When travelling always travel light, there have been times that something has happened and I have had to take to walking out with all my gear to get to some safer place.

Camera equipment is heavy and often bulky too which takes up far too much room when you are trekking remote areas. Further the more gear you have the more you have too watch.

I try and carry no more than I can fit in a rucksack and this includes my camera gear, that way if security at the place I am staying is bad, I can carry all of my equipment for the whole day and still do my job. 

Camera equipment is also heavy so i compensate by saving weight with my non photographic gear and do strange things like cut my toothbrush down, take half a tube of toothpaste etc, its amazing what weight you can save if you want too and when you put your mind to it.

Money and Plactic is light and will solve any issues you may have when you are at your destination

To mark down the value of your camera’s appearance tape over the manufacturers name and the model number.

Add some obvious coloured tape so it looks like it is holding the camera together and do the same for the lens, if you see a press photographers camera they are so beat up they are really held together with gaffa tape and super glue.

Make sure that accessories like the camera strap, camera bag look equally beat up and worthless to keep the appearance genuine  

Don’t overlook the kit lenses for your camera, they are light and compact, and unlikely to show up on a thief’s radar like a 70-200 f2.8 will.

They also don’t look as threatening when pointed at people on the street and the locals will think you are just a tourist and not a pro, making money from their image. It’s you that makes the photograph, not the expensive gear!

Depending on make and model most kit lenses will cover everything you need with two compact and lightweight lenses and will cost a lot less than one 70-200. The two kit lenses are more than capable for most situations like portraits, landscapes, reportage, travel, etc. and their biggest weakness is perhaps sports and fast action and low light, but adding fast standard lens is still way cheaper than buying the 70-200 and will be faster to at f1.8 or f1.4

Most photographers have a backup drive in the way of a portable hard drive or photo storage device, but keeping it in your camera bag or luggage is not the safest place. If your bag gets stolen or lost you have also lost the backup of your photos which if it was a wedding, you would have an angry bride and groom to deal with, and your name is going to be mud!

If you are staying in a hotel consider leaving it in the safe (put it in a bag first, so it does not look like a hard drive containing valuable information as some countries still have suspicions of espionage)

If you can’t keep it in the hotel safe, keep it on your persons, ideally in a fastened pocket or waist pack or any where else but your travel luggage or camera bag.

It is also worth considering some sort of cloud storage if you have your Laptop with you, but this does depend on whether you are paying for WiFi/internet and how fast it is, as well as how many big files you have to upload.

My preference is to upload my unedited RAW files straight to my website as well as to my HyperDrive on returning home and all is well, I just delete the RAW’s from my website

Also don’t forget to put copies of any document you may need like, passport, insurance, tickets, receipts, visas, itinerary etc. on to this hard drive as well!

When travelling always travel light, there have been times that something has happened and I have had to take to walking out with all my gear to get to some safer place.

Camera equipment is heavy and often bulky too which takes up far too much room when you are trekking remote areas. Further the more gear you have the more you have too watch.

I try and carry no more than I can fit in a rucksack and this includes my camera gear, that way if security at the place I am staying is bad, I can carry all of my equipment for the whole day and still do my job. 

Camera equipment is also heavy so i compensate by saving weight with my non photographic gear and do strange things like cut my toothbrush down, take half a tube of toothpaste etc, its amazing what weight you can save if you want too and when you put your mind to it.

Money and Plactic is light and will solve any issues you may have when you are at your destination

Here is a Quick tip

A lot of photographers have their camera bags stolen in crowded places, such as airports, train stations and cafés. You put down the bag with lots of heavy glass down to give your shoulder and back a break and next thing you know its gone from your feet!

Learning to put your foot through the strap of the bag will help, but for extra security (and for sleeping on a train after a busy day) buying a combination bike lock will allow you to secure it to a bench, shelf or rack and will stop any opportunist thief. Bike locks are of course heavy but cheap ones from the pound shop (99 cents store) are often light enough, but not strong enough for securing a bike and are cheap.

This is also ideal if you have a small lock to secure the zippers from preventing access to the compartments. 

Currently looking for socks, they always seem to hide from me so I have to plan a week before to start rounding them up and as I am leaving next week for Amsterdam I am already behind.

My camera and gear I know where all that is as I use it almost on a daily bases so no worries there although I will be doing checks to make sure it is all working OK and charging battery etc.

Blog, ah yes done that to, and set it up to post to facebook, twitter etc.