Michele on the Road: on Travel, Photography and Life

“Isn’t it dangerous?” is probably the question that comes up more often when I talk about my past, present and future travel plans.
Even more so when I say I go somewhere alone. “But isn’t it dangerous to go there? alone?!”

Now, I’m not here to say there are no risks in traveling to far off places. However, when you stop worrying about it and start visiting other countries, you realize it’s not that dangerous, especially if you compare it to most Western cities.

Milan is certainly not safer than Cusco. And New York? not safer than Ho Chi Minh City.

Almost every city comes with its own perils. What makes the difference between traveling safely and looking for trouble is not where you go or who you go there with. The difference is in how you approach a new city.

You need to keep your eyes open at all times and learn to identify possible threats, which vary in each city.
And it’s really not that difficult, it’s just a matter of common sense:

• Don’t go around looking as a pimp: keep a low profile
• Watch out for people following you and generally try to avoid isolated or dark streets
• If you’re traveling alone, try not to get drunk… ;)
• Be friendly and make a lot of friends, but don’t trust them any more than they deserve
• Keep your wallet in the front pocket — and possibly distribute money between different pockets and bags
• Don’t ever leave your luggage unattended and if you travel on overnight buses consider buying a Pacsafe to secure your backpack
• Enjoying the nightlife is a big part of an abroad trip, but try to avoid well-known problematic areas and generally raise your awareness level at night

This list may have a few more items in it, and it may sound like a lot of things to remember, but believe me, it will actually become second nature after a couple of days.

And remember, you’re there to enjoy the sights, culture and people, so just do that, enjoy it! and don’t be overly paranoid, because it won’t necessarily make you any safer, but it will certainly make for a less remarkable experience.

What do you think? are you afraid of traveling abroad? would you go on a trip to a remote place alone?

Choosing the right lenses to bring along when leaving for a trip is no easy feat.
You need to decide wether you want to have all your gear with you and be prepared to shoot in any conditions, or if you’d rather travel light and be prepared to sacrifice some shots for the sake of lightness.

With my departure date coming along — end of October — the time is coming for me to decide on the gear I’m going to bring with me.

This time I’d like to travel light, so I’m going to go with one body and no more than two lenses.
The problem lays in which lenses I’m going to take.

I’ve been pondering about getting a Nikon 18-200 and the reason is obvious: it would allow me to travel as light as possible without sacrificing versatility, but with what drawbacks?
Mainly, distortion at the widest side and some fall off. That said, distortion is easily corrected using Photoshop and as far as I could gather by reading reviews this lens is very sharp, which makes it even more interesting.

However, even though it’s got VR to improve performances in low-light situations, at f/3.5-5.6 it’s not a fast lens, because even though one should be able to shoot as low as 1/6th of a second, there’s no way you can snap a photo of a badly lit in-motion subject.
This issue could be mitigated by taking a 35mm f/1.8: tiny and fast.

The alternative would be to take an 18-70 and a 70-200, but at what cost considering I only want to take one body? I’d have to stop, take out the lens, change it and then take the photo, which in my situation would probably mean losing the photo most of the times as I tend to shoot a lot of candid portraits.
Also, changing your lens outside, especially if in a dusty situation, is gambling with your sensor: sooner or later — and I’d bet on sooner –, your sensor is going to get dirty and having the best lens in the world is not going to help if you’ve got a dirty sensor.

All that said, I was thinking about something even more extreme: going with a single lens, the aforementioned Nikon 35mm f/1.8. Why you ask? Because it would force me to really think about framing, perspective and composition.
When you have a lens like the 18-200 is easy to get lazy and start shooting everything you see, without thinking much about how it’s going to turn out.
However, even though it would definitely be a nice experiment, I’d rather not be there and damn me because I didn’t take a more versatile lens with me, so I guess I’ll keep this for another trip, maybe to somewhere I can re-visit more often — actually, most of the photos I took in London were shot with a Contax RTS with my all-time favorite lens: the Zeiss 50mm f/1.8.

The best solution would be to take two bodies, one for the 18-70 and the other for the 70-200, but I really don’t want to take two bodies and the reason is very simple: I don’t like going around towns looking as if I’m getting ready to photograph the Super Bowl, because it’s difficult to blend yourself with the crowd if you’re carrying a lot of photographic gear with you.

So I think in the end I’m going to go with the 18-200 and 35 combo.
I’ll probably have to sacrifice something in term of quality, but nothing that can’t be corrected in post-production.
In the end what’s important is not to bring home pixel-perfect photos; what’s important is to take photos that really capture the essence of the places you’ve visited and it’s difficult to focus on that when you’re too busy deciding which lens you should use for each shot.

What do you think? what’s your favourite lens? what gear do you bring with you when traveling?

Hi everyone! I haven’t written in a while, ha? almost two years.
I didn’t feel like writing so thought I’d better not write at all. :)
However in the past few months I started to feel the need to update my blog again, but not before a swift change in direction.

I used to write about everything which led to an archive with lots of confusion in it and no common thread. So I decided to scrap my archive from useless — and often pointless — posts and leave only what I felt had some gravy in it.
I’d also like to give a clearer direction to the blog so I’m going to focus on what, except from work, makes up most of my life: travel and photography.
I’m gonna focus on writing about travelling — destinations, tips and tricks, reports from my wanderings, etc. –, photography and life in general every now and then.

Why did I decide to focus on these two subjects you ask? because I’ve been passionate about travelling ever since I was a little kid.
I’ve always loved getting ready for a trip, packing, hopping on a plane/train; I’ve always had grand visions of myself going to remote places, meeting people from all over the World, tasting different foods and just enjoying this wonderful dusty planet. And as soon as I started earning some money, I started spending to go abroad.

Photography is a whole different story I must say as I’ve never been much of a photographer.
I often hear stories about this or that photographer who started snapping beautiful portraits and breathless landscapes at the age of 8. Not myself.

My first photograph was a Polaroid which was supposed to be a portrait of my mum and dad, instead, and I still don’t know how it happened, while I aimed at their faces, their feet magically appeared on the squared piece of Polaroid paper. I mean, their feet! it’s like as far as I could get from their faces!

Then came the time when I had to take photos of my school trips. Let’s say I’m quite ashamed to show them.
Out of focus, bad framing and composition, and sub-par quality — but that is to be blamed on the camera and film, right?

However something clicked in 2003: I wanted to learn how to take photos properly and decided to get a Canon 300D, the first consumer digital-SLR, if I remember correctly.
I started snapping photos and as time was passing by I managed to improve my skills.

Then I went to Nepal and Tibet in 2004 and there my passion for photography started to burn as hot as it could. I was hooked, I knew I wanted to visit the World and portray it in my photos.
I came back from Tibet and started looking for critiques. I showed my photos to people whom I respected and held dear to their opinions.

I moved from digital to film because I wanted to shoot B&W and bought a Nikon F3, a Yashica Mat124g and various cheap cameras off of eBay.
I started snapping roll after roll, always looking for ways to learn more; I read Ansel Adam’s books and various others’, and went to a lot of exhibitions to try and learn from the work of masters.

Fast forward to July 2008, when I was getting ready to leave for Peru and Ecuador.
I couldn’t decide whether I would be shooting film or digital, so I decided to buy a Nikon F4 and a Nikon D200, I would use both, trying to decide on the fly whether each photo would be better suited in colours or in B&W. The experience wasn’t painful, but I knew this setup was far from perfect.
When I came back I decided I would be moving to an all-digital setup: I think B&W is much better on film — especially the prints turn out much better –, but with Silver Efex Pro and a good printer I can make good B&W prints from digital as well.

In November of 2008 I organized my first exhibition. It was called Peruanos and portrayed some of the people I met while traveling around Peru.
I think it was a success: everybody loved it and I managed to sell enough prints to cover all the expenses — and as a first timer I made the error of spending a fortune on the prints and frames, believe me — and give some to UNICEF who was kind enough to give me their patronage.

I think I still have to learn a lot about photography, and as I do, I’d love to share my experience here.
I have a few projects, which will take me all around the World, I’d like to realize in the coming couple of years and I’ll share them with you as well.

Next up is a travel to an incredibly beautiful country at the end of October. However I’d rather not say where because it’s one of those places where you don’t want to attract any more attention than you deserve, but rest assured I’ll be back with lots of photos and hopefully another exhibition.

Just a quick note: I won’t stop writing about technology, but I’ll keep that to my company’s blog, which I think is a better fit.
Here I’ll keep it to travel and photography, hopefully with a regular schedule — I was thinking about twice weekly on Monday and Friday, let’s see if I can stick to it. :)