AFRICA PHOTO SAFARI LIVE DIARY

DAY -3, PACKING

The departure date is soon looming and that stress of packing and preparation reaches its height. Do I have everything I need? Does it all work? What have I forgotten? Putting my bag together about a week in advance gives me a few days grace period for last minute purchases/fixes and helps contain the anxiety a little.  This stress gets less each year the more I travel but it is always there and is a good thing as it encourages you to be thorough and double check everything. I also usually try and spend as much extra time with Jen as I can before leaving on a long trip but this time she will be joining me for the first week which is great! This will be her first time in Africa and I know she will love it as much as I and so many others do.

The main enemy here is hand luggage restrictions. Size and weight are extremely unhelpful for a travelling photographer, especially a wildlife photographer who usually needs a long lens or two. The first must, is to have a bag that meets the size restrictions. There is no real way around this (other than luck) as airline staff can spot an oversized bag a mile off and if you can’t fit it in the overhead lockers you will be Mr unpopular if the flight is delayed whilst your bag is checked. My regular air travel bag is the Kata HB-205, a great durable rucksack that can take a hell of a lot of punishment and works great. This year however I am testing out a new bag, the Think Tank Take-Off. For a different project earlier this year I required a roller bag for my gear and I chose the Airport Extreme thinking ahead, as it is flight compliant (just!!) and as well as having the rollers has hidden rucksack straps. This means I can save my back as I trudge around the airports (pretending it weighs nothing) and still use it conveniently out in the field where a roller will fail. More on how the bag performs as the diary progresses.

So, I have a bag of the correct size, what about weight? Some international airlines seem to hover around a maximum of 10kg at worst, this technically is a problem. Luckily this I can work around. Hand luggage very rarely gets weighed and if you act as if the bag is light, it is light (wink) you almost always get it on board. This usually works and get me checked in and on board with no hassles. There are a few extra tricks to have handy if it does cause a problem, hint: they can’t count any items on your persons as hand luggage! I have only had cabin baggage weighed on one occasion in all my travels on long haul, and even then it was them actually trying to be helpful (with an overweight hold bag). Camera (or cheaper fishing) vests come to the rescue there as anything on your person is not part of your hand luggage. Although you do like a bit of a captain nerd alert!

As I mentioned in the last post, I always, always make sure I have a working setup with me on board so I can still shoot if the hold baggage goes for its own holiday. This includes my camera bodies, lenses, chargers and laptop. On the rare occasions I need a super large lens (say the 600mm), that can end up in the hold, or put a few other lenses in the hold instead of the 600mm if it is crucial to the project (if I am bothering to carry it, it will be). On the whole though this is my carry on gear, sitting as I packed it in the Think Tank….

Note there is an extra body in may bag this time, the Nikon D800 which Nikon are kindly lending me for review. More on this camera as I use it in the field (by far the best way to test a camera). I have high hopes for it as initial reports by others are very positive and that pixel count is simply HUGE, giving me room to crop. A few other items in there are my high end head torch (a Zebralight H600, amazingly powerful for it’s size and durable), external hard drives and the Hyperdrive UDMA downloader. My lucky bean bag (bought for me my brother years ago) will help with padding it all (it is empty, to be filled upon arrival).

As for my hold luggage, we have a few changes of underclothes, some slightly smarter wear for the evening as well as anything I could technically live without. This includes spare backup chargers, spare clothes, and other non essentials. This also includes a few items that are not allowed in carry on such as my trusty Victorinox Swiss Army Knife (the cybertool lite model) and any liquids. Anything fragile (chargers, filters and so on) is wrapped well in my socks and other clothes for safe keeping.

All documentation (passports, visas, tickets) is checked now as well and then double checked at least twice more before I leave. This is in a separate travel pouch that is attached to my persons and easily accessible throughout the journey. Lastly the bag will be secured with a TSA approved lock. This is less to stop thieves who, if they stole the bag would cut it off anyway, but rather to prevent quick/casual theft and also prevent anyone from slipping something in to my bag. “I’ve never seen that before in my life officer” probably won’t be believed if said, even when true!

Airlines also allow a separate laptop bag (usually). In this goes my laptop (of course) and other items I may wish to use during travel, (phone, iPad, book) as well as some overflow from the main bag if required. This has to be a small laptop bag, but every little helps. The new macbook air was chosen over the pro due to it’s very small footprint (the 11″ model) yet powerful processing ability.

Well I hope you enjoyed this post and if you have any questions or feedback please get in touch either via the contact section or preferably on my Facebook page. I love to hear from you all and it really spurs me on to post more and share my work. I will be updating Facebook whilst out on the drives when we get a breather between all the action and hope to get some good question and answer sessions going if you guys and gals are interested in knowing more? I am super looking forward to sharing the images with you, I feel on my game at the moment so hopefully we’ll have some crackers in there for you!

Just a quick hi to all the people joining me this year out in the Mara on the workshop, it’s going to be amazing and I can’t wait to share the experience with you (for a second time with some of you).

As always, thanks for reading!

Rich.

Stay tuned via the RSS feed, Facebook and Twitter! Lots more to come.

NEXT TIME…

Mentally preparing for a trip, getting in the creative mindset!