Hey what's everybody,
Shortly to my person:
My name is Maximilian Mesch. I'm from Germany and 20-years-old by now. Like most of you I have a passion for photography and I love to travel.
That said I can get to my main content of this post.
Last year I had the opportunity to travel the North- and South Island of the wonderful New Zealand. After traveling on the german Autobahn to Frankfurt Airport, I spent around 36 hours in a plane or waiting at the Airports of Abu Dhabi, Singapore and Brisbane to finally arrive in Auckland, NZ. I only had my backpack with some clothes, a tent, my MacBook and my camera equipment. What I didn't had was a plan. No idea where to go next. No plan when something goes. Just a map and a vision of living my life as I want it to be.
So I could tell you in detail where I have been and what I have done. But that's not the point of this post, because I want to tell about what I have learnt.
TIME: You have it! Just take it. Everybody said that I should go study or plan my future. But how can I plan my future when I don't know who I am? So I needed time to discover exactly this. I took this time and now I can honestly say that this time has more value to me, than any degree or anything else I could have done in that time.
MONEY: You know say: "Yeah, but I don't have money for this.". Neither did I! But money is a thing that holding you back from being creative. Think about it. Chase Jarvis for example said once: "The best camera is the one you have with you.". There are iPhone-Photography-Contest where you can see amazing photos (of course although not so good pictures), but then you see someone with a D810 producing shitty images. Just because you can't afford something, doesn't mean you can't make the of out of what you have!
TALK: Talking to people is in my opinion the most important thing to do while traveling (and even at home). You get to know cool places to photograph, shops where you can save money on food or even just having a good time with them. Not only talking, communication in general is important. For example: One day a friend of mine wanted to hike around the half-island of Coromandel (New Zealand), but we missed a road, so we had to walk way more than expected. We were hungry, thirsty and tired, so we decided to try hitchhiking. BEST IDEA EVER! First car stopped and gave us a ride. It was an old Maori (native people of New Zealand) who invited us for a coffee and whisky (in NZ alcohol is legal at 18) and told us so many thing we would never have learnt as a normal tourist of this country. Just do it!
I just wanted to let you guys wanted to know about my experience. I don't want to go so much into the details, 'cause I don't even know if you like this. When you like it let me know! Furthermore you can see some images I took down under. Leave a comment and feel free to critique the images! And sorry for my english!
I hope you enjoyed it! „smile“-Emoticon
Mount Cook, highest Mountain of New Zealand
https://fstoppers.com/photo/77951
Pancake Rocks, South Island at Tasman Sea
https://fstoppers.com/photo/77952
Road to Mount Cook
https://fstoppers.com/photo/78070
Rainforest on South Island
https://fstoppers.com/photo/78071
Mount Eden (Vulcan Crater), Auckland
https://fstoppers.com/photo/78072
Me standing on top of Te Mata Peak, Hastings
https://fstoppers.com/photo/78073
Tongariro Crossing, North Island (Mount Doom from LOTR)
Thanks for sharing. Which equipment did you take with you? Just came back from a backpacking trip to norway, took my D610, 18-35mm, 50mm, 70-300mm and a tripod (plus batteries, filters and stuff. Of my 15kg backpack in the end about 3-4kg were camera gear.. way too much. Next time it's just a 28-300 I think and no tripod (but I love long exposure :/ ).
What a coincidence :D! I had my D610, 14-24, 50 mm, 70-300mm and bought a tripod in NZ and 1 batterie (i bought two more there), filters and a SSD. And I have to admit, it was way to much!
One lens and you have a better experience in the end, 'cause I had to change lenses pretty often, which ended by having dust on the sensor. I had to go twice to a shop to get my sensor cleaned, it was so annoying.
it is.. got me 2k pictures with the same dustspot on em.. 8x 64gb so not a look at one picture until I came home.
But the 18-35 is way lighter than the 14-24 ;)
I used the 50mm once.. so I think next time I'll try the tamron 28-300 and that's it (perhaps as always I'll take the nifty fifty .. just in case the other lens fails ;) )
With the build in Panorama funktion in lightroom I think you do not really need an ultra wide angle lens... only if it's about shooting at night or other stuff you can't stitch together.
Very cool story! We just released our landscape tutorial which features a lot of these locations and just today I was editing the Mount Cook lesson for our upcoming astrophotography tutorial. That hike to Hooker Lake can be exhausting especially if you have a ton of gear (we took tents and camped there for stars). I wish we had the chance to explore the northern island but we only had 2 weeks so we stayed on the southern island.
I'm envious seeing you have such an amazing travel experience at such a young age; I wish I had traveled more in my early 20s :)
Thank you very much! That sounds great! Really looking forward to see what you came up with! I mean what is better than seeing a professional like Elia Locardi taking pictures at the exact same location and seeing what he created?
I have some nighttime photos of the Mt Cook aswell, but it was full-moon. But I had to hike from the Hooker Lake to the parking lot back around 1 am and it was so scary, 'cause I was alone and there were hundreds of opossums who didn't even moved when I tried to scar them away with my tripod (I didn't hurt/touched them, of course).
And yes traveling is one of the best things you can do in your life, especially as photographer or photo enthusiast.
Where else have you been in NZ?