

anthonyscottphotography.com