DannieG

Photo-journalism, means to use photos to express words, which also means, caring a bunch of stuff all around. So here’s a few tips that I’ve learned on the road - a little experienced advice goes a long way.

1) no matter how cool it may look, it’s not such a good idea to carry a shoulder messenger bag and a heavy EOS camera around your neck while traveling all day on foot. So, here it is, backpack is the way to go, invest in a little bit expensive padded laptop and camera bag, (laptop compartment for incase you don’t trust leaving your laptop at the hotel). Quality is the key, don’t try to save some money right now and get cheaper quality backpack, nor buy the bag based on the brand, compare quality, functionality and buy a bag that can really protect your camera from drops and slams - when you are dead tired on the road, drops and slams comes more often then you’d like to.

Laptop: on that note, I carry a black Macbook with me, it’s the cheapest kind of Mac (can’t really stand PC) so when i’m on the road it doesn’t call out ’steal me, i’m mac pro or i’m mac air’, even that with an Apple logo it’s pretty much a dead deal, so a few things you can do - use common sense, if you hotel isn’t trust worthy carry your laptop in your backpack, might be a bit heavy but it beats than get stolen. Buy a laptop lock and lock you laptop on the bathroom’s towel rack, and fold the laptop into the bottom towel, it’s a high place where people don’t usually like to search - if they did find it, what are they gonna to do, jam it off the towel rack?!  Don’t use auto login and always use Safari - turn on ‘Private Browsing’ which let you surf the web with no trace of your personal information left behind, Get an Evernote account which allows you to upload anything from photos to PDF onto your web account, so if your laptop gets stolen, they can’t steal any personal info or password. Then again just be prepared, don’t be careless, if it happens, there is nothing more you could have done. At lease you have the ease knowing that no personal info. will be stolen off the laptop.

2) straps, oh boy, If you own an EOS digital camera with 200+zoom telephoto lens. the camera becomes really heavy around the neck, so buy a good comfortable strap that’s long enough to strap across your chest - I find it to be the best positing to carry a heavy camera while walking for a long period of the time, and still flexible eough to shoot on the go. NOTE: if you are in and around metro area, never carry your camera on one shoulder. most likely many people will bump into your camera shoulder and if the strap doesn’t have a none slip protection, your camera will drop. Besides a good pro strap only sets you back $10 - $20 max.

3) Extra battery pack and extra memory card, most metro cities has areas like Starbucks which allows you to plugin and recharge your camera - bring your charger, however if traveling outside of the city zone, do carry 2 to 3 back up battery pack - I learned this the hard way by focusing on memory cards, then only to find myself caught with dead battery packs and no where to recharge, wasted a half days of good shooting because of that.

4) Dress the part and when in foreign lands do try to blend in. There is nothing fashionable about travel photography. You are there to be unseen. I love to wear pretty dresses, I like to be unique and creative, however that’s for when I come home, when I’m taking the camera on the road, I wear comfortable clothing and shoes that allows me to blend in with the rest of the cultre, which makes people around me at ease. Go for long lasting, weather and dirt resistant clothing.

So with all these info, it’s time to get online to checkout some sweet deals. here comes a personal issue that I always have. When buying camera stuffs online - Sure Amazon is great at user feedbacks and all, however it lacks of photos of the product on a real person. Reviews send out mix message, which makes the decision process very confusing, for example, a 26 reviews of a bag with mixed results, some say the bag is too big, some say the bag is too small, which is it, do those negative reviews by people that’s older/taller/heavier in weight than me?  think about it, 13 people agrees with - a 50 year old guy named bob from Connecticut writes: this bag is too small and the strap are too short, then another 13 people agrees with a 20 something girl from Seattle writes: this bag is perfect! … I mean that’s great, it’s all so clear what type of person/age/height and body build the bag is for — yeah if only I know these info. however that’s not the case, I’m stuck for the 50/50 reviews and can’t help to determine which one suites me better.  Maybe the next level of user review should be able to solve this issue. As for now, I can only rely on my good judgment.

More and more I see people go to school to study design - not because they live and breath art, or even care for the cause - they simply can’t do anything else, and design seems like an ‘easy’ major to get into. A real artist doesn’t just care about the art, she cares about the environment, the community, issues and concerns we face in the world today, artists aren’t shallow, if any thing, we selflessly spend hours of our life time to raise awareness. Back then, people respect artists, nowadays, they are simply called designers, which, to me,  is something shallow, dispensable, something can be learned in school. I was accepted into the school of  gifted art even before the first grade, no one had taught me anything before that, it just that, we are either born with the ability to see art or not. More and more days I walk down the street I hear people call themselves designers, what really it is?  can they create or are they simply good at copying Ikea styles and turn text books into templates.

As time goes on, I think at one point I had lost the real meaning of art, until one day I remembered, when I was 10 visiting my grandparents, I saw a local Chinese programing, about a village, a very small, very poor village, they don’t have schools, mainly they can’t afford to, but as poor as they are, they do hope their children a better future, every morning, before the sun even catches up with this tiny village, the kids are on the move, they walk in muddy path, that was created by their little footsteps, for hours, some children were so little, the older kids has to carry them, from time to time. There is a school building at the center meeting point of surrounding villages, it’s just a basic house, only one wall, for the blackboard. For any or no reason at all, their effort to make it here can be futile, if the volunteer teacher from the city couldn’t make it. As disappointed as they are they still need to walk the hour long muddy road back. I was young when I saw this program, but old enough to understand the meaning of it. I made a promises to help the less fortunate. At age ten I started to give speeches, for city kids to understand, save and help. However, as time passes, I grow up, forgotten the mission I had promised to take on, at one point I must have seemed like one of those shallow ‘designers’. It is till a recent enlightenment I had remember my true passion, to tell stories, with my art, to connect emotions and understanding across the continents.