I'm also really enjoying this thread, both the specifics as well as the broader discussions. I never thought it would have the life that it has enjoyed, and have to thank everyone for that.
Zig Wrote:I too am really enjoying this. The penny has just dropped now as to why you do the things I thought I didn't...and I remember too well I also do them: namely, the honing of one's anticipation by the planning. I don't know what I must have been thinking of, but I remember my own steps from my Italy jaunts: googling away, checking out every bit of googlemap that I could, almost "walking the walk" via other's snaps from the Piazza Michelangelo to San Miniato di Monte. I pre-visulaised what lens..and what order I'd put the lenses on, then how many walks and passes I'd make first with the 21mm then the tele. For my 2009 trip to Florence, only having 3 days, I actually got the maps out to check where the sun would be in relation to my approach.
You've hit it exactly. While I am a bit of a gear-head (I think I hide it well) and presented this as a packing list, I also do and enjoy a huge amount of the planning. I research possible towns, look at maps, and check travel options for weeks or months before actually choosing a destination. Once I picked Coney Island, I researched a bit of the area's history so that I would know what was important when I got there, spent a lot of time with Google Maps to learn my way around, and looked at a few photos. I also learned the sunrise and sunset times, checked the tides, and knew which trains â F and Q â would get me there the fastest. (Coney Island essentially faces south, so the beach always has the sun.) Where are the restrooms, are there coffee shops â all sorts of things need to be learned before I leave. Even doing things like making sure that I had the emergency assistance phone number for the consulate was part of the fun.
But then there's the eternal question: What if it rains?
So in reality I planned one trip, and half-planned a handful of other contingencies. If it's threatening rain showers, Coney Island was still on. If it was hard rain for only part of the day, then it was Grand Central Station and street photography, so I leave behind the tripod and take a beanbag instead. And if it was going to be continuous hard rain, then I bring the Ikon and spend some time walking the streets and ducking into buildings, as well as some quality time in the Whitney. The catch is that I need to commit to my gear the afternoon before I arrive, and the gear determines what I can do. (Try getting into an art gallery with a tripod.) At the same time, how much do I trust the weather forecast, and what's the point where I change my plan?
It's all loads of fun.
(And I had blue skies with just a wisp of cloud in the morning.)
Zig Wrote:....so I wonder, Matthew, did you also find that the enforced brevity of "contact time" injected a buzz at the planning stages?
Absolutely. Part of that is the contingency plans that I mentioned, but there's also the pressure to start making smart decisions and compromises right from the very beginning. Carrying the right stuff, but not too much of it, is hugely important because I did a trip to Ottawa with way too much stuff and it
sucked. (It was still rewarding, but I was limping at the end because I hadn't learned to manage my gear.) So I need to know that I have what I need to get the results that I want with no possibility of a reshoot, while also having the flexibility to completely change my plans if I something doesn't work out. Having to make decisions based on how long things take (Photographing Coney Island instead of Times Square added two hours of travel time to the trip) also had a huge influence because of the short time frame.
Photographing New York City is terrifying. It's so incomprehensibly vast that narrowing it down is a herculean task; even picking a single neighbourhood (or couple of kilometers of beach) isn't enough to make it manageable. It needs additional themes or specialties to further focus the mind and produce a usable project. And with the time pressure there's the ever-present concern that something fascinating might be happening just one street over, and if I stay and photograph this really good subject then I might miss a better one. Somewhere as big as New York, it's a statistical certainty that you're not in the best spot, but there's no way of knowing until I move, and there's no time to come back if/when I'm wrong.
Twice a year the grid of Manhattan's streets line up with the sun. Can you imagine the pressure of being in the wrong spot when that happens? Or the right spot, when a garbage truck parks in the way with no other appealing subject? And do you photograph the buildings, whose facades won't see light like that again for months, or do you look to the people for their reactions to this event? You only have a few minutes, and the peak time is even shorter than that. And what if it rains?
I'm vaguely tempted to time a trip for "Manhattanhenge", but I don't think I could handle the stress.
There's always pressure with travel photography to get the shot and move on. Having just a 10-to-14-hour day both requires and enables a pace that can't be sustained over the course of a multi-day trip. I decided at 5pm that I'd done as much as I could, and headed back into Manhattan, which is fifty minutes on the subway through Queens. I found that I was nodding off on the way, which was ridiculous: I'm not coming back, so I did my best to jolt myself awake and pay attention. If I was staying the night, I probably would have retired to my hotel room and flicked on the TV, and gotten back out again around 9am. But instead I hit Times' Square while there was still enough daylight to hand-hold the camera, and caught another roll of film.
Zig Wrote:Matthew, if you did a return visit, do you think you'd change anything in terms of the way you do the "boots on the ground" stuff? I'm taking it as read that you might conceivably have exactly the same kit.
The biggest difference that I would look for is a bus that would get me in earlier, especially if I needed to travel to another spot in the city like Coney or Staten Island. The bus I was on ran an hour late, and I had to cut out some 'warm up' time on the early-morning Manhattan streets and hustle to get out there. I'm not the most functional in the early morning, and it means trading away some sleep, but it would be better.
As I was using film I didn't waste a lot of time over-shooting my subjects, and even less reviewing what I had taken. But I am still guilty of taking many variations of the same photo, and lost a handful of frames (and about half an hour) to novice mistakes in loading and unloading the camera. The combination of anticipation, pressure, and sleep depravation are my excuses, but the fact is that I messed up winding the film, which I had never gotten wrong before. Practice, practice, and pay attention.
The gear that I take is part of a very convoluted thought process. I went where I did and when I did because the weather would be good enough for me to be out without having to deal with crowds, and there would be plenty of room for the tripod. If I went again this weekend, or the next, I would pack identically. If I went to the exact same place three weekends from now, then the rides are open and the opportunities to take photos change. For that I'd take my Zeiss Ikon with all three of its lenses, using the 50/1.5 in the morning and evening and the 35+85 combination in the middle half of the day. If I had gone a few weeks earlier, then it would have been colder, meaning that I'd need to spend more time recovering inside where there aren't any photos, and there would be less daylight to work with.
But essentially: the basic kit, the non-camera stuff, all worked. After that it's just a matter of picking the camera(s) and lens(es) for the subject and time, which also depends on my current gear fascination and the results that I'm looking for. My time management also worked, with surprisingly few breaks and good pacing, so I wouldn't really change that either. Looking at many of the scans now, the one thing I would try very hard to do is start each roll with a white balance reference somewhere in a croppable area of the first photo.
Toad Wrote:I am actually pretty anal about planning and tend to over-plan.
We should form a club.
Toad Wrote:This year I am doing 2 very different long trips, and that involves some unique complicating factors. Part of the Iceland trip involves a 5 day backpacking trek, and so portability becomes an even greater-than-normal concern. The clothes, boots, outer wear, etc for each trip will be completely different but I hope that the "boy gear" such as cameras, computers, power, stabilization, and navigation setup will be very similar if not identical.
That sounds like a fascinating challenge. Thom Hogan has a couple of essays that touch on planning for hiking photography (photographying hikes) on his site, which were interesting reading that sound about right for what you're looking at. His
site is a bit of a mess, but they're under the "travel" as well as "essays" section if my memory serves me correctly.
Toad Wrote:I am being *very* ambitious about what I want onboard for the trips. I want a full still camera rig plus video capabilities. I want to have the ability to record both trips on GPS and to navigate in unfamiliar areas (both on and off road). I want to have access to the internet and have enough storage capacity for as many photos / videos as I decide that I want to take...and of course power solutions for everything. I would ideally like to be able to do light processing of photos and editing of videos in the field. I intend to keep a journal of my thoughts. In a perfect world, I would be able to backup my captures on-the-fly via VPN or FTP to my website.
I have to say that your gear lists and goal lists both scare me, but I can understand the desire to get it all in on such huge trips, and would probably do the same. (My only question is: "how much does this resemble what you do when you're at home?") What we need is Adrian's insight â but I can't blame the guy for being too busy doing it to be here talking about it. (Yes, I'm jealous, but no, I still wouldn't be up to doing what he can no matter how much I wish I could. I'm the short-jaunt type.)
Toad Wrote:My planning is almost complete - which is good because the time is almost upon me. More info soon.
Looking forward to it - I do find this fascinating.