Travel

Packing for a shoot in your town can be a pain, but packing for an extended shoot in another country brings a whole new set of complications into consideration. Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of extended trips for my personal project “Tattoos of Asia.” Over the few trips that I’ve done, I’ve managed to pare down my kit to what I absolutely need. It has been a long process, but I’ve learned quite a bit, and I’d like to share that with you as I prepare my kit for my upcoming India trip.

Singapore Airlines' latest safety video mixes the regular safety video you'll see just before take-off with the dream of exploring Singapore. It's beautifully executed and shows how they'll push barriers to give you the travel experience you desire. Why is this important? Because it shows that the travel industry is really getting creative with their approach, and they are pushing the boundaries of just what's needed to evoke that curiosity and excitement of travel.

After every trip I go on, I always end up with a favorite image. Maybe it’s the one with the best story, or the one that was the hardest to get, or the one with the nicest person I met on the journey. In 2014 I headed to Bolivia to shoot a wedding, and a few weeks later found myself wandering around on an island in Lake Titicaca. And there, my favorite image of the trip was born.

In preparing to shoot a travel video when I travel to Vietnam in October, I came across this great video by travel videographer Brandon Li. In this video, Li gives some great tips on how to plan your video practically.

Sometimes as creatives, we lose sight of what originally attracted us to the creative process of photography and videography in the first place. We get lost in the noise while we are busy juggling social media, websites, managing shoots, pitching to clients, and constantly reinventing our work. Every now and then we need an image or a video to really put in perspective why we feel the way we do when we raise our cameras to our eye. The wonderfully directed short film "Too Far Gone" does just that.

National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year has announced their 2017 winner. The prestigious competition brought over 15,000 entries from 30 different countries. This year’s grand prize winner was Sergio Tapiro Velasco of Mexico. His photo, “The Power of Nature,” captures an erupting volcano while it is simultaneous being struck by lightning.

In an effort to improve the security of airline passengers and the nation’s airports, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is implementing new, stronger screening procedures for carry-on items that require travelers to place all electronics larger than a cell phone in bins for X-ray screening in standard lanes. These changes could affect photographers traveling with equipment on board by potentially requiring each camera body, some hard drives, speedlights, tablets, audio recorders, and other common electronic equipment to be removed from cases and placed separately in bins for X-ray, slowing the screening process.

For the last 10 years I have been regularly visiting this remote and pristine island state. Tasmania is about a 1.5 hour flight from Sydney to the city of Launceston. The diverse choice of landscapes and close proximity by car make this a unique and accessible environment still largely untouched. Around 40 percent of Tasmania is protected National Parks and Reserves. If you are looking to get off the grid and discover a magical wilderness, this place is filled with adventure and convict history. Here are some of my favorite spots to photograph in spring or autumn. I have also added a few other locations as side trips that are also worth a look.

The largest single landscape print I have made to date is a ten-foot-wide panorama of the Painted Rock at Fort Irwin. Titled A Thousand Words Fall Short, I donated it to a Veterans' clinic on the 4th of July. Printed on Fuji-crystal archival paper, front-mounted to 1/4" museum acrylic with an anti-glare coating, and backed by a solid sheet of aluminum, it really caught and exalted the light in the humble hallway where I was honored to see it hanging a couple days ago.

Just recently after moving back home for the summer, I decided to begin a new aerial series. Up here in Bergen County, New Jersey, there is not much to shoot, or at least that is something I tell myself. One day after skimming Google Maps for spots to fly, I came upon a few islands on a lake, each with their own individual house. Intrigued by what I saw, I knew that I had to find a way to capture these homes in a way that makes them more interesting to me. So right here, my series began and I will explain why I think it is important to keep every photo consistent.

With the rising prices of additional baggage when flying. Traveling with all the gear photographers need for the average location shoot is getting out of hand. There are lots of articles and tricks for saving some money but most of us have stripped down our travel kits to the essentials. This of course means for bigger jobs renting extra gear once on location. Manufactures seem to get this and there has been a boom in options, from battery powered strobes to wireless flashes and all sorts in between. Back from his online blogging hiatus, Zack Arias shares how he has solved this issue with an all in one ready to go lighting bag.

One week of photography in the wild backcountry of the Scottish highlands. In this "episode," I’d like to share with you the story about a recent trek into Glen Feshie in the Scottish Cairngorms National Park. It’s the behind-the-scenes tale of my successful image titled “Catch the Spirit.”

This method is widely used in editorial magazines. It's a fun way to look at different perspectives of your work combined. Sometimes it’s just not possible to capture everything you want in a single shot. The solution is simple – shoot two photos and display them side-by-side. I find that displaying two images side-by-side is a great way to tell a story photographically, and to create ideas that are not necessarily evident when one or the other image is displayed by itself. If you're interested in trying this technique with your own images, here are some of the tricks I’ve picked up along the way. Make small prints and lay them out on a large table to play the mix and match approach.

In 2002, QT Luong became the first person to photograph all U.S. National Parks with a large-format camera. His experience in traveling these beautiful, natural lands is simply inspiring. He was even a featured artist in the epic Ken Burns documentary, “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.” With all his knowledge and stories gained from decades of creating stunning imagery across the United States, I feel fortunate that Luong authored his photography book, “Treasured Lands.”

This year’s Travel Photographer Society (TPS) competition culminated in a beautiful exhibition of interesting and unique work from travel photographers all over the world in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Surrounding the exhibition, TPS also held a series of talks by prominent travel photographers. In his standout presentation and follow-up blog post, Pics of Asia’s Etienne Bossot questions us deeply about the ethics surrounding travel photography and just what constitutes the genre.