PHOTOGRAPHY ON THE MOVE

Learn to shoot with minimal gear so that you can produce quality images while away from your home base

We live in a highly mobile world in W 2022. No longer do most working photogaphers live and work in a single town or city, serving a restricted local market. The advent of online marketing tools means we can gain new clients from an unlimited number of places, on a truly worldwide scale. Despite recent events across the globe, there's still a requirement - perhaps even an expectation - that we should be willing to travel long distances to carry out assignments; and if we don't, we could be missing out on opportunities.

As photographers, our work can take us to different continents, especially if our target market is highly specialised, with key hubs of activity spread across multiple cities. If you're a commercial, architectural, wildlife or press photographer, you might find yourself in North America at the end of one week and in the Middle East at the start of the next, with very little - if any – time to regroup at home. This can lead to fatigue, of course, but at a practical level, it also throws up some challenges as far as our gear is concerned. As a travel shooter, or someone who is going to be away from home for extended periods, often in unpredictable conditions, it's vital to plan for every eventuality. We need to be flexible and adaptable in both the way we use our photo kit and how we manage our assets, namely our resulting images.

We have two learning objectives in this feature: first, we'll explore how best to cope while shooting remotely, on extended trips away from reliable power and in conditions that may not permit the ideal workflow for our best images. Second, we'll look at how you can work quickly in the field, when we only have a short amount of time to capture the images we need before moving on to the next location - a common occurrence for press or event photographers.

MANAGE YOUR GEAR