Just a quick note to announce that X-Peditions’ 2020 season has opened. Seats are going very quickly, and we expect both trips to fill shortly.
X-Peditions is a collaborative project between Strobist.com and Washington DC-based Focus on the Story. You can learn more about this year’s classes, or our program in general, at X-Peditions.com.
Strobist
Packing for any trip abroad can be a chore. Then add in the task of making sure you have all of the photography bits and pieces you need, and it’s enough to send your head spinning. Thankfully there is a cure for this craziness: The Travel Photography Packing List.
The Packing List is my go-to resource for ensuring I have all the gear I need in order to bring back the best photos. No one wants to deal with dead batteries or a lack of memory cards while they are exploring the world at large. That’s why I use the list below to sooth my packing-frazzled mind and to get on with creating amazing photos.
I know it seems obvious but the camera is the first thing on my packing list. Why? Because I take time to check it and give it a good cleaning, inside and out, before packing it away. I often carry a spare camera these days, which doesn’t get a lot of action until it is desperately needed.
Packing time is a good opportunity to make sure all cameras are in working order. You might also want to adjust the clock (set it to the time zone you’ll be traveling to) on your camera(s) so you can hit the ground running.
Lens choice is a dilemma for most of us. Bring them all and suffer the back strain of having to lug them around, or bring just a few and worry about missing the shot? As individual as this choice can be, I suggest thinking about what you will shoot the most if you want to limit the number of lenses you take along. Also, ask other photographers who have traveled where you are going or your tour operator for suggestions.
On my own tours, where our focus is on people, nature, and wildlife photography, I suggest a 24-105mm lens for walking around and city photos. These lenses are great for a variety of situations from close to medium distance.
Then for the landscape shots, a wide-angle or wide zoom, like a 16-35mm lens or 10-22mm on a crop sensor camera, can work wonders.
My go-to lens for travel is the venerable Canon 28-300mm L-series Lens. It covers a huge range and with some panorama stitching, I can get mildly wide-angle shots without switching lenses. It’s a heavy lens indeed, but I’ve grown used to it. I will then bring a 10-22mm wide-angle for the monumental landscape shots I love to capture.
Optionally, a long lens may be needed in certain situations, but they can be cumbersome. For instance, I would not have gone to Panama and Costa Rica, lands rich in birds and wildlife, without a Sigma 150-600mm Sport lens. Yet, that same lens will not follow me to the Himalayas, where weight is certainly a factor and the chance for birds is lessened.
For all my travels in the past decade, I have rarely found myself wanting to have a strobe along for the ride, especially due to the added weight involved. Yet I still tend to bring just one flash and I have been happy every time I did.
What I have found valuable when bringing a strobe is to make sure it is one that I can use off-camera. A flash that can be remotely triggered either with a tether or a smaller unit on the camera (either the built-in flash or a unit that attaches to the hotshoe). This has allowed me the greatest flexibility to add well-directed light to my travel photos.
A good travel tripod is a thing of beauty. These units, built for packability and lightweight, have been following me on more and more trips abroad.
My main issue with packing a full-size tripod, even if it is carbon fiber, is the need to take larger luggage. The legs of a super sturdy tripod are often longer, even when broken down, than the luggage I wish to take.
It’s a balancing act and it matters what you intend to shoot. If you have space, bring the monster tripod, especially if you are accustomed to hauling it around with you near home. If you have limited space, but still want stability in your landscape or astrophotography shots, consider something along the lines of the MeFOTO Globetrotter. It packs small, can double as a monopod and has a fully functional ball head.
Power strips are great for travel and there are a variety of options. I prefer a brand where the cord is easy to store and the strip comes with two USB ports. The two outlets in the power strip are meant for a variety of international plugs so it’s easy to share when you find the outlet at the airport overloaded. I’ve done this more than once and was able to get a charge when I couldn’t have without a power strip.
WARNING: See the next section about converters because it’s important to make sure the power strip is set up for universal power. I once had a strip with USB ports go, “Pop!” and puff smoke arose when I didn’t realize it was only set for US power and I was using it in India. Know before you go!
Almost any charger from a major manufacturer these days will work on what’s known as “Universal Power”. They have an input range that straddles 110V-240V and 50Mhz-60Mhz. This fits almost any AC power around the world. If your charger is not set up for Universal Power (check the charger itself for those phrases above printed somewhere on its label), then you need a converter.
A converter will change the power coming out of the wall in your hotel to the power your charger needs. This stops things from literally catching fire.
Different than a converter is an adapter. All it does is makes the plug on your charger fit the wall socket in your hotel. There is a handy guide on the Internet that lists the types of plugs in use around the world, by country, so you can see if your plug will fit.
If not, I’d suggest picking up either a small adapter specific to your host country or a universal adapter that will serve you for almost any country around the world for decades to come.
How many memory cards should you bring? Oh boy, that’s the big question. I’m sure if we ran a poll we’d have a huge range of answers. To help in planning, I take a per diem method and figure out what my average has been on previous trips, per day. I then multiply that by the number of days I’ll be gone to get a total number of photos I estimate that I’ll take over the duration of the trip.
Next, take the total (let’s say 4000 photos) and multiply it by the average size of a photo from your camera. Mine is about 24MB, so for 4000 images, I’d need 96,000MB or roughly 96GB. I then throw in an extra card, just in case. In this example, I will bring four 36GB cards and call it good. Especially if I am going to a country where I know it will be easy to buy more.
If you shoot a lot of videos, you should do the same calculations for video and add the two together.
You can’t get a clear shot with a dirty lens and a proper cleaning is vital. We cover the basics of a simple and portable kit in our article, How Should I Clean My DSLR’s Lens?, and I’d also include a sensor brush if you are comfortable with in-field sensor cleaning.
Most of us own and carry a circular polarizing filter and they certainly have earned a solid reputation. So throw one in your bag if you are familiar with them.
Next, include a graduated neutral density (GND) filter unless you are proficient at bracketing your shots and merging them artfully in your computer later. A GND helps in situations where there is a large difference between the lighting in a scene. They will slightly darken a sky so it won’t blow out when compared to a darker foreground.
Lastly, I’d suggest a quality neutral density filter, maybe a three or 6-stop.
We’ve released shots lists on DPS before and they can be helpful to keep you on track when every single thing you see is new and photo-worthy. A shot list is by no means a dogmatic requirement, but I have found it helpful to bring back a nice variety of shots.
Otherwise, we all tend to slide back into what we like (landscape, food, astrophotography, etc.) and miss out on all the other subjects that make our trip so memorable.
For me, a notebook is invaluable for remembering the little things that go with those photos. Maybe you have a mind like a steel trap, in which case you’re blessed, but for the rest of us, by the time day-three rolls around, we can’t really remember little things that happened on day one.
Sure, your photos will help you remember, but they don’t always capture the emotions and conversations you might have had. They are also great for sharing information with strangers, such as writing down the name of a restaurant or attraction you shouldn’t miss.
I fill a couple of pages before my trip with ideas of what I want to see or shoot. It’s then an easy reference later when I’m feeling rudderless and need some direction.
I hope this gives you a good start the next time you make a packing list for a trip. It’s not meant to be exhaustive so I would love to hear what else you have on your list. Leave a comment below so others can benefit from your experience with travel photography.
The post Tips for Making Your Travel Photography Packing List for International Trips by Peter West Carey appeared first on Digital Photography School.
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| Chitwan National Park, Nepal. iPhone 8 Plus in HDR mode. Photograph by Robert Rose |
Robert Rose has operated the Brant Photographers portrait studio in Bellevue, WA for almost 35 years. He is an active member and past president of the Bellevue Rotary Club, a service organization and part of Rotary International. In 2006, he founded The Rose International Fund for Children (TRIFC.org), a nonprofit aimed at helping children and young adults with disability in Nepal. Also, he’s my dad.
The emotional and storytelling potential of a powerful image remains as strong as ever, regardless of the tools used.
At least once a year, dinner at my parents’ is a bittersweet affair as dad prepares to embark on another six-week (or longer) trip to Nepal. During these trips, he’ll lead tour groups whose members have raised funds for TRIFC, he’ll check in on project sites and, most importantly, document the positive impact that TRIFC is having on some of Nepal’s most vulnerable youth.
His documentary camera of choice these days? An iPhone 8 Plus.
This came up as we were chatting about DPReview’s recent iPhone X review, and I couldn’t help but be a bit bemused that my dad, a man who built much of his portrait business decades ago with a Hasselblad 500C, was using a phone for all of his documentary travel work.
But the more we talked about it, the more I became interested in – and began to appreciate – how the phone is really the perfect tool for the job he’s trying to do these days.
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| iPhone 8 Plus in portrait mode. Photograph by Robert Rose |
My dad started regularly traveling to India and Nepal in the late 1990s (I would make my first trip with him as a fourth-grader in 1999). In those early days, he was partnering with existing nonprofits and local Rotary clubs, and volunteered his time and expertise as a photographer to help them tell their stories.
Back then, he traveled with a 35mm film SLR (a Canon EOS 650, if you’re curious), a zoom lens and a lead-lined bag stuffed with film. Sure, film was a pain what with worrying about x-ray machines and incredibly hot temperatures, but the results were far better than what was possible with digital at the time. This was especially important as he started displaying and selling prints to help fund projects.
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| Australian Camp, Pokhara, Nepal. iPhone 8 Plus. Photograph by Robert Rose |
Print sales helped raise a good amount of money for a while, but as digital photography took off, the monetary value of individual photographs came crashing down. No longer feeling as though the print exhibitions were worth the effort, dad started leaving the film at home – but he didn’t stop taking photographs. He just started taking them for different reasons.
Today, between events, marketing, social media and other forms of outreach, TRIFC brings in the vast majority of its funding through individual donations. But to reach people, you still need to give them a reason to donate, and you need to tell them a compelling story, and the emotional and storytelling potential of a powerful image remains as strong as ever – regardless of the tools used.
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| Sima was born with blindness, and today, her education is sponsored through one of TRIFC’s programs. iPhone 8 Plus in portrait mode. Photograph by Robert Rose |
For my dad, the camera used is one of the least important aspects of a photograph. Whether he’s using his Nikon D610 or his iPhone, he’s looking for the right light, the right angle and the right expression. He stays in the moment, endeavoring to honor whatever his subject might be by taking the best photograph he can.
The resolution of the iPhone isn’t much of a limiting factor these days; even when he’s giving presentations, the images hold up well when blown up on a projector screen. And it goes without saying that even 12 megapixels can be overkill for social media and email marketing.
Perhaps most importantly, my dad finds photography with the iPhone to be refreshing, fun and freeing. And as he turns 60 this year, he definitely isn’t missing the bulky DSLR swinging from around his neck.
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| Pokhara, Nepal. iPhone 8 Plus. Photograph by Robert Rose |
Then there’s the workflow advantages; On his most recent trip, dad went with only his iPhone and a bluetooth keyboard. Backups are taken care of automatically via the cloud, image editing is intuitive and non-destructive. He can choose an assortment of images or video clips, write a short Facebook post and publish it right then and there in a matter of minutes – all without a laptop, a hard drive or a ton of easily misplaced memory cards.
Convenience can be a huge plus, especially when you’re at altitude, fighting jet lag and trying to keep up with emails at the end of a long day.
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| Niraj Acharya, a student with hearing impairment, poses for a portrait. iPhone 8 Plus in portrait mode. Photograph by Robert Rose |
My dad is quick to point out that, as transformative as a good smartphone camera has been for his travel and documentary work, it hasn’t changed much at home here in the Seattle area. Sure, it’s great to have a decent camera with you all the time when you happen upon a neat opportunity, but he’s not going to be doing corporate headshots with an iPhone any time soon.
For us photographers, it really comes down to personal preferences and purpose.
And though dad’s a big fan of portrait mode, he admits he’d like it to work a bit more reliably and he sees the lighting modes as ‘gimmicky.’ Contour lighting can add interest to an image that lacks great lighting to begin with, he says, but when you’re looking for good light every time you take a photo, augmenting that light digitally can look a bit phony.
Lastly, as we reported in our review, dad found that the low-light performance of the iPhone is pretty poor – images can be blurry, noisy, or both. The Google Pixel does some clever image stacking to offer far better results (keep an eye out for our upcoming review), but since Dad’s invested in (and really enjoys) the Apple ecosystem, he’s hoping that low light quality is something that Apple’s working on for the next generation of iPhones.
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| Bhoudanath Stupa, Kathmandu, Nepal. iPhone 8 Plus. Photograph by Robert Rose |
I’ll admit this was an enlightening conversation for me – after all, the last time I went to Nepal with my dad, I brought a D700 and constantly swapped between two lenses the entire time. I also ended up with some images I’m really happy with, and I think I’m just too much of a gear nut to travel somewhere like Nepal without a ‘real’ camera.
That said, it’s really hard to argue with the convenience, the compactness, the ever-improving image quality and the overall capability of smartphones for the seasoned world traveler. In fact, it’s not uncommon to go along on one of these trips and encounter someone who has just bought a camera for the purpose of this new venture, only to find that they mostly use their phone because they hadn’t bothered to practice or read the manual for their new device.
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| Kathmandu cucumbers. iPhone 8 Plus. Photograph by Robert Rose |
My dad thinks that, while we’ll still continue to see cell phone cameras improve, there will always be a market for real cameras and lenses, though it may continue to shrink for a while. But for us photographers, it really just comes down to personal preferences and purpose.
There’s no doubt that a camera with a full-frame sensor will produce technically better images than a smartphone, but the resulting photographs depend much more on the hands that camera is resting in, and the perspective of the person hitting the shutter. And in the end, it’s the photographs – not the camera – that matter most.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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Lonely Planet, the world’s largest travel guide book publisher, has just launched an Instagram-like mobile app called Trips that allows anyone to share their travel photos and create their own travel guides. The app, which is only available for iOS at the moment, serves as a platform for users to catalog trips they’ve taken and publish guides for the places they’ve visited. The guides include text, photos and captions, though the app’s main focus is ultimately on sharing photos.
Lonely Planet describes its new app as “a beautiful, simple and intuitive way to share travel experiences.” Each user has their own timeline, and their content can be shared with both other travelers using the app as well as family and friends.
Speaking to Engadget, Lonely Planet CEO Daniel Houghton explained, “We don’t expect people to abandon other photo-sharing apps.” Underscoring that there is an option in Trips for users to link to their Instagram account and show off the photos they have shared on that platform.
For travelers, though, Trips offers a way to share content that is more trip-focused than what’s possible on photo sharing services like Instagram. In addition to being able to arrange photos chronologically in trip reports, users can also add a map to their report, better enabling viewers to see exactly where the adventure took place. Plus, Trips can be used in conjunction with Lonely Planet’s popular Guides app, which offers travel guides from experts for regions around the world.
Trips is currently only available on iOS. An Android version of the app will arrive later this fall.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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| Tamina-Florentine Zuch won the 2016 ZEISS Photography Award with a project about the railway system in India |
German lens manufacturer Zeiss has put up a top prize that includes €12,000 of its lenses and €3000 towards a photographic excursion for the winner of the 2017 Zeiss Photography Award. In its second year, the award is made in conjunction with the World Photography Organization and is presented as a part of the Sony World Photography Awards program. Entrants are required to submit a collection of five to ten related images on the theme of ‘Seeing Beyond – Meaningful Places’ for a chance to win the single prize.
The competition opens today and will close on 7th February 2017, with the winner being announced on the 14th March. The prize winner will be taken to London to the WPO awards ceremony in April and the winning series of images will form a part of the Sony World Photography Awards exhibition held at Somerset House in that city.
For more information visit the Zeiss website.
Press release:
Pushing the limits of creativity.
The ZEISS Photography Award is a highly prestigious international photo competition run jointly by ZEISS and the World Photography Organisation (WPO). “Our lenses enable photographers to achieve superior imaging quality, and the ZEISS Photography Award is an expression of our dedication to premium-quality photography,” says Dr. Winfried Scherle, Executive Vice President and Head of the Consumer Optics business group at ZEISS.
The motto “Seeing beyond – meaningful places” will also be used for the 2017 competition and accorded greater artistic significance. Photographers therefore have the chance to use their creative flair to lend unique places a special meaning and express this through their medium.
The goal is to push the limits of creativity and grow as photographers. They could be places with a particular historical or future value, or perhaps places that exude adventure, the wonders of nature or depict a journey to a faraway place.
“The lenses are mere tools – the real value of the images is down to the photographers and their flair for creativity.”
Dr. Winfried Scherle
Submissions
All those who wish to take part in the ZEISS Photography Award 2017 are invited to submit a series of 5 to 10 photos complete with descriptions. Entries can be submitted between 11 October 2016 and 7 February 2017. The jury is looking for photos that reflect different perspectives as well as free interpretations of the terms “meaning” and “place.”
Further information on the submissions for 2017 can be found here.
Jury
All entries will come under scrutiny from a jury composed of leading lights from the world of photography. The jury for the ZEISS Photography Award 2017 comprises 3 members. Their goal is to assess the photographic skill and artistic flair of the participants.
Prize
At the end of the submission phase, a shortlist of photographers vying for the ZEISS Photography Award 2017 will be published and a winner will be selected. Inclusion on the shortlist is a great honor in itself. The winner will be announced on 14 March 2017.
The winner of the ZEISS Photography Award 2017 will receive ZEISS camera lenses of their own choosing to a value of €12,000, as well as €3,000 to put towards a photo trip. He/she will attend a gala dinner in London on 20 April 2017 and their photos will be showcased at the Sony World Photography Award Exhibition at Somerset House in London. All flight and hotel expenses for the gala dinner in London will be covered. The winner will also get the chance to work with ZEISS on an individual basis.
Key dates
All the important dates for the ZEISS Photography Award 2017 are listed below:
11 October 2016 : Competition open for submissions
7 February 2017: Competition closed for submissions
28 February 2017: Shortlist published
14 March 2017: Winner announced
20 April 2017: Gala dinner in London
21 April to 7 May 2017: Winner’s photos exhibited at Somerset House in London
Further information is available on the website of the World Photography Organization
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
[ By WebUrbanist in 7 Wonders Series & Travel. ]
When planning out world travel, one typically dwells on destinations more than times, but some of the best sights can only been seen at a particular point in the day or, in the case of these marvels, at night.
WebUrbanist is pleased to announce a new partnership with Google Field Trip, bringing some of our best and brightest travel articles to their mobile platform, allowing you to find hidden wonders of the world wherever (and whenever) you may be. In this article, we have teamed up to highlight seven amazing places to visit by night, each offering special surprises to the nocturnally inclined.
At dusk, people flock to watch the emergence of 1.5 million bats from beneath the Congress Avenue Bridge, designed and built in 1980 in a way that inadvertantly turned out to provide an ideal roost for a particular breed of flying nocturnal predators.
Often under-appreciated or even feared, these night flyers consume between 10,000 and 20,000 pounds of food each evening, helping them earn their keep. Today, there is even a dedicated Statesman Bat Observation Center from which visitors are encouraged to experience the spectacle.
By far the biggest such event in the world, the Harbin International Ice & Snow Sculpture Festival consists of huge works of art and architecture that truly come into their own once the sun sets and glowing lights behind and within bricks of ice come to life.
Using swing saws to cut ice directly from an adjacent river, artists then turn the frozen building blocks into human, animal and mythical figures as well as huge staircases and structures. Among other honors and awards, a snow sculpture featured at the festival holds the world’s record for size at 750 feet by 28 feet (13,000 cubic meters of snow). Other similarly-impressive global ice festivals can be found in Japan, Canada and Norway as well.
Fireflies can be a wonderful sight regardless of the species, but one rare type in particular (Photinus Carolinus), is even more special than its cousins: the so-called Synchronous Firefly swarms light up in unison, pulsing every few seconds at the exact same time.
At Great Smoky Mountains National Park, viewers can buy tickets in advance and be taken by shuttle to special viewing areas from which to observe these lightning bugs. Within the park, 18 other species of firefly can also be found, but only one whose constituents almost all flash simultaneously.
A maritime marvel in more ways than one, this 3D optical illusion involves two intersecting planar projections beamed onto perpendicular planes of vertical water.
Created for the Amsterdam Light Festival by VisualSkin, the resulting real-life rendering looks like a 17th-century seafaring vessel seemingly held in stasis and composed of water and light. The effect, naturally, works best at night, turning a fountain by day into a marvelously surprising evening display.
Unbelievable as it may sound, there are those who track urban wonders of all kinds – from the narrowest to the most windy streets of the world and more.
Click Here to Read More »»
Humans burrow into the Earth out of anything from necessity to superstition, driven by coincidence or coerced by circumstance.
Click Here to Read More »»
From small towns to entire cities, here are some of the most amazing, strange and surreal urban abandonments of the post-modern world.
Click Here to Read More »»
[ By WebUrbanist in 7 Wonders Series & Travel. ]
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