The Minimal Setup That Gets to Places a Camper Van Can't

Three days, two nights, and a mattress thrown in the back of a car with no sheets on it. That's the entire kit behind a photography trip along the northern coast of Spain, where the real work turns out to be finding angles that cooperate.

The trip comes from Adrian Vila of aows, who left home just after 4 am for a 2.5-hour drive and spent the day chasing a house built directly onto a cliff. The struggle there says a lot about landscape work. From one spot, he gets the cove in the frame but also unwanted buildings behind it. From higher up, the building sits in isolation but the cove disappears. He eventually finds a viewpoint that delivers both, then shoots a long exposure with a 20mm to place the house high in the frame and show the full vertical drop of the cliff below it. An amazing subject doesn't guarantee a great photograph. Everything else in the frame has to help.

The gear list stays short on purpose. A mattress, some food prepared at home the day before, a few spare clothes, and a big power bank to keep the cameras and drone running. He charges batteries in the car even when he probably won't need them, and keeps rubber boots stashed permanently so he never forgets them. Meals are leftovers eaten cold, oatmeal made from powders and blueberries, room temperature because the portable kettle went missing. Small roads that a larger rig couldn't handle are the reason he sticks with the car, and he's open about the tradeoff: nights are less comfortable, but the access is worth it.

You should know this all rests on whether you're rested enough to be at the right spot for sunrise light two days running. The car gets you into places a van can't reach, and that's real. But the ceiling on how many consecutive days you can shoot well is set by how badly you slept, and that cost rarely shows up in a "minimal setup" pitch. He admits a bigger rig is coming for longer trips, which tells you where the line sits.

What holds the whole thing together is the mindset. He treats it like backpacking, brings a sandwich, and trades comfortable meals for flexibility, time, and freedom. The compact camera isn't worse than the big one, just built for a different situation, and he uses both. Foggy mountain roads, a power line disappearing into mist, a lone tree beside the road, all found by pulling over when something caught his eye through the windshield. See how he pulls a full trip together with almost nothing in the trunk by watching the full video above.