The days seem to get longer, the weekends rush by and my temper sours, it is time for a vacation.  A time to get some distance from my problems and focus on something completely new. For me this usually means travel, as I have been fortunate enough to have ample opportunity to do so. 

Everyone plans their vacation differently, some go for the spontaneous trip, I have always envied those people, and some go for the carefully planned trip. I am obviously the latter. I am happy to leave ample time for spontaneous events, so long as they are well planned in my itinerary!

So how do you plan a vacation when taking film?  Twenty years ago this was not a question, you would toss your film camera in a bag with the roll that was already in it, arrive at your destination and pick up film in any of the millions of places around town. Nice, simple.

These days finding film is not easy. As you do a search on the internet you will find all kinds of conflicting information about X-ray, hand carry, insurance and so forth.  I thought I would simplify it down based on traveling with film for the last five years all over the globe.

• Put film in your carryon and do not worry about the x-ray. So long as your film is rated as ASAISO 800 or less you are good to go. You can ask for hand check but frankly there is no point. Toss your film in the bag and move on.  You can try the lead lined bags for film (I have two) if you are really worried.
• Take your expensive gear with you on the plane.  Do not check it with your bag.  Also you should take a change of clothes with you in your checked bag.  Nothing worse than having a delayed checked bag and nothing to change into.
• Insurance...if you are worried about losing it leave it at home.  Keep your wits about you. The place you are going is not safe....just use that assumption.  Do not travel alone if possible but if you must stick to well traveled areas with lots of people.  If you want insurance you can get some but it is expensive and requires a police report if something goes wrong.  
• I take two bags for my gear.  The first is an Airport AirStream ThinkTank bag.  Yes it is expensive but worth double what it costs.  Well built, offers great protection and has built in locks to keep your stuff safe.  This makes it easy to travel through airports. The second bag is a Retrospective 7 from ThinkTank.  This is a bit less expensive but just as good.  I like it because it blends in a bit better than most camera bags, is easy to carry and offers good protection.  This bag goes in my checked luggage empty until I arrive at the vacation spot.  The roller stays in the hotel and I use the Retrospective as my daily carry.
• Cleaning gear should be fun.  I take a large microfiber cloth to wipe off my gear after each day.  This is the outside portion of my gear.  I have a smaller microfiber cloth for my lenses with a blower.  That is it.  No liquids at all.  If you must take something wet try the prepackage wet wipes made by Zeiss.  They are great.
• Take the gear you want to shoot.  I know the virtues of traveling light, but for me this means four cameras.  A vacation is to be enjoyed and if you enjoy cameras take a few with you.  I will leave some in the roller bag, well locked, and just take one or two with me for the day.  The next day I will switch.
• Inside, outside and ISO.  Go into a church and the lighting is awful, step out into the street and it is bright.  With digital it is easy to adjust but with film, not so much.  Two solutions that I have found works...First option is to take a digital camera and use it in the darker areas leaving your film for outdoors.  Second, take two film cameras.  One with film set at EI1600 and the other set and EI400.  
• Film and flexibility.  I try to keep my film choices to a minimum.  I usually carry two ISO films, a 100 and a 400.  My new philosophy is only to take HP5+ film.  I can pull this to EI 200 or push to EI 1600 and even 3200.  So one film type can be adjusted to meet the light of the day.  
• How much film to take?  This is a very simple question to answer...as much as you are going to shoot!  I assume that I will shoot 2 rolls a day but average only one.  I usually start shooting a bunch and reduce as the trip goes on.  2 rolls is a nice average.
• Can you buy film on the road?  It depends where you are going.  I try to take all my film with me but I will ALWAYS but a roll or two if I see it for sale.  My reasoning is to support film but buying wherever I see it.  
• Photographic journals are a very good idea especially when shooting film.  Take a few notes of what you shot on which roll.  Not necessarily every picture, but in general terms it would help.  Write down the EI, what you were trying for and where you were.
• Use the journal to note the images you want to take.  These are the captures you are hunting for.  Then mark the roll where these images were captured.  

I have often raved of the YouTube channel by Ted Forbes called "The Art of Photography". If you have not seen his videos, you are missing out on some excellent content. I love his early work and received much of my initial exposure (pun intended) to photography as an art form from his videos. Recently he is going a bit more into digital gear and Lightroom but his early work is exceptional. 

About a year and a half ago, Ted released a video that has caused a bit of debate.  The theme of the message is that some believe the world has enough photographers and there really is no interest in seeing our work. Look at Instagram and you can see amazing content with millions of users world wide, which begs the question, why post more?

I left it alone for a long while because I needed some perspective on it. Many have replied that we shoot photography for ourselves, and while this may be true for some people (look at Vivian Maier who often didn't even develop her photographs), the fact is that photography is designed to share. 

When we photograph anything, we are thinking about the viewer and what they will take from the image. We look at composition techniques to guide the viewer to the portion of our image we want them to focus on. How can we then say that we do not care what the viewer thinks of our image? We can't.  Any art is designed to interact between the art and people. You cannot divorce the two.

So how do we accept both of these truths?  How do we reconcile the fact that our hobby is an art form and hence needs and audience while accepting the fact that the world is so inundated with photographs that there is little room for anything else? 

Simple, I never intended to be famous, recognized, or even to earn a living through photography.  I shoot because I enjoy it.  I work to improve as a personal challenge and yes, I like to see what others think of my photographs but in the end, I will continue to shoot and work at improving. It is easy to take a picture that gets 100 likes on facebook or Instagram.  The goal is shooting a photograph that I can be proud of.   

I love traveling but every time that I plan a trip I fret over the choice of camera gear I want to take. Interestingly I am not worried about not having the right gear and missing some critical shot, but I really struggle to pick a camera or two that I want to use.  I have too many wonderful options and this makes my selection difficult. 

For this trip, I have decided to travel light so that I can travel deep...let me explain. Carrying heavy gear, something I have done for years, is photographically rewarding but limits the enjoyment of the travel itself. You end up walking a bit less, taking short cuts and reducing the depth of your travel. 

So I will pack to travel light, travel deep and travel often! So I went through my gear and opted for the following setup.

1. Olympus OM-1:  A very light, small camera that gets out of your way and lets you enjoy the photographic experience. This little gem is an amazing piece of engineering and is a joy to use. I have a 50mm, 35mm and 28mm prime lenses each of which are amazingly sharp. 
2. Leica ME: Full frame and still very portable this rangefinder has some of the most amazing color rendition I have ever seen! I will carry a 50mm, 35mm and 15mm lenses.  I might take the 90mm lens as well but it is rather heavy so I am still thinking it over.
3. Leica M6: I really believe in the need to have a back up film camera.  Lets face it, these babies are getting old. I have had one fail on me during a trip and I learned to always carry a back up camera.  Normally I would have taken my OM-2 however it is not working (again).  So the Leica M6 allows me to use the same lenses as the ME cutting down on the weight.  

I have been to Rome several times, and I have been to Athens once.  Hence I will not be trying to capture all the architectural images and will focus on people.  The family I will travel with, the people seeing the amazing sights and people we encounter along the way.  

For a photography buff, the discovery of a talented photographer is as if a hungry man walked into a feast laden table. You begin by gently tasting the appetizers, looking at individual pieces to see if the artist has their own style. Once you see that they have an independent message, different to what you are used to seeing you begin to try to understand the style and genre of the photographer just as a hungry man would attack the large chunks of meat. This means going through as much of the artists material as you can get your hands on.  

You then start to look at the side dishes, seeing what sort of experimentation the artist went through, did they try a different style, a different medium perhaps a new perspective. You go through their body of work noting the different themes and how they all interconnect. 

Then you move into dessert, as you look to see what may have influenced the photographer.  What other art were they exposed to, did they interact with other artists, can you gain access to their notes. You want to understand where the photographer was coming from when their inspiration hit.

Unlike a feast however, with photography you can return to that same table and enjoy your favorite dishes all over again. The first trip is one of discovery and introduction, the second trip has given you time to absorb their work and put it into better perspective, so you pick over the pieces enjoying the details never noticed on the first trip.

Then there is the third trip, here you know the dishes well, you know what you like and what missed the mark, you are still awed by your favorites but are bored with the misses.  On this third trip you understand the artist and what they are trying to do, where they came from and how they created their art.

The fourth trip is the same as all the subsequent trips, the discovery is gone and it is replaced with a soothing familiarity.  All the marrow has been sucked out but the taste lingers on. You already know what the artist was trying to teach, but you still enjoy reminding yourself of its lessons. 

So the discovery of a talented photographer fills me with a great deal of excitement because I recognize the feast, and can already see my return trips and the hours of enjoyment and learning I have in front of me. 

And so it was this weekend, as I discovered Francesca Woodman, an amazing photographer but one that adds a complexity I am uncomfortable with.  You see, she took her own life at the tender age of 22. It is difficult to look at her art without this altering the message. The problem is that I do not see this as a central message she wanted to transmit but it is tainted. It is as if a horrible smell wafted into the room where the wonderful feast was laid. 

The food continues to taste the same but the smell is so different, so off of what the food tastes like that it masks it. The taste is there but you need to concentrate on it. You must focus on the smell and taste of the food and ignore the rest. 

Oh, how I wish I could enjoy the meal without the smell!  How I wish I could look at Francesca's work without the influence of the tragic outcome of her life! Why can't these images teach me what she wanted them to, without my reading so much more into them?