MANAGE YOUR GEAR
The key to successful shoots when away from home is getting used to working with only the kit you have on you
For enthusiast photographers, or even professionals who are based in a fixed studio location, it is possible to break up a shooting schedule to allow time for battery charging, data management and equipment maintenance. There will probably be a few days where your kit can be unpacked, checked, charged and re-packed, ready for the next shoot. In this time, we can also clear memory cards and backup files.
These are all critical steps in planning for upcoming shoots, as it allows us to avoid running into trouble out in the field, such as realising we don’t have any fully charged batteries or fresh memory cards to hand.
When on the move, however, while spending extended periods away from our home base, it is not uncommon to have to move from one shoot to the next, with no stop-off at charging points. It is also likely that we won’t have much time, if any, to exchange gear or pick up new items from our own inventory. This makes planning ahead all the more important.
The added complication is how to pack for extended trips. The temptation might be to simply take everything, to cover all eventualities, but this is not always feasible. By chance, this article is being written in an airport lounge, where this photography journalist has been forced to store a speedlight in a coat pocket. It’s far from ideal, but necessary in this case. A great deal of the success of travel or overseas assignment photography packing is in how items are arranged within a bag, allowing optimal storage capacity and access to key equipment. Putting together set shoot packs can help with decisions on what to take on trips, depending on the type of photography you are doing.
Here, we look at two suggested kitbag arrangements – one for occasions when you know what subjects you will be photographing, where speed is the priority, and another when the subjects are unfixed, meaning more kit is advantageous.