Taking Your Camera on the Road

As I write this, we are planning for another of our frequent excursions out of our comfort zone (home on the road) to a foreign place where we don't speak the language, have little clue on what we will find when we get there (tour books are only "so" helpful), and have prayers and hope for our survival during the duration of our trip.

Oh, that sounds ominous! No, we are not going to a dangerous place. In a way, the stress associated with traveling today often outweighs our enjoyment of the trip. Many times we've had opportunities to jump on a plane recently, and we shied away, unwilling to endure the torture of the travel.

As traveling photographers, our equipment and film is put at risk when we travel, and we have put together tips and tricks to help you get through the airport as you travel. We tell you what you need to know before you get to the airport and onto the plane.

We've been living on the road full-time, in some fashion or another, since 1996. The first four years were spent living in a trailer, pulled by our truck, cris-crossing North America, photographing nature as we found it. The last few years have been in Israel, traveling outside the country every three months to explore Europe.

We are one of the four million US citizens living overseas, and among the thousands of Americans traveling on the road every day. We've done so much traveling, you'd think we'd seen it all, but every now and then something will surprise USA, catch us off guard, and attempt to spoil what might be a good time.

We hope to help you avoid some of the missed steps and pitfalls of travel in this series of articles called "Know Before You Go", and help you spend more time concentrating on your camera and pen.

Describing the weather is a hard cold fact for any writer, no matter what genre they work in. No matter where you are, inside or out, you are affected by the weather, as are the people and places you write about.

Finding the words to describe the temperature, weather, and impact of the two upon the human body, can often leave the writer finger-tied. After all, the thesaurus has dozens of words just for "cold" such as chilly, cool, freezing, raw, icy, frigid, frosty, arctic, glacial, polar, brumal, and nippy. Let's do a brainstorming assignment to come up with words describing the different references to the weather.

In a few days we will be starting a series called Know Before You Go. It will tackle the things you need to know before you go on your next big traveling adventure, or if you are a regular traveler. We're offering tons of information packed with the things you need to know before you [...]

When you think of Alaska, don't you imagine it as the last refuge for large wild animals in the Northern Hemisphere? A place where elk, caribou, moose, and bear still wander wild and free? On our first trip to Alaska, we were sure we would return with film covered with all things wild and woolly.

Instead, we found mosquitos, rain, and empty fields and mountain ranges. Nothing.

By the end of the first week, rain pounding our tent, we were angry and frustrated, biting and snapping at each other. The truth was we were disappointed. We didn't find any great herds of elk, caribou, moose, or even the wandering lone bear. Just a few Arctic ground squirrels, soggy and boring. Nothing close to our stereotypical vision of the last wilderness frontier. What a waste.

After a week of sneers and stabs, we called a truce. "We're in Alaska!" I shouted, "Who cares about anything else!"

We rearranged our thinking and changed our photographic mood to photograph what was THERE, visible to the eye, not to keep looking for what should be there.

The dream of living and taking your camera on the road is exciting. We've been doing it for ten years now, and we had to admit, it can be very exciting. It can also be boring, but the biggest challenge for living on the road is staying in touch.
When we began, cell phones were new [...]

Growing up next to the world's largest building on one floor, Boeing's manufacturing plant in Everett, Washington, which grew to more than double it's size while I grew up, I can respect large production facilities. China and Kodak have just announced that Kodak has built the world's largest disposable camera production base in Xiamen [...]

In general, I'm all for new technology, especially in photography. I love the new popularity of photography on the Internet. Everyone wants to show off their pictures, good or bad, and photoblogs are gaining popularity. Sites like ours have a goal of helping people learn more about photography and improving their photography skills, but [...]