Be prepared
Before it comes to packing day, a bit of preparation will yield great results when you’re out on the road
For my road trip to Scotland I may have over-prepared, but on the next two pages are some of the most useful things I took with me, in addition to my camera kit.
I hadn’t done the trip before, so I bought an Ordnance Survey map of Scotland. It gave me a top-down view of my shooting locations, that I then marked off with a pencil, and it showed the contour lines of the mountains, so I could see what sort of a hike I was in for.
An updated view of the world is great when you have power, so I also packed my smartphone with Google Maps, and downloaded some offline maps for those times when there was no signal. I also updated my satnav, so I could rely on it to reliably get me from place to place.
I also used my smartphone to track the sun and the moon with The Photographer’s Ephemeris tool, in order to help me plan effectively. And the stars didn’t get away from me either, because I also had the Sky Guide app pre-installed to help me locate particular constellations. I optimistically added the Aurora app too, as there’s always an outside chance of aurorae in the far North of Scotland. And finally, I also brought my laptop so I could pick my favourite shots each day and edit them at dinner time when there was not much else to shoot.
Check out my short but sweet kit list below to see the camera gear I took. It was all stripped back for travelling light, and so I only had the bare essentials. Once you’ve familiarised yourself with my kit, and everything else I took, turn the page to discover how I approached my first shot at the Old Man of Storr on the Isle of Skye.