Thursday, April 26, 2007

Lists, Lists, Lists

Well, the timeclock at the bottom of the blog is clicking downward to departure day for Bali and it is time to start thinking about "the Lists" those inevitable scraps of paper that start to form in my head and then have to be reduced to writing. When you are 8,000 miles away from home, there is no guarantee that you will be able to find what you need and the wrong place for your battery charger is on the shelf at home. Therefore, the lists. I wind up with camera lists, computer lists, clothing lists, manual lists, hardware lists, and lists of lists.

When I first traveled to France in 1967 with my Minolta ALs, all I really worried about on my camera list was did I have enough film to last the whole summer. Even if my planning had been off, there was film to be had for a price. What I found at the Eastern end of Bhutan was that there wasn't even electricity to be had for a price!

Today, with the advent of digital photography and the world of electronic gadgetry, the lists have gotten a little more complicated. I have traded rolls of film for compact flash cards, card readers, multiple chargers, an Apple MacBook Pro, an Epson P-2000, a laCie ruggedized hard drive, blank DVDs, a cell phone, and on and on and on. If I don't write everything down long before the trip, I will forget something.

So the lists have begun. After all, the clock says that I only have 2 months, 13 days, 2 hours, 2 minutes and 45 seconds until I leave.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Planning for Bali

This is my initial posting to my travel blog, RNC Photography. I hope that it will become a spot where friends and interested parties can follow me on my travels. I had the great fortune to travel with Tewfic El-Sawy on two trips in 2006. We went to Angkor Wat in Cambodia in February and then to Bhutan in November. These were the first two trips in almost 40 years of shooting that were specifically undertaken with the sole purpose of photography.

There were four of us with Tewfic in Cambodia and eight of us with Tewfic in Bhutan. I am unsure how he will be able to top those trips but in July, we are travelling with him to Bali. The travel plans are underway, the airlines are booked, and vacation time has been scheduled.

Tewfic has a blog, The Travel Photographer, located at:

http://thetravelphotographer.blogspot.com

and I highly recommend it for informative, creative, and thought provoking posts on travel photography.

For the record, I used to shoot Nikons, now I happily shoot Canons.