Professional Photographer Magazine. Travel Special - April 2007

Have Camera will travel - Peter Adams & Julian Love

Who better to seek advice from on the practicalities of what gear to pack for a travel shoot and how to safely transport it, than two of the leading photograpers in the business? WORDS Gavin Stoker

WITH THE GROWTH IN picture libraries demanding images for editorial and advertising use, photographers are being increasingly tempted to unplug the three-bar fire in the studio and book a ticket for sunnier climes, hoping to pitch a plethora of stock images off the back of their Vocational' holiday. But in order to avoid lack of foresight and inadequate planning becoming the death of creativity — and losing that eight-page spread in National Geographic — it makes sense to first thoroughly consider the practicalities and logistics involved.

Carry on... abroad
As your equipment is also your livelihood, it's worth checking out that any recent additions, and the territories to which you're travelling, are covered by your insurance policy. Companies that specialise in insuring photographers and their kit and that can answer most queries can be found in the back pages of Pro and other magazines.

Travel photographer Julian Love, last year's winner of Travel Photographer of the Year, agrees that getting cover makes not just sound business sense, but offers a creative freedom that in turn generates saleable images.
"I read up on places when I'm planning trips, and often hear that you need to be particularly careful with camera equipment," he notes. "But having insurance means I can go out and take all the pictures I want and not have to worry."
Taking a different view is fellow pro Peter Adams, another past TPOTY winner. "For the amount [of gear] I own the premium would be so high that it would take me six years to pay off, and touch wood I haven't had any bad experiences," he says, while admitting that his stance is pretty rare among his peers.

"If I was travelling for a year to places I thought quite risky, like South America, then maybe I'd take out a year's insurance. But I don't like the fact that you have to waste a whole day in the local police station if something does happen."

Apart from packing his trusted Canon EOS IDs Mark II, Adams draws up a checklist before leaving because there's so much to remember. "Which is partly down to shooting digitally but also the complication of sometimes taking a small Hasselblad XPan panoramic camera and film as well," he reveals.

For transportation, both Love and Adams favour Tamrac backpacks. "You can distribute the load across your shoulders, which is good, if you are out photographing all day," reasons Love, "anything else justleaves you exhausted. I've settled on one with a camera section at the bottom where I can store a body, three lenses and a flash. It also has an open section in the top, which will take a couple of maps, a guidebook or two and bottle of water, plus I can strap my tripod to the side too."

Julian Love, who claims he typically transports 13 or 14 kilos worth of gear as hand luggage, admits to having had a few "interesting conversations" with airport officials. Peter Adams meanwhile offers a novel approach to getting around any inconveniences.

"Because you can only take one bag through Heathrow, I've devised a system of wearing a waistcoat and going through like a terrorist with a load of cables and a portable drive," he says. "It looks like a bulletproof vest. I also now put the tripod legs for a Manfrotto 190 in the main luggage and carry the expensive Swiss ball head separately, so if the worst happened I could perhaps buy a new set of legs when I arrive."

If Adams is only going to be away for a few days the laptop will stay at home and he'll make use of an Epson P-4000 portable drive for backup. On arrival, he stashes any equipment he doesn't immediately need at the hotel and ventures out with a couple of lenses he knows he's going to use.
"I try and keep it simple — if I'm shooting a city or architecture I'll pack a shift lens," Adams says. "I always carry a Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 and a 24-105mm. I don't go for a lot of extreme wide-angles because I find that a bit of an issue with digital, and I don't have anything beyond 200mm — I just carry a 1.4x or 2x extender. The IDs Mark II is so heavy that two lenses is about all you can carry."

If travelling light, Julian Love, who also shoots on the IDs Mark II, will pack two 100GB Nexto drives - so he can back up each memory card twice. "Typically I find I shoot 20GB worth of Raw images a week, so that's more than enough for a four-week trip. The laptop comes with me if I'm staying in hotels, but if it's a trekking trip you just can't carry that kind of weight around."

Love does, however, carry a Gitzo 1128 with him at all times. "It's a small yet sturdy carbon fibre tripod — if you have one that's too big you just don't carry it with you so you may as well not have it," he reasons. Inevitably though, compromises are made for space."I don't take all the kit I own," he nods. "I pack three lenses: a 24-105mm zoom - which is my 'workhorse' covering most of the focal lengths and with a built-in image stabiliser - plus a 70-200mm zoom. I then carry a 24mm perspective correction lens for doing shots of buildings and interiors. These days you can do corrections in Photoshop, but in my experience it's a lot easier and quicker to get it right when you take the picture in the first place."

Carry on...follow that camel
Of course, for DSLR users swapping lenses in unforgiving climates - deserts and rainforests being favoured destinations — preventing the intrusion of undesirables is a must.

"If you're in a dusty desert type environment it can get pretty horrible," frowns Peter Adams. "I know some people clean their sensors every day, but I find that an average of once every week is fine."

Both Adams and Love recommend a sensor-cleaning brush from Visible Dust (www.visibledust.com; 01293 823232). "You use a blower to create a static charge on the brush and then just brush it across the sensor," Love explains. "It's very small and light to pack. It does the job. You only need to use some wet swabs at the end of a trip if you've got real gunk on there."

Bravely perhaps, Love doesn't treat the bulk of his equipment with any special consideration for climate conditions, but says the EOS IDs Mark II holds up well.
"I treat my kit quite harshly — because I always have my camera around my neck ready to take pictures, whether I'm hiking through a rainforest or up a mountain. They do get banged around quite a bit. It's often when it's drizzling or raining that you get the best colours in a rainforest, and if you don't have a camera that's sealed against moisture and dust you'd be in trouble."

That said, Love will pack a Canon EOS 5D body as a backup for the Mark II - Adams has a second 1 Ds — but this tends to remain back at the hotel so he doesn't have to shoulder so much weight. Like Love, Adams has a similarly cavalier attitude towards protecting his main kit. Meaning that he doesn't.

"I was in Northern Sweden at -30°C, where condensation was the biggest problem," he remembers. "There are things you can do but I just kept the cameras in the cold, in a bag on my balcony. You just have to allow for a period of adjustment going from the cold to the warm."

Finally, what is the first thing each photographer does once home?
"Do some key wording or captioning," replies Love, "plus make any final adjustments before I send images to my stock library or client. The other thing I do is try and catch up on business - put in a few calls to editors and let them know I'm back and what I'm planning next, and drum up as much interest as I can."

Adams pauses for a moment. "Pour myself a large whisky," he laughs.