The planning of - We Were Wanderers - Iceland

Nicole and I decided last December that we were going to make this trip happen.  Before I realized that the work she and I do together should be something of its own, before I really even understood Patreon.  So we booked the trip, and have been the stressful and exciting process of planning the whole thing out.

Planning these trips has gotten so much easier over time.  You can scout locations with instagram hashtags, 500px, tripadvisor, and plot everything out ahead of time with google maps.  Its pretty damn amazing.  My first cross country drive was done with some mapquest directions, an atlas, and a flip phone...a lot has changed.

After finding all the places I wanted to shoot I plotted up a google map with the locations and emailed it to myself for safe keeping.  If you are on a desktop you can check out my weekly maps below

Iceland Week 1: http://bit.ly/1YFxthq
Iceland Week 2: http://bit.ly/1MNJlua

Iceland has experienced an explosion in tourism due in part to a tremendously successful Instagram campaign by Iceland Air.  Almost every website advises that if you are going to visit the country you should do so in the summer window of June-August, so we planned our trip for mid September.  If you are going to shoot nudes in a location try to plan off peak season.  Nothing is worse than spending all of that money to go and create art only to get there and realize that thousands of people are going to make that impossible.  I've also found that travel websites tend to think that people want bright blue skies when they visit a place.  Blue skies make for pretty shitty photos though.  Give me gloom, rain, wind and I'm a pretty happy camper.

For this international trip I had to pair down my usual camera bag into something a little smaller.  All of my gear except my tripod needed to fit into a carry on sized bag because I stupidly booked flights through a discount airline, WOW if you are interested.  Despite the fact that I've been gifted countless camera bags at this point I still use my original Lowepro Fast Pack when I need a camera bag for flying.  It perfectly fits my two 5d MK II's, the 70-200mm F2.8 IS, 17-40mm F4, Sigma 85mm F1.4, my laptop, power chord, two chargers, 4 batteries, memory cards, and my circular polarizing filter, and somehow stands up to the ridiculous beating that my gear often takes on long hikes.  Its only down fall is that it isn't water proof, but I bought a rain jacket about 20 sizes to big that it fits under while wearing.

For Iceland I also picked up a rain jacket for my camera because I knew I would be getting a lot of water from winter storms, waterfalls, and the ocean.  This thing worked amazingly with my longer lenses that had lens hoods, and kept my camera dry with my wider lens.  

I have only ever owned one tripod the Slik Pro 700D.  Its a beast, weighs a ton, is in horrible shape, but its survived 10 years of abuse, and still gets the job done.  I took it apart completely and packed it in my checked bag.The only thing left to do was to figure out where I was going to stay and how we were going to get around while there.  With only took weeks to spend on the island tent camping, and public transit were pretty much out, so we did exactly what we do when we travel the United States...got in a car and slept in it.  I always prefer sleeping in a car when I want to shoot first light anyway.  The discomfort of sleeping in a seat leaned all the way back is the perfect motivation to get up and get to work, but also get adequate rest.  Tents are too comfy.  Hotels and Hostels are even worse.So with that we were ready to go!