Travel Gear That is Easy to Take with You
Laura Grier
Lesson Info
37. Travel Gear That is Easy to Take with You
Lessons
Class Introduction
15:59 2How to Break Into Travel & Destination Wedding Photography
08:52 3How Are You Perceived as a Photographer?
08:42 4Brand Yourself Before Others Brand You
04:36 5Activity: What Are Your Photography Goals?
13:50 6Owning Your Own Style
23:50 7Preparing for a Photoshoot
23:46 8The Importance of Research
17:09Q&A for Magazine Submissions & Researching a Shoot
21:25 10Branding: The Intentional Psychology of Color
29:31 11Pick one Style & Stick to it
03:51 12Curating Aesthetically Branded Images
08:36 13What Magazines & Blogs Like
20:50 14Shooting to Get Published
15:55 15Video Branding: Showing the Process
09:05 16Brand Yourself as an Experience
08:50 17Behind the Scenes Video
23:45 18The Power of Weekly Social Content
17:47 19The Power of the Written Word with Photos
28:47 20How to Write a Story in Multiple Ways
05:44 21How to Repurpose Images with Fresh New Stories
16:06 22Become a Thought Expert to Further Your Brand
25:33 23Q&A: Writing & Blogging
06:54 24Create Stories Before you Start Shooting
12:46 25Submit Work to Digital Stock Agencies
26:38 26Press & Photojournalism: Having Intent & Strategy
08:58 27Steps to Get Travel Jobs
23:49 28How to Pitch to a Travel Brand
02:07 29The Importance of an Electronic Press Kit
26:39 30How to Contact Magazines, Blogs & Publications
06:52 31Shooting an Editorial Assignment
13:41 32What are Travel Editors Looking For?
33:32 33How to Develop a Social Media Strategy
16:05 34Creating an Instagram Strategy
15:00 35Sample Media Visit Form
03:33 36Push Your Boundaries Through Styled Shoots
08:36 37Travel Gear That is Easy to Take with You
17:19 38How to Start Going Where You Want to Go
17:09Lesson Info
Travel Gear That is Easy to Take with You
Okay, so let's talk a little bit about what's in my travel bag. I don't have my huge travel bag here, not that huge. Actually, it's like this big, but I want to tell you literally what's inside of my travel bag. The photo on the right, by the way, is like an example of me loving to bring flowy colorful scars with me wherever I go there, just like pop it into a photo. So we were that scarf went all over the place, so I love just bringing fun pops of color in and making a little more interesting. And then also the photos of me around the world have turned into and not go off subject. But there's brands, for instance, Dame Traveler. And there's a few other travel bland brands. No offense of the guys here that only feature female travelers, and they, if you look at it, they're usually really beautiful pictures of girls in exotic places, like usually you can see they're back, and they're like a small blip in this gorgeous scenario. And so a lot of times I'll take pictures of myself in these...
locations just so it can be featured on other people on INSTAGRAM account. I know it sounds crazy, but it really works and can drive people back to your site. So I have a Canon five D Mark three. That's my I Love Cannon. I love my Mark. Three. I may have Teoh upgrade to the next level up just in terms of having more leverage and more abilities for stock and selling it. And I want to get in the stock after this before we move on to the end. But I love my canon. My canon 600 flashes in a little transmitter. I think you do. You watch that video yesterday I was using is awesome, like you can create beautiful, strew, light looking studio images with just a couple little flashes and a transmitter and like like in just really remote places without having to plug in anything. It's super awesome. There's all these little pop up for. The next one is a Westcott rapid box, Arctic it with beauty dish. It's literally it's about this big. It's like a beauty dish. Second, like pops up in like an umbrella and then brackets onto your existing camera flash, and then you can take that and attach a stick. My travel tripod. I can unscrew one of the legs of my tripod and turn it in to a mono pod so I can attach the beauty destry mono pod and hold it up and have a light coming from way up high like that. Have assistant do that on the fly wherever I am standing in the ocean and have studio lighting right there in the middle of nowhere. So I love that thing and I love having I'm gonna jump down to the me photo travel Tripod. That thing folds up like this tiny and it weighs maybe £3. Super light. I used to travel with a big old giant tripod and it was just awful. When I got knocked around, it was pain. So it's amazing to me like they're making things so much smaller, lighter, separate cameras. I wish they would make those later, but that tripod, like I said, you can take the leg off. You can use that to steady your camera if you want to do video and I'm not a videographer. The most important tip for any type of video is just to hold it still put it on Iraq, where just have the mono pod from your tripod or even just have it on the tripod and just do a slow pan. So doing video and photo with that little me photo travel Tripod. Awesome. I use that tripod for all the the composite images I did with with Winston for the Czech Republic And, um, you know, being able to use it on the fly and was really tiny and easy to carry around GoPro in selfie stick. I'm not a huge fan of selfie six, but they do come in handy. I'm honestly, I think a selling were not obnoxious with the selfie stick in general, but for certain shoots, it is great to have one. I think they're so tiny is the Have it in your bag. It doesn't hurt to have one. GoPro's are great, But to be honest, after some recent travels where I was shooting under underwater and to loom there not that clear. And you don't have that much ability to really control GoPro video, and so I would actually and my Samsung is amazing. Get an underwater housing for your cell phone and use that for video. It's a lot less expensive. It's really easy to travel with, and I find that the video quality out of that is way better than a GoPro. So just get like underwater housing and use that wherever going this so many times or having some sort of underwater camera is, you know you're not going to travel with a massive underwater housing that's $3000 for your big camera, and sometimes you're just not in a position to use it like you're white water rafting or something. So get waterproof housing for your phone and then you've got something with you. Um, Stella 2000 portable waterproof light. That's this guy right here. This thing's awesome, so it's a pretty powerful late. It can attach to a selfie stick very easily, and it could be submerged exactly like this in 300 feet of water and work so you can use this was underwater lighting. You can use it underneath the water tow light from under neath like this. You can use it anywhere, and it's all battery part. You just make sure it's it's plugged in and last for a really long time. Make sure it's charged for you go somewhere. It's tiny. It's got like a little hook again. Like just hook it to your saw and you have this awesome light. It comes with ease, adopters on it that you can use to really make the light a little bit more of a beam. You can control the power of the light here, and you can also have different filters on it to make it different color temperatures and stuff. It's it's amazing. So I love that. I just want to be as compact as possible. The smallest possible underneath that is the local Geo one gun light. I do love this thing, but it looks like a giant drill, you know, and sometimes it's heavy and it's cumbersome and like when you're going through security there, like What the hell is that thing? So like, seriously so I mean, is that how possible? I don't bring that, But if I'm doing a local, she it is a powerful light, and what I love about it is that it's very directional. You can you can, I don't know. You can make like the snouts of it, like more narrow or shorter, and make the beam of light wider or more directed spotlight and and it's awesome for like, like especially twilight or different things like that or back lighting someone. But again, it is a bit heavy and cumbersome. But I have brought it on a trip and I will tell you actually did come in handy. So we were doing that. I was in Guatemala is doing a photographer travel photography workshop there, and I was like, Okay, we're gonna what kind of light exercise they're going to do while we're here. And so we were doing this four clock in the morning hike. I really wanted to like So I was trying to think it was more about like, Let's do the hike. What could I teach while I'm on this hike at four o'clock in the morning? So I thought, Let's do painting with light at the pyramids. And so the idea of the four AM hike is that you hike all the way up to the top of the tallest pyramid and then you sit there and you watch the sunrise and the whole jungle comes alive. You can hear Chad wires and two cans and all this stuff, and, um, but you don't know where you're going, You have a guy and it's really dark. And honestly, there'll be a big pyramid like 10 feet from you and you can't even see it. It's pitch black. So the guide was like OK, like Okay, I'm telling the guide I want to do a light. I'm with a group I want to do kind of a lighting exercise. So I want to stop by the three pyramids along the way and light them and then we'll do an exercise and then we can go on our way. So we'd stop and and we'd put it on the tripod. And then I used the gun light to paint light. We do a long exposure on the camera and we would just paint light and I would have an assistant run over like Papa Flash over here, Papa Flash there we would just paint with it and then on did a whole series of painting with the pyramids. There was, like a really cool exercise. But what happened was later on, we ended up like his light went out like the guides light and we were stranded and, like a light saved us. We were able to get out, and we ended up using it for, like crocodile spotlight hunting earlier on and stuff I don't know. This is a gun team. Gun light came in really handy on that particular trip, but normally it's not. You know, I wouldn't say Don't going to go into the woods without any type of backup light or anything. But that light is very powerful. It's more powerful than this one. So it just depends on what you're in eating lenses. So everyone's always like what lenses to use. I really don't like I said, I want a pack light So I try to bring what I think would be the most, most versatile. My 16 35. I love this lens. I use it for almost all my landscapes, like the way it's sort of distorts the clouds in the sky. It makes my skies so magical looking for some reason, like I could have the 24 7 70 on that same camera, saying the same place to put the 16 and it's like this magical sky. Somehow I don't know, like the disorder, what it is, the pullers station or something. But that lens is awesome. 70 is great for for me from or close up stuff in getting more detail shots. I do like that lens. Obviously this better detail lenses. But like I said, I'm not trying to like, you know, have every lens known demand on my trip with me, I'm trying to pick ones that have different reasons. 7200. My telephoto lens is awesome. It's It's just I use that for a lot of my close up my fashion stuff. Most of my novica fashion stuff. I shoot with that, and it's just a great long lens tohave. When I went on safari, you could buy like a little adopter that makes that 72 200 turn into more of like a 300 almost 400 lens. You could buy a next ender adapter that's about this big. Instead of having to buy a whole other lens, you can extend that lens and make it like very, very telephoto lens. And then my 51.2 is like my baby. I love this loans. I shoot like I love shooting natural light and low light stuff is great. This lens can literally shooting candlelight crisp, beautiful, awesome. And in the five d mark three is known for like really, you can push it to a high. I eso and really get not that much green So but those four lenses I'm set, really for, like any shoot that ideo Universal adapters in Power Strip. So my biggest problem is my Mac book Pro has, like a three pronged and you and you go somewhere in the foreign and you use in a universal adapter into to prom. You can't really hard. It's hard to find a three prolong universal adapter, so I always forget that I, like, bring everything I need and I get somewhere, and I'm like, I can't plug in my laptop. This is awful. So always remember it either get like a 3 to 2 pronged adapter, or I like to bring a power strip where and has a two pronged that can plug into thing. And in the power strip is all three prongs. Just so you have, like, a ton of things to be able to plug into. I usually am traveling, and they'll be like one outlet. We're all fighting over at the charge, different things, so bring a power strip with you when you're traveling and you can plug in a lot of different things. And then I bring my last c A. I don't even between that name rugged, many hard drive. I have literally the singers, like wrapped in orange, orange. It's a rubber. It's like Drop prove. It's practically waterproof. It's this really rugged, and you don't need to plug it into a power source that you just plug it into your computer and then you congrats up everything. So on when I'm traveling on the go, I make sure I have one of those to double triple back things up. And if you don't need a lot of memory cards, if you have one of those who hear, like shooting with cards, you can just be dumping it onto this thing. Teoh. And then finally, my roller bag, my low pro. I love this bag is Actually this bag is so good. I don't have it in front of me. But, um, the low pro roller bag I've had since I was 21 years old bag has been to every almost every country. With me. It's still I just got the wheels fixed on the other day. They were like turned into triangles. They've been dragged all over the world so many times. But this bag is like a rock star bag like, honestly, it's just it fits everything. It fits all my lands. Everything I just said they're like, other than the travel tripod and the beauty dish, like everything else, fits in that bag. And then it has a pattern flap, and it fits my laptop on top of it, and I zip it up and it's like the tiniest little carry on it, like fits in Asian Airlines, which is, if you've flown Asian airlines, you know that they're like, it's like this big for your overhead compartment. So it's an amazing bag. It's really good for travelling. I'm a huge fan. I didn't My boyfriend's like to buy a new bag. I'm like. So I went out the wheels fixed, which I think costing as much is buying a new bag. But water. I love his bag. And then finally, as I said earlier, having flowing, vibrant clothing, this might not work for all you guys out there. But if you like to put that on a girl or someone else in your photo are like dress it up. It's a great way, Teoh to really just add a pop of color into your pictures. I love it. Two other things before we go on. I wanted to mention an app called Trip It. It's owned by Concur, which is a company that my boyfriend she works for but has no affiliation with, like this app other than he works for the company that sells it. And it's amazing. So trip it, all of you. Your travelers should download this app. It's amazing, basically sniffs your email for any, um, travel related emails like if you, I have ah, car rental email that comes in reservation of flight reservation, a hotel reservation, anything like that. You just bored that email to plans that trip it dot com, and it automatically populates it into like you're on your phone into an app to all your trips. And it has everything. You click on the trip, and it will tell you all your information, your flights, what gate you're supposed to be add if it's delayed like all these things, and for someone is traveling a lot and managing multiple trips at a time. It's it's like a must have just in. It's free. So I think there's a pro registration for it to that. You get more benefits, but you can just download it for free and use. It's awesome. I just wanted to mention that so I kind of like spoke about a stock imagery and working for a stock company without really getting into the details. So I have a company Robert Harding, that I'm represented up by. But sometimes you don't want to be represented by a big company. Maybe you just want to license their own images. There's a site called Image brief dot com. You know, if you guys have heard of this, but it literally is sort of taking the agency out of stock images. What they do is you go in and you can upload a portfolio, and you can tell them exactly the kinds of verticals that you want. Babies, countries travel this whatever it is like, this isn't something you travel. This goes across the board. You could do this for all your other energy for family purchase. May be, then, all the stuff that you have, you know it's all genres. You go in and you tell them the kind of stuff that you want to shoot or that you might have money that you want to shoot. Set that you already have in your library, and then they will match you up daily. They'll send you leads that match up with your description, so I'll get daily. I'll get an email that's like this company is looking for pictures of African American women on this beach in Africa, or that we're looking for a couple laughing while on a boat or whatever it is, they'll send you a lead, and they'll say it pays $400 per image. This is the company that wants at Bobo, and then you can go in into that library that you created and select the images and submit it to that lead. And then, by the end of there's a time limit for the end of the two day time limit. Order is the company will select their favorite image from that and buy it from you. So it's a It's a free app part that you can like upload your images into you, can be seen and potentially sell your images of stock without losing your rights to those images and without losing, you know, without having to, like, tie up all your images with a stock company. So it's a really cool way to kind of like self stock, and I love that. It caught me into kind of preparing myself for stock, and I wanted to mention a little bit more about that, because when I started getting represented by Robert Harding in the UK, it really opened my mind to thinking a little differently when I'm traveling and what I'm shooting. I looked at what the work that they're representing and I go Okay, so when I'm shooting, I also have to get the landscape, get the building, get the detail. But then I need to put somebody in it enjoying the landscape. And so I do think about lifestyle and travel when I'm shooting. But I also have to think about my output. What is looking like? I want to submit it to them. Are they gonna like it? And it's It is a little bit more. You have to think now like you're not just shooting for yourself personally. You are shooting for another entity in what they're gonna like. So I do love being with an agency because I feel like for them an agent doesn't make money off you unless you make money. So it's in their best interest to sell and get your images out there. So being part of an agency that's gonna work harder for you, I think is better. But image brief is great for those of you that just don't know where to begin and have a library of stuff that you could be repurpose ing and selling and making money on.
Class Materials
Ratings and Reviews
user-670c8f
I've been listening for, like, two hours. OMG. Like, I could, like, you know, get more from this if, like, she stopped jibbering and get to, like, you know, the topic? She sounds more like a rambling stream-of-thought teenager than a mature adult giving a succinct organized presentation. In two hours, I have, like, learned about two or three things I can, like, use. Like, Ehhhh...? It's like, bor-ing! Like, whutttt? Is she, like, 15 or what? Sheesh.
a Creativelive Student
I have to start by saying that I was lucky enough to be part of the live audience in this class! What Laura has shared this 2 days, is something that will have taken me a few years to learn. Thank you for remanding me that we create our own opportunities and we have to go for what we want instead of waiting for it to happened and will these tips your share in this class, will make it a lot easier to approach editors or potential clients to be able to conquer my goals! Thanks you very much Laura and Creative Live for making all these possible for the photo community all around the world. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!