Finally, I am back! I just got home a couple of weeks ago after more than a month on the road; happily, while having to take care of a few assignments, I organized my travels in such a way to be able to fit in some serious personal shooting time as well (three weeks in Ireland, one week around Italy). Besides bringing back with me more than a thousand photos more to fill my hard disks with, I came home tremendously enriched by the whole experience, both as a traveling photographer and as a person.
Getting in touch with other cultures, other histories, other climates, other food, other ways of thinking, looking at life, dressing, having fun, being happy and being sad, of building lives and buildings, of preserving a place's and a population's heritage, of living with nature and so on is one of the most enriching experiences we can make, both generally as human beings and especially as artists. The amount of ideas and inspiration we can draw from traveling around the world is endless, not to mention the help in relativizing the importance of things like nation, race, fear of the other and such in favor of respect, acceptance and humanity.
As a photographer, every time I go on the road I come back with new ideas on how to refine my kit and shape it to the requirements of my traveling plan, both as far as photographic & computing equipment and as far as clothing, basic survival kit and so on. This time I decided not to bring along a laptop, to try and get further away from the technology world that surrounds us all every day of our life; the idea was not to have a chance to see the photos I took until I came back home, to get the detachment that only time can afford. However, next time I will probably proceed differently and take advantage of a laptop to start load images, do a first selection and edit in order to save some time (especially good for the assignments, but useful for some of the personal stuff as well). On the camera side, I traveled with a Nikon D800E, Nikon 24mm f/1.4 AF-S, Nikon 35mm f/1.4G AF-S, Nikon 50mm f/1.4 AF-S, Nikon 85mm f/1.4 AF-S and the Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 AF-S VR; a SB-910 Speedlight and some flash modifiers. I also had a Sony NEX-7, equipped with the Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* E 24mm F1.8 and the Sony 50mm f/1.8 for more casual shooting. Next time, I will probably leave the 70-300mm home (or sell it) and bring my Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR II and a Nikon TC-17E II converter, because the 70-300mm didn't quite pass muster IQ-wise; in this case, as much as I love it, I would probably leave the 85mm f/1.4 home due to space/weight limits. I thought about replacing the 24mm f/1.4 & 50mm f/1.4 with the Nikon 24mm f/3.5 PC-E and the Nikon 45mm f/2.8 PC-E, which I would have liked to have had for a few shots, but I am not sure the loss in f stops and low light capability it's worth in the end. As well, I would definitely bring a second SB-910 with me, with PocketWizard MiniTT1, FlexTT5 & AC3 remotes (this time, I tried relying only on the D800E's commander flash, but it definitely wasn't good enough, especially outdoors). The bag I brought along is the Kata Bumblebee UL-222, which I loved - it's incredibly light, holds a lot of gear, is very well built around an aluminium frame and is very very comfortable to use even on long walks. After a few years of travel, I think I have the clothing/utilities/rest of the kit down pretty solid, and once more after this trip I found out that all was pretty smooth, so no changes will be needed there.
OK, now it's time to get down to work and start posting pictures & stories! More to come...
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