Travel Photography Essentials
As a photographer or a camera hobbyist, we all have that wanderlust in which fuels our feet to pack up and travel to see the world. In hand with our trusty camera, we’d like to try to capture each scenery and object that comes to our attention through the viewfinder. To be able to capture a memory, a historical place, a place of tradition, rare moments, well-timed still captures, cultural objects, everyday life of people, interesting strangers, weird contraptions, interesting patterns and designs, and surprising events in our own perception and frame style, each shot becomes our own art as it creates a sense of satisfaction, a reward for each step we go through to find such a shot. These are what drives our wanderlust as photographers and can also be essential for nurturing our spirituality.
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Now bear in mind, to be able to take pictures as much as possible, you have to make your trip well coordinated in order to make the most of it. If your trip is a more laid-back style as you drift across in wonderful discovery, that’s actually fine as well. To make the most of your trip and not missing a single thing to shoot, you need to be well equipped and prepared. And that is to travel with the essentials of travel photography.
Blog Category: Travel Photography
Destination: International | Philippines
Photography: Jones Silva Creatives
Camera - Your Indispensable Partner
It’s a given to bring the main cast. It will be with you 100% of the time.
Camera Bag - Carry-It-All Companion
It goes without saying, it’s imperative to have something that fits and carries all your gear as you travel. For safety and caution, have it least with water resistance in case of sudden downpours to protect your gear from rendering unusable due to damped short circuit. Take “Evecase Shoulder Camera Bag” or “Case Logic Shoulder Camera Bag” as a recommendation, they’re water resistant, comes with a padded top handle and an adjustable shoulder strap for easy carrying, padded with dense foam to provide maximum protection against shock, and adjustable inner divider keeps lenses apart.
Jones Silva Creatives at Singapore Changi Airport.
Spare Batteries - Extra Energy for Smoother Experience
For smooth transitioning whenever the battery of your camera drains out after hundreds of shutters. Would’ve been a downer if your camera ran out of juice in the middle of your excited trigger happy moment only to feel short of satisfaction. Without power, that’ll end your day since you’ll have to recharge the battery and wait for it to be full again. Be sure to have extra batteries to have a smooth experience.
Short Prime Lens - Portraits and Bokeh
Perfect for capturing elegant portraits of people or making bokeh effects like a sharp focus on the subject while having a smooth blur on the background. A 50mm lens is good enough as it shoots a very sharp image and has the perfect distance between the portrait subject. A 35mm lens makes you more flexible ranging to portrait, close-up, and landscape shots. You can bring at least one or even two, depending on your preferences.
Wide-Angle Lens - More Details to the Frame
It’s always better to capture an amazing monument, building, temple, or scenery in a bigger frame without missing a single detail. Wide-angle lenses do wonders for these shoots as it captures a wider angle, letting us capture more details and easily adjust the frame of the photo to our own preference.
Capturing a great story is easy as long as you have the right equipment for every situations.
Travel Tripod - Portable Stability
You may come across a scenery that looks magical if you shoot in slow shutter speed - capturing a starry sky, glittering night sceneries, and more. A tripod can also be used as a 2nd person to capture shots with your own self in the frame, that is if you like to neglect taking a
selfie on your phone or tire yourself with difficulties by using your main camera. Also helps if you’re shy with strangers that can help you take the photo for you. There’s also people who don’t satisfy your own framing concepts, like people who suck at taking pictures for example. So a tripod is far better to suit your own preferences. Adding to the menu is also the ability to take Time Lapses. A tripod that can contract into a small size is advisable, but Gorillapods are also easy to walk around with as they are small and mobile, sturdy enough, and can be wrapped around rails and poles.
Cebu multimedia producer Jones Silva Creatives editing on the road and always on the go.
Laptop - Import and Work on The Fly
Important when the need to import and edit photos rises on the occasion, especially responding to work emails that correlates to your photographer mission on the job. Importing your photos into a laptop also makes you see your captures at a bigger and detailed screen. Reviewing them also helps you determine if you missed something or not. Just don’t forget to make space or just bring an external hard drive. An Ipad is also another derivative if bringing a laptop is a hassle to you.
Film Camera - Taste for Vintage and Add-ons
An optional to the list, but a vintage flare addition to your photography arsenal. Film cameras still have the best quality in terms of physical photos. The only disadvantage is that film nowadays has quite a hefty price tag attached to them and it takes up time to develop them, then there’s the tedious task of scanning them into digital assets. The advantage? No power needed to press the shutter, and thus can be your trusty backup camera when worse comes to worst scenarios.
Drone - Bird’s Eye View
This is actually optional because of its limitations, especially for places with a restricted airspace. However, having one and being a place without restrictions can expand your arsenal and artistic horizons. Photographers and Videographers have the leverage in capturing a bigger and farther frame that a person stuck on land couldn’t. As I said, this is optional as it also adds a heavy weight to your baggage and might slow down your trip. If a conundrum appears to you as a must but should be less burdened, then there are lightweight drones out there in which are available in camera shops like Macy’s Camera Shop.
GoPro - Almighty and Small
One more to the optional gear list. Known for its portability, wide angle lens, sharp quality, and waterproof capabilities, having one can make you even more flexible in capturing a variety of things. Though it is convenient, using your main camera is sufficient enough and is still superior when it comes to photo quality and diversity. On the other hand, GoPros can take underwater shots which is a huge plus.
GoPro HERO8 Black for portability and waterproof capabilities.
"Kinabuhing Wa Damha" - A Cebuano short film shot in India by Jones Silva Creatives.
Discovery through Photowalks, Pilgrimages, Sightseeing
Whether you’re finding yourself having a walk in the ever changing scenic and historic streets of Cebu City, Philippines, following a trail of exotic tradition in Bangkok, Thailand, or enjoying the breathtaking gorgeous native sights of Kyoto, Japan, we tend to discover things on the way, things that attract our artistic spirit, the pure desire to capture it into frame and let each shot nurture our well being. Traveling light or not, as long as you have the photography essentials that doesn’t hinder your excitement and create shots the way you want to take.
