Things to do before a Photography tour

As an armor to a soldier is a gear to a photographer. Taking as many gears as possible may sound safe but trust me carrying many gears will tire you soon enough. There are instances where I have cursed myself for carrying heavy Gimbals where videos were not my priority. So always pack only the necessary gears and thank me later. Another factor which influence this will be the theme. For example unless you wanna shoot some Landscape or Night sky you may wanna give your wide angle lens some rest.  And set aside your Telephoto lens if wild life or shooting birds was not on your list. Pack appropriate gears!

Get the permission:

Not all surprises are sweet. Reserved spots throw up a bummer when you plan every little detail but put the permit to the last hour of your departure and show up at the place getting prohibited from shooting. It occurred to me in few instances and trust me nothing can be more frustrating than this during a photography tour.  You don’t want to put yourself in an frustrating situation like this. Be prepared by looking up in travel forums or Social media communities. And even better option is to connect and seek help from members of hotel or stay place you have opted to stay. They will certainly have the idea about the permission requirements so that you can arrange for the permission or passes ahead of time.

Get your power and backup options ready

There are shoots where we need to go non stop from morning till evening or even night. Example like Time lapse or Night Photography or even commercial shoots can suck up the time and all we have to do is shoot non stop. Be ready to take on such experiences but before hand, be ready with your back up power and backup options. Months ago we have to shoot in middle of a huge Canyon in India where to reach the Canyon we have to trek for about an three hours. The shooting took longer than I anticipated and guess what I sucked up three of my batteries dry and going back to power up my batteries is not an option. Same goes with my memory card, carry additional cards.

So always figure out how long the shoot is going to be prepare your back up and power options accordingly. Because you cannot expect power and backup options to be readily available wherever you travel.

Plan your itinerary

This is one of the common step we all follow for any trip. But before going for a Photography expedition you should make sure to set the plan that suit your objective. You should not over plan nor under plan for the shoot. Sequence the places you visit that based on the distance , objective, time of the day and weather. Setting up a simple itinerary will do but for longer trips it’s best to carefully plan the itinerary and pen it down in your notebook.

Always have a plan B

We all love to see things go as per our plan but be prepared for surprises especially the bad ones. It’s important to be adaptive of the place, surroundings and weather because a lot of things can take a wrong direction no matter how much you plan. Most of the times the weather will be the culprit but other instances like place of stay, lighting conditions, travel mode are equally capable of throwing bad surprises at your way. So be prepared, think of alternate travel modes if one doesn’t work out. So have your plan B prepared in case plan A doesn’t pan out for good.