Lessons

Lesson Info

Fast and Light: Working Alone in Remote Locations

All right, well, I would say that the most common question that I get is all right, cory I'm a one man band. What do I need to take with me into the field? And this really applies to this talk this is a photographer I'm not going to focus in filmmaking will touch on a few things that are motion related, but in general, this is going to be a talk about what needs to be in my bag. How do I pack to go to remote locations and that's? Whether you're telling stories is a photo journalist whether you are shooting an ad job on your own, whether you're there shooting travel photography, the bottom line is this is my kid again. There's no writer wrong tow how you pack your bags? I'm just going to give you my methodology and I'm going to reveal what's inside of my bags. My my basic philosophy is this I try to take on the plane with me just actually do one other set up before we dive into the gear. This is a gear geek segment. By the way, we're going to really dig into all kinds of gear and like, ...

look at all of the little tools that I use, but the forward to what I do just so that, you know, if I get to a piece of equipment that you're not interested in you can go to my website, corey rich, dotcom ceo r e y r I c h dot com and kind of see a portfolio of my work, but still photography and the video that I shoot um, and I'm not going to do that on screen right now because it's more important that we dive into these bags and started digging them apart, and I'm actually really curious how long this is going to take it takes me about two and a half hours to pack these bags, and so the question is, can I unpack them in about seventy five minutes and we'll find out so back to the philosophy I roll one bag onto the plane with me. That's, a low, pro pro roller and inside of this bag is all of my camera equipment. The rationale is if I landed in some wild place on planet earth and none of the checked bags arrived, I could still do my job. It won't be comfortable, biggs I've flip flops on, and if I land in the arctic that's going to be a problem, but at least I have the cameras and I can improvise. I can walk into a wal mart, or I can walk into whatever store is available on by them, the necessary clothing and force this camera kit toe work so let's and then the next thing that I do is I check on average two bags under the plane of patagonia rolling bag it's the biggest rolling back that they make and I have a pelican case that also goes under the plane typically and I'll explain this this low pro backpack would be stuffed inside of this patagonia bag but we'll get there so here we go which is dive right into it if you have questions online or in the audience give me a minute see if I answered the question in the next sentence and if I don't have those questions ready because this is all about answering the questions around what do you pack so the beauty of this pro roller bag is ah lot of the flights that I'm on they're not big jets they're actually little prop planes and so the guts of this bag actually zip out so that often times and everyone has been there you're trying to get on the plane and the stewardesses oh I'm sorry sir you've got to check your bag under the plane but it's not practical to check all of your camera gear underneath the plane so you can see that I flew up here and they took the bag but I just took the guts out of the bag and I can carry this that's a lot thinner it's a much sleeker profile and I can usually actually get this under a seed if necessary but certainly in the overhead bin and they always look at me cross eyed when I hand them this bag and I say you could check that under the plane and it's really, the size typically is the issue they want you to actually put the bag under the plane, not because of the weight I know I probably break every weight limit on domestic and international flights sometimes internationally, really way you're half carry on this thing I would guess is about forty pounds minutes and so the key is you need to work out a little bit, so when you're lifting it, the stewardess doesn't see like herniated, you need to be smooth and just elegantly, like put it in the overhead because if you shit blood vessels or breaking in your face, they might actually call you and say, sir, how have used that bag? So, you know, that's really key, so this is all of my critical this is the gear I need to get the job done. Um typically I'm carrying three camera bodies I'll carry the flagship camera, which is an icon defore and so all this kind of lay this stuff out the deform, bringing with me if I need to shoot action, so if I if I need lots of frames per second eleven frames per second or ten point five shooting sports for example even if you've just tuned in for the last segment we shot a ballerina doing a lot of split leaps and jumps you know speed would have been valuable a lot of frames and trying to capture moments I told you in the earlier segment my favorite cameras actually the nikon d six hundred it's a full frame sensor which is pretty amazing in a very small form factor very light and you'll notice I actually have this camera there's no lens cap there's a filter with the sixteen to thirty five millimeter lens and there's a battery and a card in it so I can literally pull this thing out if I just want to make pictures I can grab this camera instantly and I'm shooting pictures I'm ready to go so I encourage you to always don't disassemble all of your cameras and of lenses off because then some great moments unfolding in front of you and you're scrambling to get it all built now that's that's not my philosophy keep one camera body ready to go I also carry a d eight hundred and this one you see there is no body on it by the way, every camera that I shoot with I keep a battery in it and the card in the camera at all times so the idea being you want to be ready to roll you don't want to be scrambling trying to find that card and find that camera the difference between the d a hundred and eighty six hundred, the d a hundred is ultra high resolution, but it's also a heavier camera, so I love the file that comes out of the eight hundred, but the d six hundred on the small guy, oftentimes I need to hike to the locations where I'm shooting, so if I can get by with the d six hundred, I'll do that. If I know I need ultra high resolution, then I'll go to the eight hundred um, I showed you that my three key lenses it's a fifty millimeter, one point four lens love this lens, and you'll notice that I actually taped the top of the lenses and the sides and the fronts and that's so that really quickly I can look into my camera bag and know exactly what I'm reaching for oftentimes it's low light pre sunrise after sunset and it's just a really quick way to grab the gear that I need. Now, inevitably, everything gets mixed up, and by the end of the day of shooting you no, you think you're grabbing the fifty and it's on the, you know, the wrong lens, but at least the intent is good, I'm trying to keep it organized, so fifty millimeter, one point four the next lens that's my go to lens and I really toggle between the seventy two, two hundred millimeter f two point eight in the seventy two, two hundred millimeter f four if waits a concern, I go with the f four lens if you're on my website, you can check out I did a shoot in pakistan last year and we climbed to twenty thousand foot mountain and I brought the d six hundred sixteen to thirty five f four and seventy two hundred f four lines and that was about the lightest full frame package that I could have had with me for shooting video and stills in such an extreme environment. So this baseline kid and I mean I just want to make sure that everyone really gets this this configuration one camera body d six hundred sixteen to thirty five millimeter lens seventy two, two hundred and fifty millimeter lens you can do about ninety percent of the work. Anything you see on my website ninety percent maybe ninety percent plus was shot on that configuration or comparable configuration of gear. Everything else that we're going to get into here this is kind of a bonus material now I bring a lot of this is so that I have redundancy I bring a three hundred millimeter f four lens and the reason I carry this lens as one it's three hundred millimeters a lot of magnification but it's also kind of a backup to the seventy two two hundred so if I drop the seventy two two hundred or break it I still have another long lens that I can work with um I think I already joked with you guys about caps getting mixed up on lenz okay this is correct surprisingly this is actually a twenty four millimeter f one point four lens so the beauty of this twenty four one four is it's actually a backup to my sixteen to thirty five if I happen to actually drop this lens or it goes in the water so everything is about redundancy right you don't want to be in that wild location shooting your travel feature for national geographic traveler and you drop your one cameron you drop your one lens and all of a sudden you're out of business it's I dropped this camera falls out the door of a rickshaw a car runs over it and then I switched the d eight hundred with the twenty four to one four so it's you know the idea is you always have redundancy so um the next lens and I I really I know every wedding photographer when I say this they cringe at me and scoff and roll their eyes I hate the twenty four to seventy millimeter lens it's just the focal length I like the least but it's actually a super important lens and I find myself using it occasionally when I need that middle focal length this is the backup lens to my fifty one four and on the low end it's the twenty four so twenty four to seventy um f two point eight so very fast I also bring a fisheye and I try not to overuse this this is sixteen millimeter fish islands and that's again it's very specialized tight spaces or I'm really trying to show an enormous landscape that's sixteen millimeter two point eight lines is pretty important yes I was just going to ask um why is it that you hate the twenty forty seven it's just a focal length and I'm the least I'm I don't like that space I really like wide and I like tight were long and so it's just a pretty boring look to me yet I mean that said every a lot of fantastic pictures are made with that lens I've made some decent pictures with that lens but it's also a pretty beefy lines I mean if I'm finding toe limit what I'm carrying, you know this is going to be my pick and then if I can add one more lens well add this fifty with the rationalist this is a lot less weight in this lens so you know it's a magnificent lens it's sharp it's technically technically great, but for me I'll go to the the other lenses first okay and this is this actually on the other hand, I give credit to the entire wedding portrait world the eighty five one four is an incredibly sharp lens beautiful for portraiture, but in it is just outside of that seventy millimeter focal length, so eighty five one for and if you're wondering, I have tape on this because we're shooting video the other day and it's so that we could mark our focus points you can actually see it was that's where we started and that's where we ended and we can predetermine mohr of a video technique, but don't be afraid to put gaffer tape on your lenses so that's kind of the basics of the camera cameron lens kit that I carry um I'm not going to talk much about video, but because I shoot a lot of video always have it's a kudo loop in the back of the bag and that's just so that if I'm in this amazing situation, even though I'm on assignment to shoot still photos but I want to roll some video this allows me to put it on the back of the camera and actually because we don't look through the viewfinder when we shoot video we use live you, I could just get my eye up to the camera and I can actually see what I'm doing and achieve critical focus, so I always have the loop in the bag I might not use it if someone a still photo shoot, but at least if something great is unfolding and also to that end, I always carry a little shotgun microphone. This is the nikon emmy one and it's not because it's nikon, but this is actually the best shotgun on board mike that I found and the reason is it's bus powered, so as long as this thing is plugged in, you have power to the microphone. You're not depending on a battery inside because that's kind of rule number one inevitably, what you f up is the bat you never turn on the microphone, but you plugged it in and you're not wanted during the sound, and then not only do you have you have no sound rather than better sound, so I'll always have a little microphone with me the m e one it's compact pretty easy to have in the bag, let's see, I like I said, and you can all relate to this. We start pretty early in the morning and we end pretty late at night. I always like to say if you're sitting in your hotel room, drinking coffee and watching the sunrise, or if you're having cocktails with your buddies and watching the sun set, you're blowing it like your support that's when you're supposed to be out shooting if you're doing location, work so I bring a little led headlamp this from black diamond they really they innovated a lot of the rock climbing equipment that we use, and this thing saves your life because you can put it on your head. You look like a coal miner, but then you can see inside of your bag as you're walking the trail to get to your location and often times I'll carry a couple of these these air pretty valuable. If I have an assistant or someone that's going to help me, inevitably, they won't have one. And so I tried to have a couple of groups, a couple of spare lady headlines with me. Um, I I alluded to with memory, you really do not want to cut corners, I carry a wallet of cards, and the system that I use is it a card is facing forward. So these air sandisk extreme probe card cf cards in the front, and then I have the sd cards in the back because depending on the camera, beauty of sd cards is that they're waterproof and shockproof so on a lot of location shoots it from, for example, working near water it's raining a lot or if I'm working in a water housing, I love the idea of shooting on sd cards if the housing floods. The camera's toast and so is the lens, but I don't lose the content because oftentimes you travel to great lengths and put a lot of money into getting to those locate so you don't want to lose the data on your card now what I do so that I know what shot and what's not is if the card is unsure hot and it's facing forward so you actually see the sandisk extreme pro logo and then once I've shot the card, I flip it over so it's actually backwards and you just see the black side so everyone on my team, whether it's me alone or whether I have an assistant in the field if it's flipped over, that means it's ready to be downloaded. We shouldn't be touching that card until it's ready to download and in a wallet like this all actually do we'll do it like reading a book, we just go from right to left right toe left and we'll just go you know, wallet, page, toe, wallet, pidge and just flip those over so it's boom that shot bloom that shot and then you never make a mistake because you know that's a shot card and then until the card has been downloaded and duplicated to to external drives, it doesn't get formatted so that's kind of the techniques we use for the card wallet and I try to carry I mean this is a question that I get a lot I goto whether it's the arctic circle or the himalayas I almost never download in the field if I'm a one man band I can shoot for two weeks cards or cheap enough today that I'll just carry enough memory to not have to download like I don't want to be distracted at night downloading to a laptop I want to be focused on the creative process getting enough rest so I can wake up the next morning and really be making great pictures not being a dj attack at night so that that's my advice I've never lost information from a sand discord let's see a little bit of gaffer's tape you can buy gaff tape in all kinds of different sizes and the beauty of gaff tape this is all gaff tape on the lenses it doesn't leave a sticky residue so it's good for if you need to tape cameras are fixed for you're in someone's house and you wanna hang something against a mirror ron paint it shouldn't peel the wall paint off the same time unlike duct tape which leaves like a goo on anything you put it on gaff tape doesn't do that you can get variety pack switch like multiple colors one inch about this size and it just small enough you can put it in your bag I use rechargeable batteries I'll show you that my strobes are actually in another bag I don't keep those in my camera bag typically but I used these in luke batteries and the system that I use is if the battery is still fresh the male side is up and if the battery is dead then it's the female side up and then it's really easy when I get back to the hotel room ok everything that's female side up needs to get charged everything that's male side up I know that it's fresh and that's a cool little block to keep the batteries in otherwise, you know you have a ziploc bag full of batteries. I carry an automotive shammy and this is I'm never gonna wipe the front of the lens with this but it's just to take all of the moisture off the top of the lens or camera if it's really wet it's like kind of dab it, get the standing water off the top I really try my best to keep the sensor queen a still photographer e we get pretty lazy figure out this fixed that in photo shop later, but I have one of the static free, visible dust blowers and if I need to all open the camera upside down and try to clean it off I've been more sophisticated kit in my pelican case, but once you transition into video you absolutely definitively have to keep that sensor clean because you can't go back in there it's very very difficult to go in and clean that sensor later so I bring that blower with me also I bring a little lens cleaning fluid I need to clean the lens I bring kind of like the card scenario I just bring a lot of batteries I would rather actually buy more batteries than try to charge in the field so two years ago I did a trip to the arctic circle and we were away from humans for almost ten days and we brought thirty two batteries I believe for the nikon d seven thousand is what we're shooting on and in super cold temperatures it was minus thirty degrees typically at night and you know, in a barely warmer during the day and we barely made it through seventeen batteries and that was shooting a television show for discovery and still photographs for ad campaigns and magazine articles so these cameras are incredible in the batteries or even better so you know when you buy your camera I advised by four or five more batteries at the same time just like cards space you don't want to be shooting the moments really evolving and you're out of memory and you're in the field trying to delete pictures that's the worst case scenario nor do you want your camera battery to die on your batteries are pretty cheap they're getting better and better just have some extra batteries available. You know we're all pretty connected these days and our mobile devices, they're pretty important a lot of the locations. You have to go a lot farther these days to lose cell coverage on dso now carry a little charging device. Mo ified device I canoe for iphone charges and there's two usb slots. Same thing you're not near your rental car all day. You're not going to get back to the hotel room. So actually, just having this device to charge with is pretty valuable. I charged it before the shoot, and I can usually make it a couple of days. This is more of a video piece of equipment. Um, but I always keep it in my bag. This is just a bed sheet, a black bed sheet that I bought at wal mart. And maybe this was a pillowcase that I cut up. And the rationale for this is sometimes I'm doing time lapses out of hotel windows so I might mount a camera with the tripod right up against the hotel window. And what I learned through trial and error is then you flip on your lights and you go in and out of the hotel room. And you just get a little bit of reflection that's coming from the back of the room so by taping this black fabric gaff taping it right to the hotel window so you're masking out all of those reflections you get a perfect time lapse were perfect still photograph it could be long exposure in the still photo world because you're not getting any of that reflection through the double paned or triple pane glass of a skyscraper style locale so little piece of black fabric goes a long way just in terms of masking that out um all sometimes I'll show you that but this just on extra man photo ball head and I have a couple of different tripod scenarios, but I carry this with me sometimes even that hotel room scenario where I'm doing long exposures I'll sit this on the desk without a base, even lean the camera right up against the window and there's my little tribe plod note but ball heads they're pretty valuable for just manipulating your camera gear for cleaning and remember it just to put it in context this is all what goes on the plane with me and you can see you can do a lot of shooting with this configuration of cameras, so I have a little dust device on the other side you can kind of take smudges off on this side uh little blower with with air again taking dust off of lenses sharpie marker inevitably I need to write on lenses who I need to make some notes I have a couple of rubber bands I'll explain what these rubber bands air for as we get deeper into this you know, I always say that as a photographer the instant you start breaking down physically meaning you're starving and once that happens, you're not paying attention to the situation so always have snatched in my bag little clif bar you know something healthy? I have the x right color kit so that we can control our color color space if it's something very technical not always but often times used the x right system for color management in the field it's always in my bag um a couple of more pens just for writing down people's names I have it all kind of hide little like pieces of gaff tape. This is probably thirteen inches of gaff tape right here white gaff tape and whites valuable because you can write on it so I can actually mark stuff. So I'm just storing that in these little pockets of below pro bag so that in general that's actually what goes on the plane with me? So I'm gonna as john you're welcome to shove stuff in here the best you can and let me move this off the table so so the next thing, obviously, I'm not working out of this bag. This isn't very practical, like hike up the trail at sunrise, you know, it just doesn't work to be rolling a camera bag. So what I do, as soon as I actually get to my hotel room all always shove this. This is my favorite backpack, it so low, pro flipside, twenty leader sport a w and really, what? All of those technical acronyms mean this's a waterproof bag, you can put a waterproof cover over it, and the flip side means it actually opens from the back. So let's, just say you're in the jungle, it's muddy outside and it's on your back, but you need to change lenses. You know, conventionally, you had set a backpack down like this and then open the front of it, and then the bomber is you have to pick the bag back up, there's mud all over it, and you throw it on your back, and now you've got the money back, and you look like a fool the rest of the day, and you're uncomfortable. So the beauty of the flip side, back, back pack philosophy is you open it this way, and so inside I actually have two other camera bags that I carry, I carry this just a top loader sixty five so I can put a single camera body with the lens in there with sixteen to thirty five and that's if I'm going super fast and light like maybe I'm just going out to dinner and I don't want to carry this with me but there might be some cool photographic opportunities and with this bag I can actually get d six hundred sixteen to thirty five millimeter lines and I can tuck a fifty millimeter lens just inside so I have two lenses that I can switch from and then if I want to carry just a little more this is a pouch for a seventy two two hundred either the f four or the seventy two hundred to eight fits inside of this bag and so if I have a belt on you know sometimes I'll do that if the backpack is on I can put it in the backpack strap if you download this video last night we shot a pretty fun bonus material and I shall show you how in the bonus material howto ascend a rope in a vertical environment and and how do stable shooting from that situation and this is the configuration that I use but I'm hanging off a cliff anywhere in the world self now these are the bags that I bring that I work out of so all all in the hotel room or in my tent I'll actually pull apart what I need and then of course in the backpack I can configure it to carry a cz much or as little as I want but I just shove it so that it's just a big open space while I'm traveling and you'll see I can hear it crinkling you know I have another clif bar in the side pocket I mean just see if I haven't any other interesting stuff in here okay so this is pretty important you know? We spend a lot of time miss photographers waiting right we're sitting there and we're waiting for the situation so I'll always have a ball cap but I can put on so I'm not getting cooked by the sun I have what else is in here? Yep sun block will always have a lot of this is common sense stuff but all it takes is that one time where you sit in the sun for twelve hours and get cooked and miss the shot and then you'll start carrying this stuff so some lens cleaning tissue I carry a bunch of rubber bands may see if it's in here I don't have it in here but I'll show you what those rubber bands air for and it has to do with keeping your camera dry up here we go so will also carry thes air just clear trash bags that you would get for doing it like your lawn and you can stick leaves in them and the reason that I'm using a clear trash bag this is really important so you're out on location it starts pouring rain you've got your hat on so I tear a hole in the end of the trash bag and I'll poke the lens through it and then I'll actually take one of these rubber bands and ideally with the lens hood because then the lens hood is actually protecting the rain droplets from hitting the front of the lens and now you know pretend my hand is a camera now you have a perfect dry shooting area and the rubber band is keeping the bag from blowing off of the camera now you can actually continue to work so that's I don't know if they recommend it but sometimes I'll put my head in the trash bag so I can also see you know I'm staying dry the ball cap comes into play pretty cheap solution minutes and I always have one of these trash bags usually even like hotels I don't know why but they always put clear trash bags in your trashcan or unlike the ice vending deal so often grab those you can never you never know when mother nature is going to call it's just like twelve plies of toilet paper twelve squares of you're on location and the shot hasn't happened you don't want to leave that location couple of zip ties just for fixing stuff on the fly extra yes these air vitamin eye this is ibuprofen you know, imagine you're out there for a week you know you can twist your back or you're just tired and sore you have a headache you're dehydrated so I always have a couple of ibuprofen with me. Ah, a sponge. This is just a little kitchen sponge. I'll cut it up so I have little squares. This is kind of like the shammy it's just to keep the lens dry. I'll never touch it to the actual nick or glass. If there's a filter on, sometimes I'll dab the filter to get the big droplets off before I go in with the cleaning tissue actually get off that the rest of the water and the beauty of a lot of this stuff is once it's in your bag you're never going to take it out on a lot of the stuff. I mean, I haven't touched that I it's probably expired ibuprofen but the bottom line is I know it's there. If I have a situation, I can use a little notebook I showed you in the last segment. I often times have a white piece of paper in my back pocket. This notebook I used inevitably I'm in the middle of nowhere I meet someone I need to get their contact information it's an opportunity just real quickly write down that information so okay john I think that's it for me just what I feel right o two more things little pocket knife just for screwing stuff in cutting tape there scissors toothpick you know when you're camping and you get that one thing stuck in your teeth you really need that toothpick or it's going to drive you crazy a little bit of duct tape so the idea with these little rolls of tape is you don't need the whole roll don't carry the six pound roll of duct tape just carrying a two feet of duck tape and if you need to make a quick repair you can I always carry a usb reader this is sandis guts inside of it but then it's branded corey rich productions and the reason I carry this is inevitably I'm in the field and the client really wants like that high resolution image or a siri's of stills or video clips I can download to this usb stick really quickly and drop it in the fedex without shipping a big hard drugs because usually I'm not bringing extra hard drives so all right and feel free to just throw it all familiar ah yes see john knows john kerry's the same same notebook by the way john is going to be teaching two courses later in the creative live week photo week so check the schedule well maybe even at the end we'll give you the exact times one on lenses and the other on studio lighting he's gonna open your minds in both worlds now okay, so the next thing I'm going to dio etc can I get, uh who's the strongest back in the audience? Can I get someone to help me lift this up? So the next thing that I'm going to do is we're going to actually put this pelican case on the table let's actually spin it around on all trade with you. All right? Okay, so I always estimate that I carry about two hundred forty pounds of gear now admittedly the two hundred forty pounds I'm not going to carry on my back into the field, but it's a least getting into the car, it's least getting to my base camp it's getting to the hotel where I'm shooting from, and I've already pointed out it's the low pro roller that goes on the plane um then we have a sixteen fifty pelican case, and so the rational with the sixteen fifty pelican case is you can get stuff that's fragile that you don't want banged around but it's less critical than the equipment that's in that rolling case that I bring on the plane now you'll notice I actually write c r p said that one corey rich productions and my web address all over the case and the rationale is if it gets lost you know, a silly tag that just has my name with a piece of you know like this that disappeared this is what they asked you to put your name on it and then you've lost your pelican case with all the gear, so no matter what with corey rich dotcom, they're going to actually find me if they need thio eventually I'm going to see this pelican case again um one of the other now you see here in the top of the pelican case and this is not accurate because I put this case together quickly the other night will always list everything that's actually in this pelican case. So when you open the case, this was from another video shoot it's the audio kit, half shoulder rig, pocket wizards radio and slate and then we'll also usually do that on the outside of the case, I'll put a piece of white gaff tape usually right here in between where it says pelican that way it doesn't rub off and all list everything that's in that case, this is mostly important to four on a big job where you have ten pelican cases when you're working alone and you have one pelican case it's pretty easy to remember what's inside of your pelican case yes, you know, on the plane or I don't I do put t essa locks on the plane when I travel internationally domestically and I think it's post nine eleven, I've had nothing stolen out of my bags post nine eleven domestically, I've lost bags internationally post nine eleven internationally, but so I feel pretty darn safe and that's the only dilemma when you list everything that's in a case it's kind of like a shopping list if someone knew what they were looking at missing whoa, that mike say that's really expensive? You're inviting someone to open the case, but, you know, knock on wood, I've lost very little. Um, I will say that when the bags air sitting in hotel rooms, they're like waiting, waiting for us in like a storage area that's where I'm the most concerned it's not at airports, it's actually, when we're kind of in the real world and then one of the things we'll do zip, tie them, or we'll just put those say locks and it's really, those who just to keep the honest people honest, you know, it's not going to prevent someone from really opening the pelican case, so I'm just going to kind of take out of this case in order what I see, this is a cool portable flag, so this is if you're trying to block some light trying to keep the sun off of your camera or a light is flaring into your camera just a little fabric you can actually velcro it on and then you have this portable flag super lightweight fits inside of the case which is pretty nights this is a little jobe style tripod um I actually take the head off and I use it most with no head I can either level the tripod you know there's like a weird situation where I'm trying to like get the camera real close I can do that I can wrap it around and this isn't the best illustration that I can wrap it around a post for example and mount the camera there so it's a very flexible a device for mounting a camera kind of serves multiple purposes I showed you that other ball had the man proto head oftentimes put it on that tripod let's see, I always carry two hard drives that's kind of the norm oh actually I have this labeled hard drives but it's incorrectly labelled usually I'll try to label everything accurately so when I look at one of these low pro cases I know what's inside so this is actually chargers so this is I buy this external charging device for the and loop double a batteries you can charge infinitely it's a mah hah charger and in about an hour and a half you get a full charge on an entire rack of batteries so all of the cabling for that charger I'll bring for the g eight hundred eighty six hundred I'll bring three chargers with all the chords and then I'll bring the defore charger as well so the idea is when I get back to the hotel room and I'll always carry a couple of these guys because inevitably you get into your hotel room and there's like one power outlet in the most inconvenient place so I'll stick this in and now I can actually get three you know, three chargers going usually I'll carry two or three of these in fact just so that I can really keep the charging process going um I alluded to keeping cameras clean so this is kind of my beef you're visible dust kit if I'm really having sensor issues and I need to get in and touch the sensor which I try not to do this is kind of the more robust kit so I opened this up and there's actually different brushes that aiken went down I have the in static brushes that spin and again I try not to do this thankfully I all oftentimes send my camera back to nikon just to get it clean but I have the kit just in case I need it okay so that's the visible dust kit as faras hard drives this is kind of our go to configuration we'll bring these one terabyte t tech firewire eight hundred drives and we'll just tether them together everything it's backed up in duplicate usually I'll just in the box carry them in the pelican case once I've done the shoot then usually I'll put them both in my backpack or occasionally I'll put one in the pelican case to get home and one in my backpack just in case my backpack got stolen and the pelican case makes it back to the airport so g tech drives and, uh this this is my nikon strobe system, so I'll start by just showing you so all carrie um four nikon sb nine hundreds and so it's just they're all the same configuration sb nine hundred couple of light modifiers in the bottom and those stack in here perfectly I'll also carry the commander unit so that if I actually want to, uh fire these via the nikon system this is super powerful set up the nikon commander I can have multiple banks of lights so I can control all of those lights from the camera. And I assume if you look at the creative life schedule, I would venture to guess that one of the instructors will be doing something with speed lights and the beauty of the commander unit is I could have you know I think it's up to ninety nine nikon s p nine hundreds or nine tens set up and I can control the exposure from on top of my camera on each of those strokes it's kind of like having a studio that's controlled from the top of your camera all via infrared so commander unit for sb nine hundreds and then sometimes the commander unit is not ideal from outdoors that has a hard time when the distance between strobes and camera get too far and in that case I'll actually switch to pocket wizards and so I use thes cords to plug into the strobes also you see ivan extra battery the commander unit and I'll just throw this right in the top of the top of this case actually have two extra batteries I said again it's all about redundancy like making certain you don't run out of you don't wantto lose battery power and then you can't shoot purple j who wants to know if you ever have problems with the s p nine hundred overheating in the field in all the you know with the sb nine hundreds they had a little bit of an over heating issue if you're really firing fast I mean if you were trying to just bang out shots one after the other I find I don't shoot that fast when amongst robe so I know the answer is I never really had that issue with overheating that s p nine ten which I've also played with their fixed that overheating issue so my advice would be if you're finding your just you're wearing out the strobe. You're shooting so fast. Maybe. It's. Time to graduate from the s p nine hunt did the sb nine ten, where they really solved that heating issue. I also bring a bunch of gels with me. So these are these are a little company called hajnal photo. And you convey l crow different color gels onto your strobe. You know whether it's your correcting the light or whether you're trying to create some kind of a cool effect, it's just a nice system. That's. Easy to use tonight. I just probably have two or three sets of the yells enough so that I can really control the light. And then I have a couple of other little modifiers that are specific to speed lights. This is a honey comb grid. This pretty cool. This is you can stick it right over the front of your flash and we can really control. We can modify that lights that it's directly on someone's face. Or we can we can control, like, bleeding off of the strips. Honey, come grid. I have these air, the little velcro adaptors that go on top of the flash for the for the gels, and then I also carried this just a little bounce card, so I can, you know, you often times see people with strobes to hold their hand there's all kinds of little modifiers that's just a very simple white bounce card. If you don't want direct light going from your struggle, bunch your subject and again it velcro is on this. Is this another variation? This's you can wrap it around your stroke, but it's a little gold, silver reflector style. So again, different light modifier, different effect, but pretty minimal for the amount of light that I can get out of that device. I I always carry walkie talkie radios. You know, a lot of what I'm doing, I'm pretty far away from my subject. And so you know, these they're just, you know, cheap walkie talkie, motorola radios they're incredibly affordable today. I'll carry if it's just me, I probably carry two of them and I carry the charging system. I used the rechargeable batteries pretty darn good. And then if there proprietary rechargeable battery wears out, I can just throw some double ways in the back. So again, the charging unit and I put that in just a little bag, so I know I know what's in it. Um, I carry this. This is a little bit of a cross over into the video world, but I'll always have with me too. Variable andy schneider optics filters and this is so that and I'm not going to go much deeper than this if you're shooting video in the field on lars, you need variable indies and or you need consistent nd filtration so that you can control your depth of field and shutter speed so actually just have I always have two of those and I might usually have, like one or two fixed nd filters and there's some application for nds and still photography if we're shooting a waterfall, for example, and we really want to slow that shutter speed down, but it's midday light, you can't do that at one hundred s o and f sixteen, you just need to cut some of the light out of the image so the nd filter said is pretty valuable. I don't usually have it in my camera bag. It's pretty specialized, so that's one item that goes into into the er pelican case in addition to using strobes, dis crosses over just slightly into the video world as well. I'm more and more carrying led lights, so this is a light panels led light and some filters for one that just got bent and a honey comb grid, and so this is a light that I can, which is also dead apparently I didn't charge it, um, but this led is an enormous amount of power and depending on the situation, sometimes I'll choosed actually shoot with continuous lighting, even for still photography. Because it's really time I can see what that light is doing. I can really move it around the subject. I can take the grid off, and I'll show you how I amount that in the field. So that's an led um, I actually, I bring a pretty lord. I always have a one by one. Led, which runs on power. So have a little extension cord like a fifteen footer and that sometimes valuable, even in the hotel room for charging, you know, inevitably, that outlets in a weird place. You can't get off the plugs, so I'll run the, uh, extension cord out from behind the bed in the hotel room, have a splitter, and then I can run all of the chargers in my laptop from that extension cord. I also I bring a one by one, led. This is also a light panels just show you. So this is this is amazing light. I can run it on anton bauer batteries when I'm remote in the field, or I can actually plug it into the wall, and the beauty of this one by one light is that one it's dimmable, so I can decide how much light or how little like but even more importantly, I can adjust the color so I can go from daylight all the way over to tungsten so it's like a true orange light all the way back to true daylight um and so if I have power I can run it directly off of the wall have a rain cover for it is again a lot of working on location is about inclement weather you shoot regardless of what the weather is doing so rain cover and then I actually just used their jails and then light panels makes it easy they're starting to sell some pretty cool kits so you just say I want the one by kid or I want the interview kit so I have some diffusion it's lots in I have if I really want it let's just say that by color wasn't working or I need more orange that can put that on I guess I just have to diffusion and orange in here and then I also you notice that for almost all of my lights I carry a grid here's another grid pattern for the lady just so I can really control where that light is going I can shape that light to do what I wanted to do and I just keep it in the in the box you know, that's probably been around the world four times and it's still holding up all right, so then I also carry a satellite phone everywhere that I go and the rational with the satellite phone is you know, it doesn't take much for if something goes wrong this is really more for safety than it is for business it's just that it's the knowing that I can communicate with the outside world if something goes south I'm in a remote location someone really gets hurt, I can pick up the satellite phone and within a couple of minutes have somebody on the phone and call in a situation and now I'll probably be using the satellite phone more my wife and I just had a baby and so in fact this creative live trip is the first trip where I've been away from home from my wife and from my baby, so I'll probably a bigger satellite phone bills now when I'm calling home to see how everyone's doing yes, my phone is that because you are in places like patagonia and antarctica that's whyyou have a satellite phone or do you recommend everyone put a saddle on? You know I have to say it doesn't take being the answer is that's problem that's why I bought the satellite phone for the first time was going to these really remote locations, but it doesn't take being in patagonia or the arctic to need a satellite phone you know you could drive to eastern washington and you lose your cell phone connection and if that's where you happen to wreck your car someone gets hurt on location you know it doesn't you mean white in the state of washington there's plenty of places in the state of california the highest population density in the united states where your cell phone doesn't work so there's different satellite phones this is actually a global star this does not work everywhere in the world works really well in the continental united states and it's actually relatively cheap it's you pay one monthly rate you can talk as many minutes as you want on the phone. The flipside is sometimes it'll take fifteen minutes before you get satellite coverage there's other satellite phones that give you reception immediately but the price point per minute is like three dollars a minute four dollars a minute certain parts of asia you have to use another satellite style phone so there's different satellite phones this is the one that I used in the united states and for me it's just the safety blanket and quite frankly I use it for business occasionally you know we're on location I've really got to make a phone call and it's the ability to do exactly that all right? Satellite phone I carry two men photo suction cups just so that if I want to actually mount a camera in a car on a window it's just the opportunity to get cameras and unique locations or brace stuff said to such ng cups, I think a lot of assistance and folks that rig on cars would probably scoff at that and say you should always have three. Two is not enough, but I like to take risks. Two is too is what I carry. I love light year. This is just a man proto ultra light, uh, light stand. And so I can put the one by one light panel. I can put nikon strobes on this sucker it's super light there's a you can actually modify the top two quarter twenty. Or is it three eighths? Is that three eighths or quarter? Twenty might need a wrench. Um okay, this is my pocket wizard kit. And this is I carry four pocket wizards with me at all times. Andi, I try to keep all of my kids. They're always assembled so that everything I need is going to be in that kit. So here's a kid and then here's to more pocket wizards and you can actually see I have these happen to be cords for my pro photo set up. So there's pro photo chords and these are just the old pocket wizards we also higher carrier receiver. For the modern pocket wizard set up, I just want to be prepared for any any situation that I end up extra battery whips extra battery for them for the newer style of pocket wizard and then you saw in the strobe kid I was also carrying theodore actors that I can plug into the speed lights and I should all right, I don't see it I was going to tell you I actually have the trigger for a triggering cameras remotely, which is the other great use for pocket wizards, but it must be in another camera bag. Okay, so on one more light cord for light panels, so that's what's in my pelican case and the beauty of the pelican case when you're camping, which you know, whether you're on safari, whatever you're doing the beauty of the pelican cases that khun stay outside so I can leave everything in there, close it at night, it can rain on top of the pelican case. You know, just recently an animal came over impede on the pelican case at night doesn't matter it's like it's, watertight it's shock proof, you know kids can stand on it, jump on it again, thrown around so there's a lot of peace and peace of mind in that, okay, thanks john it's like a train wreck every time I open my my bag or a yard sale is more like it, it's incredible what have managed to fit in there? I don't think I've ever seen anything what's in your bag, and this comes out I love pretty incredible. So a question that came in this's from d who was wondering going back to that rain cover that you had used wondering why you don't use a cover that's made for cameras? And can I just say, kids do not put it over your head? Don't try it at home like corey was doing, but I'm just wondering, how much of your gear is d I y make sure thing you create? And do you recommend people doing that type of thing? Or do you recommend them buying brand? Yeah, I think I think that's a great question, depending on how much time you're spending in the rain rod mara who's, the seattle seahawks photographer and a good friend here in seattle, he shoots in seattle a lot he's on the sideline a lot when it's actually raining he's not going to use a trash bag with a rubber band because he needs to perform in that environment all the time, so he's going to buy some kind of a cover for his camera. But for me, it's pretty rare that I'm actually in a rain environment and I want to always have protection if I get caught in that ofthe situation where I'm actually stuck in the rain, so I think that do it yourself, you have to draw on, draw a line in the sand for yourself. How often am I going to use the rain covers worth that multi hundred dollar investment to get a good rain cover? I don't know the price point or is it something where the trash bag will actually do the job for you? And if the trash bag will do the job for you and you're only going to use it one day a year? That's pretty good value and it's really light it's really fast? Because that's my goal while I have two hundred forty pounds of gear that goes on the plane with me one time on my feet and out in the field shooting, I have a little backpack on my back and one camera body and a few lenses or two cameras in a few lenses, so a really rain cover weighs a lot more than a trash bag, and I do use water housings it's worth saying, you know, I used out tex if I'm trying to be ultra lightweight. I used awkward tech housings I know I'm going to be in the water so it's it's all scaleable depending on the assignment ok cory we have about thirty minutes you wanna take another question sure, sure and we'll take another question then we've got one more bag and then looks like we might have some time for questions in the ends right perfect all right this question came in from sam coxes from colorado do you have insurance for all this equipment are we get into that? Yes well let's talk about it. Okay? Let's talk so that's actually that's a really great question early on when I was a kid in college picking up jobs and you know, my entire bank account went into buying year I just didn't understand the concept of insurance but today I really get it we pay a fair amount of money for a policy for a large studio and but the peace of mind comes in that if a piece of equipment gets lost whether it's transit or I drop something or gets stolen it's covered it doesn't mean I can get my job done when I still need to figure out how am I going to shoot while I'm on location but yes everything that's in these bags is covered by our insurance company and we use tom pickard and company they're an l a based production insurance and they have very basic packages if you wanted to ensure you know two cameras and five lenses and your laptop you khun do that and it's liability insurance and workman's comp is usually bundled into the same policy or as you get larger and you need more equipment covered then you can up your policy the one thing that's worth pointing out about insurance is if you're not a professional photographer and you're truly doing it as a hobby, you can use your renters insurance or you can use your homeowner's insurance too to ensure your equipment the instant though you're making money with your photography you know don't think you're tricking the insurance company because you're going to have that bag of gear stolen and they're going to see on your tax return you made x number of dollars from selling your photography services and then it voids that renter's insurance or that homeowners insurance for your equipment so don't fool around with that once you have several thousands of dollars invested tens of thousands in your gear bison, real production insurance and just a follow up question from pro photographer as faras like if you had an insurance claim you take photos of every single piece of gear that you have so you have proof of that we have a super sophisticated itemized list of every piece of equipment thank you john that we have in our studio and so any time we update our equipment in the studio we update that excel spreadsheet and if you download my course or if you watched it live two or three weeks ago on creative life, we shot on location and in one of the classroom sessions actually showed you our excel spreadsheet and it's, one of the three downloads that you get for the bonus materials, but I would encourage you to build some kind of an excel spreadsheet with detailed lists in serial numbers of everything that you own the high price point items, and it serves many purposes. It helps on the insurance front, it helps unpacking. Also, if you ever trying to get in and out of the country where a coronet list isn't is required, you've already done the work and just a reminder, cory's course on credit five was called stills in motion storytelling on location with corey rich. You want to look that up? One other thing I wanted to point out, since we're talking about insurance, and this is kind of an interesting topic that comes up a lot is, well, how do you carry to each of those bags? The pelican case in this roller there, seventy pounds each, exactly seventy pounds, and I weigh that, and I really don't like sitting on planes, but as you can imagine, I end up sitting on planes a lot, and so I've bought into the whole frequent flyer policy, so I fly on two different airlines delta and united, and I fly about one hundred thousand miles each on each of those airlines, and the advantage to those frequent flyer programs, aside from some free peanuts in the lounge and free drinks, is that you actually get more baggage and more weight and that's, really biggest photographer. So on united airlines, I get three seventy pound bags for free and here's the best part if I'm traveling with people and and we buy the ticket together, so let's, say it's, myself and five guys on the crew, we get three seventy pound bags each for everyone on the team. So all of a sudden we have fifteen, seventy pound bags, and if you were to pay rack rate for those bags, you'd be talking thousands of dollars in luggage. So there's, all kinds of credit cards that you khun by through the airlines and you just have to weigh your investment. You know, delta has a deal where you pay for a certain credit card four hundred bucks a year, and if you spend x amount of dollars, you get a certain status with the airline and that status allows you to seventy pound bags, for example, so either be prepared to pay for the wait or you want to pack the bags accord or or being one of those programs okay, so now this becomes more personal stuff actually inside of this patagonia rolling bag you know, I said it before, but you always want to be comfortable being too hot getting sunburned or too cold is a big deal, so I'm going to point out what I carry this is a doss parka this is synthetic down jackets so what synthetic means is if it gets wet it's not like feathers goose down that just bunch up and you're just standing there even colder than before. So this is a down jacket and dos stands for dead airspace, so it's just you know, you have a sleeping bag around you that allows you to be warm while you're actually standing there waiting for your photograph, I carry a westcott six in one reflector kit and I'll show you what that is that means and it fits in that bag that's the key so there's multiple surfaces on this reflector this's kind of a silver surface. This is a gold surface if I want gold light and then you can actually unzip this guy and you have a true silver on this side you have a kind of a heavy scrim no multiple stops scram you have black on this side, so you're getting a lot of kind of reflector and one kit set that there for maybe I'll set it here go on, then. This is actually kind of an ultra lightweight silk. So if I want to defuse some daylight, you know, I could hold this up. And with the kit that I have, I can sometimes use a stand. If I'm alone. I can, you know, wedge this against the wall, and then I can also use a tripod, for example, to hold it. And so that's a way to defuse daylight. By the way, this is the trickiest reflector takes. I've spent a third of my life trying to re fold this reflector. You need a college degree to do that. So I also just carry fabrics. This is a black photo flex fabric for a six by three rigid reflector. And so if I need to just black something out, I have some black fabric that I can use. The other side is white and you guys just on the previous course, we used this black fabric to create another background. So I carry a black and white fabric. Just got that guy. I carry a gold silver. So if you look at this closely, you can see it's kind of a pattern silver and gold it's a little hard to tell under these lights, and so that creates again. This fits on a rigid frame, but even if I don't bring the rigid frame, I'll still bring the fabrics because they're incredible value incredibly valuable sometimes all even laid the fabrics on the ground or tape him to a wall. I carry a a solid silver fabric um somewhere in here yet and then here is actually like a silk, so this is actually you can see through it, we can diffuse light, we can hang this on a window, weaken whatever we need to do to modify the light so that's pretty lightweight to carry a couple of fabrics, but with the ability to really modify, like that's a nice, fast and life option. But I see a question formulating are all of those fabrics specifically designed for photography? Or are there any d I y solutions in the fabrics that you just showed us? You know, I'm not sure that there's a do it yourself solution. I mean, black fabric would be pretty easy to create, but these shiny surfaces I would imagine that you're going. I don't know what these cost, but it can't be much more than trying to find this fabric in the real world and buying it certainly you could get like, a white bed sheets, I don't know the full answer, but these air pretty affordable fabrics and there they have elastic on the edge is what you could do is build the frame you could do it do it yourself style and build pvc frames but I would I would encourage you the aluminum frames that photo flex makes their really durable and they're pretty darned affordable there's a variety of different frame sets but this is you could save yourself a couple of bucks but these fabrics are kind of tried and tried and true and proven so thanks okay, so the next thing that I have is this is I used these bags are actually designed for rock climbers like the packing year on walls you could use whatever you could use a whole foods a grocery bag or your wal mart bag if you wanted to but I use thes is kind of my my bags for organizing year so this is my grip kit and so I'm just gonna kind of pull out of the grip kit what I carry with me so this is a man photo magic arm I really like this style of magic arm because you can really crank it down tight I find that the latch style just a kind of sag a little bit that's my preference so magic arm I carry a couple of these knuckles with me manfro toe knuckles so these of course can go on to the end of the magic on what we're doing that uh oh here we go. So go on here and then I can use this to for example grab a reflector where I can mount this on a post so couple of knuckles knuckles air really valuable in terms of they do all kinds of stuff for you here's just a glimpse now this is kind of you know, do it yourself style stuff you can buy this at home depot for like a dollar ninety nine each or you can go toe like a film tools I'm not naming film to us I'm just saying a shop that's specifically for video and production and it's like a seven dollars a clamp so you know bottom line you can go to a home depot and get these but they're great for clipping fabric to toe walls clipping fabric to poles the's air great these little clamps I can mount a nikon strobe on the end I can actually mount a flag on the end I can actually put it on top of a stand. What is this called jonah forgot even what this is called. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was going to say I call it like the joe mcnally clamp so it's anyhow they're really great for mounting lights or holding a piece of foam core or holding a flag, for example and I carry different sizes of that I carry just a a handful of different roles of gaff tape so this is, you know, some black gaff tape multiple colors because sometimes all all use different colors for marking certain things little bit of electrical tape you never know when you need to do a quick repair and that I always carry a big roll of the white gaff tape for doing stuff like labeling the cases and labeling the equipment so no that's on the pelican case, I can write with it on a sharpie super valuable get black and white if you're just going to get two colors from this a little ninety degree mt that goes on top of a light stand and then there's a quarter twenty so I can modify, you know, the angle that I'm not. We have stuff sticking out this is just a super lightweight ball head, and so I can put it, this is on a stand or even on the top of my camera, and I can mount one of those light panel leads, but the beauty is everything is kind of universally quarter twenty or hot shoe mta ble this actually, I bought this tripod when I was fourteen years old in high school, and I'm now thirty seven and this thing just keeps on going it takes a lickin and keeps on ticking, and I bet you have shot, you know, one hundred photographs that have sold professionally or time lapses with this little tribe blood just super lightweight there's a ball head on it you know it's made toe last this is now owned by man photo used to be bogan but a great little device sometimes I'll put a thief your ball head on top of that thing this is I did not make up this name this is called the nasty clamp uh I don't know but but this is actually great I used this mostly in the video world I can clamp this onto a tripod and put like a video monitor right into this quarter twenty now where I can you know anything that you want amount quarter twenty microphone it's an option this is a smaller joe mcnally clamp can't remember what it's called but again you can put a flag in it you can mount it you can see there's multiple directions for mounting another little ball had you're going to see just a lot of little bald heads a little options for mounting here's a big sponge just in case I actually I lose the other sponge leave it in my bag if it's raining out here's another just power splitter different configuration but just so that I can really make sure I can charge everything in the hotel room you go more trash bags clear trash bags for keeping stuff dry because these work also on lights just another knuckle there super you know yeah I don't know what I'm saying his knuckles are usually the say what he said because I'm so super clamp the super clamp is actually a more technical term a knuckle is really unlike a c stand it's the round nothing some just using the wrong language I'll carry a couple of like these air pink clothes pins for just clipping gels in the front of hot lights you can also use it for clothing also carrying this little miscellaneous bags and safety pins you know your models sure it is to lose since you khun tighten it up real quickly just some safety pins some scissors if I need to make some quick adjustments another sharpie marker and again these aren't sophisticated bags and then these air ziploc bags but it's all about just keeping the gear organized I carry this is my tool kit I don't have much in the tool kit it's just another little eagle creek bag it's a leatherman with, you know kind of a high end leatherman with cem uh I guess a little wrench and socket for a screwdriver you know a small tip pliers. I also carry kind of a bigger set of pliers. I found that over the years like sometimes you just really gotta crank on stuff I'm trying to open a window in a hotel room even if they don't want you to and this usually will open the window little screwdriver set micro set of screwdrivers this was like a freebie a like a trade show from nikon but it's you know inevitably if you need to get in there and really mess with the camera or anything small you need those small settings set of allen wrenches I've us and metric two different two different sets and again the key is you just wanna have the gear like it's oftentimes you'll carry this stuff around and you never need it but that one day you need it you just gotta have it in your bag carry just some miscellaneous rope here just some chords you know, you could buy this in ari I or walmart little bungee cords and webbing some rope and again, you never know when you're going to need it. It's too windy out you need a reflector up into contention that reflector to the edge of a building or two a car you know, really, really valuable. I also carry two cam straps and these air for just tensioning stuff down. You know, maybe it's we get in the back of a truck and I don't want my bag to fall out and they don't have a way to tie it down so cam, strap the bag down all right? We'll get a little bit deeper in here I also bring a rain shell with me so I showed you this base layer that I had kind of the dos parca this is a hooded rain shell I always try to get hooded jackets because it's you know, maybe it doesn't look is cool, but when it's really raining or really when you're really cold, you definitely want to keep your head warm. I find this photographers we end up in a lot of situations where it's questionable like how safe it is, you know you want to be in this perfect location and you're standing under my easter you're standing under icicles or there's construction going on? I just carry this is a pretty cheap climbing helmet by black diamond I don't know if it's osha approved, but it protects your lid if something hits you in the head and so I'm always I err on the side of caution even though I shoot in pretty extreme environments I don't want to get hurt like I know I'm a miserable guy when I'm laid up in bed, so I'll put on a helmet will make sure that I'm safe all the time, even if it's not required all oftentimes put on a helmet if I think it's a risky situation to that end, whether you're shooting rock climbing or not, I don't know wine a clamp is in here, but I also carry I'll bring a thirty foot section of like eight millimeter a static cord with me just, you know, great examples you're off on a rooftop and you're trying to shoot at night, like looking down at a street scene all time myself off to like a chimney or something just to make sure that I don't paul, you know, I don't know photograph is worth falling off a roof now this is a pretty extreme set up. Most of you won't buy this, but this is a rock climbing harness with ju mars and a sender's and extra carabiners and repel devices, but often times all used this even without all of this I have attached, I shoot a lot out of helicopters, and so I'll just take all the miscellaneous stuff off and all time myself into the helicopter. And I can tell you I was shooting in switzerland a few years ago, and the pilot insisted, you know, european, I know you must tie into the delicate french pilot you need to tie into the helicopter. Yeah, sure, you know, it's going to be plenty stable and sure enough, we hit a pocket of wind or air where the helicopter tipped sideways and I literally slit out the helicopter door attention the rope and, like the camera, was wrapped around my neck hanging out of the helicopter and I realized that's, why you tie in that's actually, like you could actually fly out the door of the helicopter and as photographers were always trying to push that limit, you know you're standing on the skid, you do not want to fall out of the helicopter, that would be kind of the end game, so I'll bring, you know, and this is I joke that I'm wearing flip flops right now, but all actually, but I'll always have, like, fairly heavy duty boots to go into the field. These aren't like steel toed, but I can put a cramp on on the bottom right hand stand in mud or if a heavy piece of metal fell on my toe it's not going to cut my toe off. This is the scale that I was telling you about, you know, you, you don't want to be that guy standing in the airport where they tell you your bag weighs seventy eight pounds and you need to lose eight pounds and you're doing it while there's like a line of seven hundred people so that's just really simple you reset the scale, you can tell I put heavy stuff on here because it bent the hook and you just lift up your bag and then it sets the weight and you look at it and say, up there we got seventy pounds and then there's, no surprise when you get to the airport, just like the jacket, I carry a pair of synthetic pants, you look super cool when you're cruising around town in these things, but they do really keep you warm if you need to hang out and wait for that photograph to happen. Um, I also bring this just layering is the key, and then you probably heard that you've heard that atari ire is a boy scout they talk about, like, layering. This is also synthetic, everything I wear if I'm out in the field, the synthetic. So if I get rained on or snow it honor, I'm sweating like in this polartec felice, and I just, you know, add, add clothing is needed. I also carry a pair of neo shell pants, this's, a waterproof, breathable fabric, and so, you know, you look like the pillsbury doughboy when you have all of this on, but you're comfortable, and it means you can continue to shoot pictures. You know, I just in the last few years, I've started carrying this a tent. This is large enough for two people tight to short people like myself and my wife, but the beauty of this tent is it can be a really miserable environment it's raining, snowing, winding. When windy outside and I can set up a tripod with this tent right next to it with all of those clothes on with no sleeping bag and be pretty darn comfortable so it's and it's fast to set up you set it up from inside the tent so valuable piece of equipment pretty small manfro tripod I'm not a huge tripod guy most of what I shoot his handheld but obviously when you're doing long exposures or time lapses, you need a tripod and so often times this is it this all carry this man photo tripod will sometimes wait it I'll take a piece of cord, tie it off and then you know, tie a boulder to the bottom just so that the tripod doesn't shake in the wind or add, you know, water bottle a gallon jug of water just to stabilize the tripod um, you'll notice a lot of this is really light weight I mean, in the mountaineering world, everything is about moving fast and light and so this is a sleeping pad this and inflates to about one inch thick and has really comfortable in the beauty is you're getting something between you and the cold surface from the florist if I'm going to spend time all oftentimes bring this season if I don't have a tenth if I'm going to be sitting in the woods waiting for an animal or something all inflate that's I'm just sitting on something that's warm and comfortable and I can lean against a tree. So it's kind of a bit of a seat old fashioned walmart umbrella. Just a small one again. You can use this kind of a rigging to just, well, that's. Probably too small, but often thames all rig an umbrella. So it's gonna stand right next to me. I'm dry and I'm focused on shooting photos. I actually have one helmet at home where I can actually mount the umbrella right on my head. And you look like a complete dork doing it. But it's functional, it actually works. All right. I bring just a real backpack. If I need to hike, you know, long distance I might depending on how much gear or five an assistant it's. Nice to have a non photo bag that I can load other stuff into. And someone else is carrying the other gear. That's? Not exactly. Photo related. Okay. How are we doing? Timewise wear doing well, you have about ten minutes. So perfect. All right, perfect. Okay, so we'll definitely have time for a few questions. So I'm going to show you just the last couple of things that I carry with me, and then I can answer anything you want. And I know a lot of this is common sense, but I'll carry these heat packs and you can use them on your toes or on your hands but you know if you can't feel your fingertips, you're gonna have a hard time making great photographs or if you're going hypothermic and you're going to amputate your toes at the end of the shoot you know these air like life savers to keep you focused on being creative my carrie a warm hat of course that's just part of this layering system I carry sun visor I noticed that sometimes when it's really hot like if you can tell there's been some sweating that's happened in this thing but if I'm in the tropics for example and it's a hundred degrees in one hundred percent human ah ball cap that's closed just you know your head gets really warm I want my head breathing so I'll carry it sun visor if it's cold by the way, I'm really accustom now toe working with gloves on you no don't buy a set of gloves and think you're just going to show up in the field and and have the ability to manipulate your camera. The key is when you have gloves you really want to be be ableto work with the gloves on, you know if you're pulling them off every time you need to adjust the camera, you're defeating the perp with your hands going to get really cold, you're never going to get them warm, so these air made by black diamond and they're actually these air designed for ice climbing, so holding ice axes while you're climbing, but it turns out they're amazing for photography because they're really designed for for touch so it's a pretty sticky fabric on the front there wind proof waterproof I I often times you I come from the climbing world, but the reality is a lot of this outdoor gear works really well for photographers because it's designed for high function and it's really lightning fast and comfortable, so gloves are valuable. This is if I need to wear a hat under a helmet it's just a thinner profile. One of the other things I meant to say is you notice none of on ly a few things that I own are black. My philosophy is if I'm going to be outside, I'm not trying to blend in when I'm working alone like I want people to see me in a lot of locations it's really remote I'm in the middle of the jungle or the forest are out on the ocean, I don't I want people to see me standing there at versace, you know, getting run over a shot, for example at night I mean, if you want to stand out I didn't exaggerate with sun block I'll carry all kinds of sun block like backup to the backup small tube is big tubes thirty or forty this is kind of my favorite brand there's no ad I just read a consumer reports this is like the best waterproof sun block you khun by get in big bottles or little little tubes okay more fuel more food clif bars cliff shots and then you know I used to not carry rubber gloves but I find them in enough weird situations and I've been in situations where people get hurt that aren't part of my job but I'm just there in this weird place and someone's cut like you need to get involved and I sign now just if I have to get involved or the car breaks down and I don't want to get grease all over my hands it's kind of nice I have rubber gloves so carry some rubber gloves and I think we're getting really close to the end of my bags packing and then I just carry a pair of gortex shoes these air also waterproof and this allows me tio, you know, walk through mud but also like I don't really like wearing boots if I need to walk a long distance unless there's a real reason like I have to have crampons or really rough trail but running shoes this is kind of my choice from not in flip flops then I'm in running she was trying to get to the location so that's kind of the big picture one rolling bag with all my cameras goes on the plan that's the mission critical gear pelican case with like the secondary gear that's still fragile in the miss rolling bag this patagonia roller with everything else that's personal and you can see that I'm there's not much clothing so I'd usually crams more clothing in here for you know kind of flying to and from the only other thing that I carry on my back when I get on the plane is this little patagonia computer bag and this is this is really the basic stuff that I always want on me it's you know the folders where I have all the information about the job I have a pack of gum I have some pens I have a little sleep mask for falling asleep on the plane with some earplugs I have my laptop computer and a bunch of miscellaneous charging cables so I'd just slide that in this leave here I have my you know, an extra iphone charger I have extra usb cables have firewire hundred cables I have dongle, you know, so it's just the this set of here's an audio this is a really important cable these days, so that when you get in your rental car you can actually play music so but that's and that's all on my back so I can kind of continue to be working I could be writing email receiving email posting photos and then eventually once I've done a download I'll add the hard drives to this backpack and then my passport goes in here bottle of water and this train wreck that you're seeing right here this is uh this is the baseline for how I pack if I'm alone in the field cory I am absolutely blown away this is so cool I've just been like sitting here in thrall then every single thing that you're bringing out of that bag in all these cases I guess I just want to say it's obvious that all of these every single thing that you have in your kit has been put in there because of experience so this just shows the years of experience that you have coming out of this bag it's absolutely incredible I have thoroughly enjoyed the part about you guys I thought that was so cool all right well we do have some questions way have a question our city audience go ahead so I myself am a climber as well so I don't get it I get a lot of the stuff you're talking about but is there a time it sounds like a lot of this stuff you're bringing with you and your kind of base camping somewhere and then going out from their right like you know, do you carry your laptop of its just you do you mean like, what do you do if it's just you run because there's a four man team, and sure, sure, I mean, I always say that this gear this two hundred forty pounds of gear, it kind of gets staged, right? If we're going to use this pakistan example, you can see some of my photographs on my website corey rich dotcom from pakistan, and I wrote pretty extensively about this trip to pakistan last summer to climb the triangle tower, but really, I flew to islamabad, and we had a lot more than two hundred forty pounds a year. There were more guys, and we're doing more video production, and then we got to islamabad and we realized, well, we don't need all of this, and we left one or two bags in islamabad, then we made it to the hotel in I'm forgetting the name of the town, but let's, just say, the last town where we actually got in cars and then we realized, okay, we definitely don't need this, and so we left and some of it's just stripping away cases, so okay, we don't need the hard shell, we can pack this into a bag, let's, lose the pelican case. And then eventually, we, you know, after five days of hiking and importers, we got to a base camp at fifteen thousand feet, and then we left a bunch of gear in base camp, and then, of course, I had to scale it down to ok. Now, it's, just me alone with the athletes, and we're going to go to seventeen thousand feet and then it's now it's all going to be on my back. And then at seventeen thousand feet, I realized, do I really need this piece of equipment? And I scaled down yet one more time until finally we climbed the final three thousand feet to twenty thousand feet with one camera, two lenses, my climbing backpack and water and food and so it's all scaling in terms of what do you need? And my philosophy always is less is more, the less you can actually have on you, the less gear you're fiddling around with, the more you're going to be focused on being creative. And I show all of this because the truth is as much of this that khun stay in the hotel room or in the rental car or in base camp, the more I can be focused on shooting with a few piece to the equipment the more creative I'm going to be the more time I spend fooling around with gear the last time I'm spending shooting but when you need a piece of year, you really need that piece of gear there's certain things it's, hard to improvise and solve that problem without having that right piece of gear. All right, well, we have about one more minute, so their question came in from pro photographer. I know you said you've never been. You've ever had anything stolen or maybe lost that's actually that's not true. I did a funny story. I was in irian jaya, indonesia, and wear climbing the highpoint of australasia. And I had a pair of yellow boots like this and there's, the donnie people who are famous for the penis goard's that they were like a stick that's it's part of their cultural history. So donnie porters had helped us carry all of our gear up to our base camp and we climbed the peak success plan was really terrible weather. And on the last day it was time to start hiking out and I looked outside my tent on my boots were gone. And of course I thought that's really weird and sure enough, I asked around and no one had any idea like where the boots had gone, so I hiked out in flip flops but the funniest part is we're days later, we're in the small port town where we're going to find the catch a boat and then fly out, and I saw some guy walking around with the penis gordon yellow boots on, and I didn't have the heart to actually say those were actually my boots, but I just let it go. But aside from a pair of shoes, I can't think of anything that's been stolen. That's awesome. Well, one final question is there anywhere we can find a list? Yes, that's a great player so you can go to corey rich, dotcom and goto our blogged, and we just added a gear list or what's in my camera back. Most of the gear cameras, lenses, grip equipment, tripods, lights, it's, itemized and well, actually send you directly to add aram on where you can buy at the specific piece of equipment over time, we're going to add the outdoor gear because we're more and more people are asking that question all of this other stuff, where do I find it? But feel free to hit us? Send an email to info it corey rich. We're post something on our blogger or any of our social media, we're really good about sharing and answering those questions, and we'd love to hear from you, in fact, great. All right. Well, thank you so much to corey rich it's. Always a pleasure having you here. And I hope that you come back for more creative live workshops. Corey, you're an absolute pleasure. All right? Well, we'd like to, uh, take a moment to thank nikon. Yes, sir. Thank you. Well, I guess what I want to say is, obviously, I use a lot of nikon equipment, but one of the things that really makes me proud to be associated with nikon beyond just cutting edge technology is their philosophy. And they're there position in this industry to embrace education and sharing and that's a it's. A pretty special thing when it's about communally raising the bar and that's what nikon is all about and that's what creative life is all about. It's sharing it's actually passing along information and allowing everybody on the other side of this camera to learn from all the mistakes that I've made and the other instructors have made. So I hope that's a benefit.