Traveling Light or What to Pack When Seeking the Picturesque?

Travel today is mostly a foregone conclusion -- we can arrange most aspects of any trip within a matter of minutes. Online travel information and booking mega-companies like Expedia and Travelosity, or traditional travel agencies, and the legacy travel packagers Thomas Cook or American Express can make travel planning nearly effortless. Regardless of the ease in making these arrangements, considering an extended stay in a foreign country our needs for day-to-day comfort and activities require some additional information and concern. Local customs, laws, roads, lodging conditions, weather, geography/topography, and language all usually require more information and expertise to navigate.

Countless guidebooks attempt the task of providing background information and how to conduct daily sightseeing forays. Few general guides tell you what the actual location is like, specific weather conditions or how difficult the terrain might be to walk across, but instead provide generic suggestions for average needs. Few personal anecdotes are offered and readers often find the reality of the location at odds with the glowing and flowery descriptions.

Travelers of the 18th century and later often had to rely upon personal accounts, usually journals written by prominent persons (Dafoe, Gilpin, Wordsworth, Martyn, etc.) for information concerning distant lands and landscapes. Between visits to local estates, the traveler usually wandered about with companions or a local civlian as a hired guide for the day. The Picturesque tourist also required knowledge concerning the topography and local history to enjoy the qualities of the landscapes. Additionally they carried an assortment of devices to record the scenery. These often included paper, drawing tools, brushes, watercolors, or optical aids like a Claude Glass. Gilpin thought the glass a novelty and preferred to render his landscapes by hand by drawing and later rendering in ink washes. His first journal, published in 1782, utilized the new technique of aquatint for his illustrations of the Wye Valley. Other less skilled individuals employed other optical aids, like a camera lucida or camera obscura (although this, even when deemed 'portable,' was quite bulky). Most written accounts chronicled some combination of drawing and viewing aids.

To me, the Claude Glass requires the least skills and provides the most immediate experience of making pictures. My discovery of this technique proved a rather dramatic awakening to a past culture's longing for creative skills and seeing the world in aesthetic terms. I was struck by the similarity to viewing images on the camera's ground glass, viewfinder or today's LCD screens. In fact, it was this connection -- between the Claude Glass and my first digital camera, a Nikon 900, that propelled me to further investigate this period of time and its rich and complex social and cultural underpinnings. I realized the word picturesque wasn't about photographic scenery, it was a mental construct of taste and refined sensibility. (more on the subject of the Claude Glass and its relationship to photography next time).

My specific needs for this trip became a little more complex once I decided to publish my account via a daily web-based journal, aka a BLOG. It seemed appropriate I speed up the process in a way relative to the entire evolution of just about everything else in our technology driven world. I should be contemporary with my process. This would include digital photography, wireless internet connectivity, portable data storage, portable computer(s), and lots of electrical power in the form of rechargeable batteries.

One of the challenges of the Wye region, still a somewhat rural area, was how to deliver a daily accounting of the tour. When I first began looking at the task I found there were fewer than eight internet cafes spread in the entire area containing Gloucestershire, Monmouthshire, Herefordshire, and Gwent. It's a big area with little public access to these modern high-tech services. In the period of two years that number has grown to over fifty sites and continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Still the thought of hanging out in pubs, bars, coffee shops and restaurants every day and night seemed a nuisance. As I like to drink beer, it would be a real challenge to write daily blogs and not drink. I'm no Jack Kerouac; I can't write and drink, not even a pint. ;-(

With some good luck and scouring the extensive lodgings listed on the Internet, we found the Old Brewery B&B which advertised Internet connection (wireless to boot). While we'll visit our share of pubs and bars, I also know I can safely work from our "home" base.

With that settled, I began to assemble tools to satisfy the trip's goals. Below is a list of what is being carried into the landscape on a daily basis, in no particular order:

Maps showing recreation and history sites
Guidebooks, old and current, of local attractions, lodging, services, and history
Boingo™ monthly voucher - for Internet cafes and “hotspots”
T-Mobile international cellular phone service
Canon 1Ds MarkII and 8 gigabyte of CompactFlash cards, with a CF reader (L)
Vosonic X2 80gb media companion (C)
"Backup" Camera - Agfa Super Isolette (D)
B&W filters for above (E)
Hakuba Carbon fiber tripod (H)
Hakuba Table top tripod with telescoping leg for monopod support (G)
Apple G4 12” laptop with wireless and Bluetooth (F)
Nightlight for laptop, suitable for airplane and bedroom (K)
HP IPAQ rx3715 Mobile Media Pocket_PC, with wireless and Bluetooth (my digital Claude Glass) (A)
Infrared keyboard for IPAQ (B)
Hard, crush-proof aluminum case for IPAQ
12 volt electrical converter (for 110 volt current) with cigarette lighter plug (I)
220 to 110 voltage converter
Electrical plug adaptors, British to USA
Claude Glass (J)





It's pretty small when all collapsed.





I know, I know, big deal, real photographers carry the BIG gear when photographing the landscape.



William Henry Jackson and his assistant "Hypo"