- What's up, everybody?
Peter McKinnon here, and I am back.
Programming will return to its regular scheduled time.
In honor of my return from abroad, today,
we're talking about five tips, five tricks that you can do
when traveling with your photo or video gear.
Intro.
(upbeat rock music)
First things first.
Pete, why is your face so red?
Well, I'll tell you.
The wind utterly destroyed my skin
whilst climbing the side of a mountain.
Needless to say, I was in four countries yesterday.
That's crazy.
And I started thinking to myself on the flight back,
what can I teach you guys that I learned on this trip
that would be valuable to you, and I thought, well,
this is a perfect example of things you need,
things to do, things to keep in mind
when traveling with your equipment, be it
on assignment or vacation or whatever it is.
There's kinda something for everyone.
A little bit of a mixed bag, if you will.
So let's start with bags and organization.
Now, these are are the bags I use,
these are the pouches I use, the things I use
to keep my gear safe, organized,
and efficient when I'm traveling to shoot.
Or whatever it is, photo, video, assignment,
pleasure, doesn't matter, this is kinda my system
that I feel is a good one to implement
if you wanna keep your stuff together.
So, so many bags to choose from.
There's roller bags, stroller bags, sling bags,
backpacks, I've had 'em all.
For me, the best thing...
I'm come full circle back to the backpack.
You can have your hands free if you're hopping a fence,
if you're climbing under something.
It's just the easiest bag to keep all your stuff
on you without having that side bag flopping around
when you're walking, or slinging it, it gets stuck,
and all that weight starts hurting your one shoulder.
You can't roll a bag up a mountain.
Every bag is good for something,
but there's just some bags that are better for everything.
For me, that's a backpack.
Specifically, I like a backpack that opens from the back.
It doesn't matter what brand it is, but if it opens
from the back, that protects it from thieves.
Six days ago, I was in Venice, Italy, and we were shooting
some footage and I put my back down to grab some equipment,
and I noticed three guys sitting on a bench.
The second I put my bag down, they looked at each other.
One got up, circled around behind me,
pretend to talk on the phone, magically had a phone call.
The other guy went around to his other side,
and they effectively formed a triangle around me,
and the one guy on the bench was keeping watch.
I know what he was doing, I know what they were doing,
I looked up, and I gave 'em the nod.
Yeah, nice little, nice formation there.
Real stellar.
And he looked over at his friend went like this,
and that was kinda the signal to tell them
I had caught on and then they all went back and sat down.
The phone magically went away and that phone call ended,
and I zipped up my bag and left.
So, you gotta be careful when you're traveling anywhere
because people, people wanna steal your shit.
So you gotta make sure it's safe, secure, and in order,
and nobody's getting into that bag, except for you.
I love the Lowepro ProTactic 450.
They're not paying me to say this.
It's just a sick bag, because it opens from the back.
There's a lot of loops on the front that you can use
to clip different things on and off,
different pouches, kind of a modular system.
Now, within that bag, I segregate all my devices,
accessories, et cetera, through different pouches.
So I've got an audio pouch.
I've got a cable pouch.
I've got a battery pouch.
Because time is money, if you're on assignment.
If you're just shooting for leisure,
time is also important, because you might only
have a couple seconds to get something.
You might have only a couple minutes to get something.
You need to know where your stuff is,
and you need to be able to access that stuff, fast.
So for me, all my cables, dongles,
whatever, what have you, stay in one bag.
I know where that bag is.
I can open up my backpack, pull out that bag.
All my cables are ready.
A lot of these tips might seems kinda basic
but not as many people think about them as you'd think.
Someone's coming down the street, you're trying to get,
you're battery's dead, looking through your pouches,
stuff everywhere, filters coming out lenses, there's gloves,
there's a bag of chips that exploded in there,
Sun Chips, because those are just extra...
Yuk.
It's not efficient, and when you're a photographer,
and you wanna make sure that you get those shots,
efficiency...
Mmm! (Peter snaps)
That's key.
Another thing you wanna keep in mind
is airline restrictions.
Does your bag fit in the overhead, or are they gonna ask you
to sky check it because hell no, you're not taking my bag.
Are you kidding me?
Mmm. (Peter snaps)
Point number two.
Doing your homework.
What does that mean?
I hate homework.
I hated homework too.
I don't think I ever did my homework.
Regardless, doing your homework, very essential.
Now, there's two schools of thought on this.
Let's say you're traveling to San Francisco
for a vacation, and then let's say you're traveling
to San Francisco for a photo assignment.
If you're doing a photo assignment, chances are,
you already know what you're going there to shoot.
So you go there, you shoot it, you get the job done,
you come home, cool beans.
All is well and good in the world.
If you're just going to travel and you wanna make sure
that you get the most out of the time that you're there
and you get good shots, and you hit the right spots,
you gotta do the homework.
My recommendation is to open up Instagram,
hashtag search San Francisco or find some Instagrammers
that live in San Francisco, and go through their photos.
Find the spots that you like, that you'd wanna shoot at.
See if they're geotagged.
If they're not, maybe DM the person and say,
hey, where did you take this shot from?
Because having a little bit of a shot list
that shows you location, that helps you manage your time
so that you get everything that you need to get,
for photos, for video, you're good.
You land, you get off the plane, you have some food,
throw back a few tacos, and then you say to yourself,
all right, I wanna hit this spot at this time,
and then we're gonna across the bridge to here.
We're gonna hit that spot.
This area looks amazing.
The guy told me you can get in if there's a little hole
in the fence, so we're gonna crawl under that hole.
He told me, if that's blocked off, you can go around the...
Just planning your shots helps you ensure that you get
everything you wanna get while you're gone,
and you make the most of that time you're away.
Now, there's some people who might say, well, Pete,
half the fun is just exploring and wandering around
with my gear and shooting whatever I think looks good.
Yeah, absolutely, 100% agree with you.
However, I like to do my homework so that I know
the right spots to get the most epic photos or the spots
that inspire me that I wanna do my take on that version,
and then, once that's done, because that was
so efficient and planned out, I've got plenty of time
to wander around and explore and find my own spots.
Now, this goes as far as tracking your flight
the day before you leave and seeing the flight path,
the trajectory of the plane, because that way,
you can choose which side of the airplane to sit on
when you do your online check-in, which means,
when that plane lands and takes off wherever it is
that you're leaving and going to, you have
the best vantage from the best side of the window,
because we've all been there.
You know when you're landing in Vegas or something
and everybody's peering on the window on the right side
and they can see the strip.
You're on the left side like, what...
What are you looking at?
Oh, no, that looks so good.
Can I...
(Peter sighs)
But if you have all these things planned out
and you're on that window side...
Pow! Pow! Pow!
You've already got sick shots coming in from the plane,
and you're gonna land,
and you're gonna hit two spots at night,
and you've got a location planned for the morning.
So when you do your homework, you're gonna ensure
to yourself that you get the best footage
and the best photos, because you put in the work.
(Peter snaps) Yes.
All right, let's talk
about storage and dumping your footage.
You need to bring an external drive with you.
I can't even tell you how many times I've had
drives crash, cards stop working, cards formatted
because I didn't have my shit together.
I'm trying to figure out what goes where,
and is this card empty, is that full,
I'll just format it...
(Peter gasps)
I didn't save it!
Travel with some sort of a laptop or a hard drive
so that you can be safe, dump your footage,
back it up, and have that piece of mind so that you know
when you go out shooting, you've already got a copy of that
in the cloud and in the hard drive, 'cause trust me,
I've been there, it sucks really, really bad.
Okay, so here's a quick example of how I format
and organize my footage when I'm on a shoot,
be it it's paid or leisure.
(Peter snaps)
Let's jump into the computer right now.
We're not gonna jump into it.
We're gonna go over.
'cause, I mean, you know, whatever.
Okay, so when you plug your hard drive into your computer
or your laptop or whatever it is that you're using
when you are traveling and you're essentially not at home,
this is what I do for a typical workflow or backup
of my files to make sure everything is safe and secure.
So let's do an example of the trip I just did,
which was through Italy and Switzerland
and Germany and all that stuff.
Let's just call it Alpine Road Trip.
So we go Alpine Road Trip.
Now, every single day I'm gonna update this folder.
So day one is Day 1, and I'm gonna write down Day 1
and make sure it's all ready to go.
Inside Day 1, depending on what I shot with,
I'm going to update this folder with the camera name.
So I'm gonna write, okay, the 1D I did some shots with.
I did some shots with the GoPro.
We flew the drone, and we have some footage
with the camera we we were testing,
which was the Olympus, and that is what I will make.
Now, inside the 1D, I'll make folders called Photo,
and I'll make folders called Video.
Just make sure I spell it right.
Inside the drone footage, depending on which drones,
I might have the Phantom 4, and I might have the Mavic.
So, now we've got a pretty good file structure for day one.
We've got our 1D footage with photos and videos.
We've got our drone footage with the Mavic and the P4.
We've got GoPro footage, and we've got footage
from this Olympus camera we were testing out.
Now, every day, I'm gonna make the same folder.
So on day two, I'm gonna do the same thing, day two.
I'm gonna open it up, depending what I shot that day.
That's the 1D footage.
Maybe I only shot 1D and drone,
and maybe I only shot the Mavic, so inside,
just so that I know which drone it's from,
to keep that organization on point, I'm gonna write
1D, drone, Mavic, and that's it.
That's for day two.
That is everything completely organized.
When I put my cards in, I'm gonna dump all the footage.
So it's good to have three different types of backups:
one locally on your computer, so in this case,
I'd probably save it to my laptop as well.
On the hard drive itself, which is the backup,
and then I would back one extra time to Dropbox
or whatever cloud service it is that you're using
to make sure you've got three contingencies.
So, if your hard drive crashes in your laptop,
you've still got your external.
If your external crashes, you still have the cloud.
If the cloud crashes, you've still got both of these.
If everything crashes, well then, fuck, just go home.
Now, next up is essential items.
These are things that you need to bring with you
that are gonna help you out so, so much.
I'm only gonna go through a couple,
so let's go right now.
You need, if you're shooting video, you need,
you have to get, a variable ND filter.
Now, what's a variable ND filter, Pete?
Hah, I'm happy you asked!
I'd be happy to tell you.
Variable ND filter...
Think of it this way.
So, when you're shooting video, you need to do the 180 rule.
So you gotta keep your shutter speed
double what your frame rate is.
So if we're shooting at 24 frames a second,
which most people do, you wanna keep
your shutter speed at a 1/48 or 1/50.
Some cameras only do 50 like mine,
so you wanna keep it at 50.
Now, what if it's outside and it's too bright
and you wanna keep that nice shallow depth of field,
and you can't shoot at 50?
That's when you put an ND filter on your lens.
Now, a variable ND filter allows me to adjust the amount
of light that comes in through that filter, so you can see,
if I spin it, it gets darker.
If I spin it this way, it gets lighter.
So it's limiting the amount of light that comes in.
Now, the reason this is on the lens,
think of it like sunglasses for the camera.
I can put this on the lens, still shoot,
keep my shutter speed at 50, and if it gets brighter,
I just spin that filter a little bit,
and it blocks out more of the light.
Keeps my shutter at 50, which gives me
the most natural-looking motion blur,
because if you don't do that,
you get some jittery footage, it's too bright.
You gotta stop down and you lose that depth of field.
So these, absolutely imperative.
The second I just started to make this habit and not
break away from it, my footage looked so much better.
So there's links below for these if you want one.
This seems like a no-brainer, but trust me...
(Peter laughs)
You'd be surprised.
You need to have at least two batteries
for every single device that you have with you.
So, if you're shooting with a Steadicam,
you've got two batteries.
If you've got a drone, you've got two batteries.
If you've got a mirrorless camera,
you've got two batteries.
If you've got a DSLR, you've got two batteries.
The other one's in the camera.
This one, I nearly forgot last week.
Different places use different types of power,
so you gotta make sure that, if you're bringing
a hard drive and a laptop to back up your footage,
you can actually plug it into the walls.
So, I mean, just get some adapters.
What else do I need to talk about?
What else?
All right, tip number five
is shooting at the right time of day.
This is probably the most important point for me.
A lot of the times, I have friends, I have fans,
I have people and family and whatever, ask me questions,
and a lot of the questions I get is,
how does that footage look so good?
Why does that guy's stuff look so much better than mine,
or why do those clips look so much better than my clips?
A lot of people don't shoot at the right time of day.
Let's use the Matterhorn, for example, in Switzerland.
(shutter snaps)
I was there a couple days ago.
A lot of people were out mid-day
taking pictures of the Matterhorn.
Now, did I do that as well?
Yes, 'cause I was there.
I'm taking a couple photos.
However, I wanna get the best possible photo I can
of said mountain, so what am I gonna do?
I'm gonna wait for the right time of day.
For me, that's either sunrise or sunset.
Sunset I find is better because it's the gift
that keeps on giving.
It literally, the sun looks amazing just before it sets,
it looks great as it sets,
and then there's some residual light after it sets.
You've got like a whole little runway of amazing light
where sunrise is just gonna like, boop!
And it's done.
And you gotta get it and, you know, whatever.
But sunset, you got more time to do it,
but you gotta give yourself time.
So many times you hear people saying, oh, chasing the light.
Yo, chase, hashtag, chasing the light, bro.
Yo, we're light chasers.
You don't wanna chase the light.
You wanna be there for when the light is right
so that you don't have to chase it.
I mean, that's...
There's nothing worse than trying to actually beat sunset
and get to somewhere or get to a spot that you wanna get to
before the sun sets, 'cause when it starts going down,
there ain't no stopping it.
It goes fast, and the best photos, best results,
are gonna happen during that time, so be there on time.
If you're there a couple hours before, or an hour before,
you can scout different locations.
You can say, okay, right as the sun starts to set,
I'm going to shoot a time lapse right here.
As it's just peaking below the mountain,
I'm gonna run over and shoot over there,
and then in five minutes, when it's gone completely
and the sky is just on fire from that residual light,
I'm gonna come back to this spot and shoot stills.
So having a plan because you're there early
lets you execute and get all those images,
get all of that footage.
It's gonna look the best from that entire day.
So many people just don't wait for the right light.
They just shoot it mid-day, they get back,
they show their photos to the friends,
and I say, oh, yeah, no, I've been there too,
yeah, check this out.
Why does that look so good?
'Cause I waited.
So, for me, I got the best possible shot that I could
of the mountain instead of just shooting at mid-day.
Now, you might say, I'm not gonna be there at sunset,
so how do I still get a great photo?
In that case, yeah, I mean,
shoot it at mid-day and do the best you can.
You might not.
But that's why you plan and do your homework
so that you can be at the spots you wanna be
at the right times of day.
Okay, guys, so that's it for me today.
It's important to say that this stuff isn't just
for people who are traveling or working abroad
or going on assignment or vacation.
If you're just going down to the city for the day to shoot,
these tips will help you just as much.
They still apply to a very wide range of information.
It's not just for people who travel, vacation, or work.
If you're just going around the corner,
you can still take care of your gear.
You can still use ND filters, and you can still
do your homework and find the best spots around you.
Okay?
So use these tips.
If you got something out of this video,
hit that thumbs up button, give me a like.
Show me some love.
Subscribe if you aren't already, and,
and, mmm!
(Peter snaps)
I'll see you guys in the next video.
(upbeat techno music)