Weigh your photography stuff before hiking.

A Very Long Way To Go.

Heading To The Tower.

Enroute To The Tower

A little Color Enroute To The Tower

Well, this may not seem very earth-shattering.
However, I did the complete opposite. I packed all of the stuff up, did the
hike and then realized this stuff felt like it weighed 100 lbs. Once I
arrived back home in the U.S.A, one of the first things I did was weigh my
backpack. Wow, was I surprised. But, before I tell you how much the
bag weighed, I ‘ll give a few details of the trip.

I decided to bring some photo gear on a trip to Hong
Kong. I have recently started watching Joe Edelman’s VLOG and he
continually talks about forcing yourself to practice. Well, I decided I
could get a lot of practice accomplished during this trip. Also, I was
reading some blog entries from Neil Niekerk and one entry that stood out to me
was a challenge to make a self-portrait of yourself.

Well, I could kill a couple of birds with one stone during
this trip. I could get some more practice traveling with photography
gear, hike to the top of 1000 ft. peak from the hotel, take some
pictures that would capture the beauty of the mountains while at the same time
practice using manual off-camera flash. And, who knows, I might
also get lucky and take a decent self-portrait in a really cool location.

It took a while for me to figure out the best way to
pack the equipment, and then to find the best bag to carry it in. I made
a couple of attempts while on various trips. I tried a couple of
different backpacks that were lying around the house. I also tried using
a shoulder bag. After I couple of attempts, I was able to figure
out exactly what I needed to use that would allow me to accommodate the
equipment and to carry it around fairly comfortably.

I purchased a bag that would accommodate up to a 25” long item which
would accommodate the light stand. I chose a backpack because the
side-slung bags I attempted to use quickly revealed that I needed something
with better weight distribution than on one shoulder and I needed a bag that
would allow me to walk with a normal stride.

I had to make a few equipment changes also. On a previous trip,
I carried a light stand that when folded, was 25”. However, I
soon realized, that I would need a smaller profile light stand and I purchased
Mathews Reverse Folding light stand. Which has a length of 23” when
fully folded.

I also decided I wanted to bring a tripod because I wanted to have a live
person to photograph when I got to the top of the peak and I knew I could not
count on one of my travel companions going with me. I purchased a fairly
compact tripod off of eBay that fit the bill nicely.

Here is a picture of the gear that was stuffed into my backpack.

Here is a list of the equipment that
was packed.

1 Mathews Reverse Folding Light Stand
1 Garmin GPS
1 Light stand adapter
1 White shoot through umbrella
1 Nikon D3200
1 Nikon SB 24
1 Zomei tripod
1 Neutral Density Filter
1 Polaris Flash Meter
1 Scout 3400 Backpack (Not Shown)
2 Bottles of water (Not shown)

Here is my really cool
self-portrait.

Well, it’s not really cool atall. I was covered in sweat, and pretty tired by this time and I still
had about an hour hike in front of me to get back to the hotel. Also, I
had forgotten that this part of the trail didn’t have a location that offered a
clear shot of Tung Chung Island. It was basically a small area that
had some grass cut down. So, the edges of the peak were not very
accessible in this location. ( I have had to tangle with some of the poisonous
snakes in Hong Kong before and that convinced me not to push through the
overgrowth to try for a clearer location.)

Challenges encountered

Hauling photography gear in a backpack.
Being Surprised at how much more flash power was
required using 1/4 CTO gels, especially when stacked.
Choosing which WB setting to use

I chose to use Daylight and then gel the flash in order to capture some of the blues in the clouds. Or rather, that
was my thinking. I did not want to WB for cloudy, which it was, and
then change the subject and the scenery together.

The flash kept going to sleep which required me to make
a lot of trips back to the tripod to cycle the power to wake it up.

The SB 24 goes to sleep after about 80s. And,
there does not appear to be a way to turn that feature off.
However, I did figure out, back at the hotel, that if I pressed the flash trigger once, it would wake the flash up.
Rethinking how to use TTL flash again.
Working with manual flash, and balancing with ambient light during rapidly changing lighting conditions.

On the way down from the peak, I grabbed a shot while using the on-camera flash. I had to rethink how much flash compensation to use when shooting a backlit subject.

Conclusions:

I was disappointed with the pictures, however, I still had a lot of fun.
During the process, I became more proficient with dealing with the gear
and dealing with the technical brain stuff that must all come together in order
to accomplish an outdoor location shoot.

Also, thinking through the challenges encountered, forced me to think
through details that I may not have considered previously and helped me see
that my knowledge was not as thorough as I had assumed.

Lessons Learned

Weigh Your Stuff

Although the pack felt like it weighed 100 plus pounds, it only weighed 17lbs.
That was an eye-opener.

I have an even deeper appreciation and respect for guys like Joey L, Joe McNally and many others who do this kind of stuff full time.

And yes, I would do this again. That is, I will and have already used the backpack and the gear again. However, I will wait until the weather cools off in HKG before I climb through the mountains again.

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How Not To Hike With Photography Gear