In the past year, I have done a lot of traveling, both for business and pleasure. If I remember correctly, I’ve been to Iceland, Halifax, Turks and Caicos, New York City, Grand Cayman, Toronto, England, France and Italy, all within about 13 months.
I never used to think I was a huge traveler, but I now realize that in my fairly young life, I’ve already had the opportunity to see and photograph some very iconic places. I’ve walked the Great Wall, seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa, gambled in Las Vegas and climbed the Eiffel Tower (to mention a few).
While traveling, I always have my camera with me and, as a minimum, I will always carry my 50mm f1.8 and often my Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 for some really spectacular wide-angle shots. I will rarely carry any lighting equipment, and other than a LensPen and some graduated ND filters, there isn’t much else in my bag.
Nikon’s 50mm f1.8 is a great, cheap lens that is perfect for traveling. It is razor sharp, lightweight, and excellent in low light. As an added bonus, if it ever got damaged or stolen, it wouldn’t break the bank to replace it. The only downfall, especially on digital sensors, is that it’s not very wide, so capturing large scenes is difficult. That’s where the Tokina 11-16 comes in. It’s a bit bigger and heavier than the 50mm and still quite good in low light. I love using this lens to capture vast landscapes and it adds some interesting perspective to clouds in the sky. It’s also great indoors for large rooms such as cathedrals and also small rooms where you wouldn’t normally be able to capture the whole scene. It’s great for photojournalistic “street photography”. You can drag the shutter a bit and show some motion without losing any sharpness in your background.
I hope to continue traveling whenever possible, and hope that I can continue to do more photoshoots in awesome places in the future.
