Monthly Archives: September 2021

Ok, we landed, deplaned, and were met immediately by Lawrence from African Travel, who was super helpful and got us set up to clear customs and took our bags while we did. Quite lovely. Derek then joined us and walked us over to the covid testing site at the Intercontinental. We paid for our tests, got our nostrils tickled, then headed to the hotel shuttle. Rode the shuttle to the Protea Hotel (on airport grounds) and set up here. Tomorrow we fly to Botswana at noon – that’s where the photography fun starts!

So let’s talk GEAR! Here’s all the gear I brought with me. I made some late decisions, and in a few cases may have been able to do better decisions, but live and learn. Here’s the whole mess set up on the desk:

Focusing in on camera gear:

• Camera body is a Sony A7Riv mirrorless full-frame 61mp camera with image stabilization with two high-speed 128GB SD cards. I have it on a Hawkesmill wrist strap, which I adore, but have a backup neck strap on quick snaps.
• I have two extra batteries for this and a pro-master charger which is powered by USB. I can charge one battery in the camera, and one in the charger. I figure my normal will be “one in the camera, one in the bag, one on the charger back at the lodge.”
• I brought 4 lenses:
  • Sony FE 4.5-5.6/100mm-400mm GM OSS – this will be the go-to in the field. I also brought a Sony 2.0 teleconverter that darkens this lens a full stop, but also doubles its magnification so it becomes 200mm-800mm.
  • Sigma 24-70mm 2.8 – this will cover all normal/close in shooting, if the 100-400 is just TOO CLOSE
  • Sony FE 2.8/12mm-24mm – this one is for the big sunsets, sweeping Savannah, wide shots of Victoria Falls . . .
  • Sony FE 2.8/90mm MACRO G OSS – this is probably my favorite overall lens, and will serve if I do find things to shoot VERY CLOSE UP, e.g. bugs or flowers.
• I also brought a Giotto Rocket Air to blow dust off of gear, and a couple of Glazer’s lens cloths.
• Time exposures, very long range telephoto, etc. all want a tripod. I went with the Peak Design travel tripod (carbon fiber) because it packs super small, is pretty light (about 2# all in), and is compatible with the peak design quick release I use on my camera bag, which is a . . .
• Peak Design Every Day Sling 10L with a peak design quick release foot attached to the strap (so in the field, the camera is outside the bag). Everything listed above, except the tripod and the macro lens, fits in the camera bag for transport.

Ok, then there’s the stuff to get photos off the camera and process them (and write this blog, etc). For that, I ended up going with

• a Microsoft Surface Go 2, because it packs up small, acts like a tablet on aircraft, etc. I bought this dedicated for this trip. It has Lightroom Classic, WordPress, Netflix and Spotify on it. And personal email. It is NOT able to access work resources, because it is not managed/monitored by corp – that’s to keep me from working, not because I am worried about Dustin’s team (I work on a bunch of this tech and absolutely believe devices accessing corp resources need to be monitored/managed – malware is a *thing*).
• I have a Logitech MX Anywhere 2S Mouse to make editing easier
• A Microsoft designer bluetooth compact keyboard (Keyboard covers that are so awesome on the surface were sold out, unfortunately)
• I carry two Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD drives at 2TB storage each in a case to get the photos off the cards and get some redudancy (PC, SD, SSD) for the photos. These are my normal “working with lightroom” drives so it is super easy to set up a catalog, etc.
• I use a Tiergrade USB Type C Hub Pro in part because I can feed it my SD cards directly and get fast backup, it has a huge raft of USB-A ports I can use for charging, does HDMI out, ethernet in, and it relatively tiny. Normal edit usage will have the SSD drive in one port, an SD card in another, all tied together into the surface via this thing.

Ok, Phew, what’s left?

• I carry a big Belkin battery in case something needs emergency power (like a cell phone). I don’t remember how many milliamps, but its a lot, 80k-100k. Enough to charge my phone 4x if I recall.
• I carry a belkin 4 port USB hub – this is just so I can charge more devices (watches, phones, camera batteries, the belkin battery, etc. are all greedy bastards).

Clothing:

• Ex-officio undies and socks x6 (the socks have bug-guard)
• 2x zip off pants (convertible to shorts). One of them is ex officio and has bug guard. The other are Columbia and do not.
• A Bison ultra-light belt with a plastic buckle (for airports)
• 3 long sleeve ex-officio shirts with bug guard
• 3 short sleeve shirts, 2 ex officio with bug guard, one REI without.
• An REI Cotton/Poly blend pullover hoodie (very thin, but combines with other layers to get some warmth)
• An ex-officio safari vest.
• My favorite sailing hat (basically, a soft hat that has an all around brim and vents
• A pair of new balance hiking shoes.
• A pair of vuori shorts that I can sleep, swim, scuba, whatever else in (when I long haul, step one is always “change to jammies” then an hour before landing, I switch back to street clothes so I don’t feel totally gross but don’t burn an outfit. These shorts are “jammies”)

All of that, plus some spare cables, masks, etc all fits into a North Face Base Camp 50L duffel. Altogether, it all comes in JUST under the 33# weight limit for the bush planes. 32.4#. 17.5# of that is camera gear, a few more pounds is computer, so I am at less that 10# of clothing.

Now to take all this tech and try to make some art 😉 If you are looking at a trip like this, hopefully this helps you out. I will try to post my learnings on the gear as I go. I can say now that I wish I had bought a photographers vest, not the ex-officio, only because having pockets that would swallow lenses would be magic in the field. I may pick one up in Nairobi (10 days from now).

Thanks for letting me geek out!

We got in the car (Atlas Towncar in Seattle, highly recommended we have used them for 20 year) at about 0520 and headed to Seatac (SEA) which was swamped, very crowded. Fortunately there is a Microsoft employee kiosk, so we were checked in really fast.

Interestingly, we couldn’t check in on the phone because there is a lot of air ticket fraud into S. and Central Africa, so you have to show the credit card used to purchase the ticket to the agent to actually check in. We also had to show our negative covid tests (PCR tests done the day before) and our passports.

From there to the TSA pre-check line, which was VERY long, but moved pretty well, and then into the airport and the Delta lounge to download videos and get a coffee – this basically took all the time up until boarding.

We boarded for Atlanta (ATL), and had a pretty uneventful 4 hour flight. THe only issue I hit – and honestly, felt goofy about – is that because of the strict size/weight limits for luggage on the bush planes in Africa, and because of a LOT of camera gear in my bag, I was well outside of my normal routine and didn’t have a breakout bag for my “at my seat” stuff in the aircraft. So I looked and acted like a noob (dressed up as a tourist) which I wasn’t wild about. More on the gear later.

Mask compliance in SEA and on the way to ATL was really good. There was more mask below the nose, mask on the chin crap there (honestly, folks, it has been two years, you know what to do . . .) but my ongoing N95 obsession boosted my confidence (I have now had this mask on for 24 hours . . . about 2 hours until I can take it off).

Heather had heard of a good restaurant called “One Flew South” – not just a good airport restaurant, but a good restaurant – so we stopped in there. Cecilia was our server and was AWESOME. Great, fun, dialed in service. We had poke tacos, cauliflower soup, shishito peppers and salad and everything was really good. Their cocktails were super good – Heather had their tequila spicy thing and I had their old fashioned (not as good as Dustin’s barrel aged old fashioneds, but good).

Sated we camped in the Delta lounge briefly then headed to our flight. I am writing this from the tail end of the flight from ATL to Johannesburg (JNB). This used to be the 9th longest flight in the world – now higher since many of the big routes (Like Singapore-New York) aren’t running now. We got to chat with the pilot, who was super cool and obviously knew he was at the top of his game.

Delta’s customer service game has been on point – they took the picture from the previous post, had a handwritten thank you note for us, and just generally are hitting the right notes. Delta is doing a good job of being polite but firm in enforcing mask compliance on the flights. It isn’t convenient, but it seems a fair trade for getting to adventure in uncertain times.

We have a health form we have to fill out for S Africa for contact tracing, and apparently they will do a “real time” test on us when we land – that’s new, wasn’t in the processes even two days ago. So this is a very dynamic time – the risks for the trip are less about getting covid, I think, and more about late breaking rule changes.

But we’ll roll with it, and make the best of it – that’s what adventure is all about, right?

I guess this story starts in August of 1992, when I was randomly assigned into a work group at UCCS that included a whip smart, crazy beautiful and driven woman. We struck a friendship, then more, then suddenly we are planning our 25th anniversary celebration. We talked about it for years, then landed on the idea of a photo safari in Africa (I am an enthusiastic hobby photographer, and spent the pandemic acquiring gear and knowledge and practicing).

Heather is an amazing travel agent, and went wild finding all the coolest stuff for our trip in June 2020. Then… COVID. It was clear we would have to reschedule – we thought, to October 2020. Nope. March 2021? Nope. September 2021? Along came the Delta Variant. Lots of anguish ensues. Studying trends, debating what’s the safe thing, the right thing? I was firmly for rescheduling, again – but Heather had had enough, and there are some compelling reasons to go forward.

First, we just don’t know the future. Many things could happen in the next year that make the trip impossible. Second, the economy in Africa is reeling – tourism is hugely important to the people who live where we are going. This ties directly to the animals – people have to eat and tourism beats poaching. Third, the lack of tourists now will make the experiences more special – less human disruption to animals, plenty of capacity at the sites we are going to. And finally, with full vaccination and good precautions, our meaningful risks are relatively low.

This is not pre pandemic travel, to be sure. We will have to take and pass Covid tests basically continuously on the trip, and a failed test will mean weeks of quarantine and an end to the trip. We will be contact traced through the trip, adding tons of paperwork. Some sites will be closed to us, as will most cultural experiences, because of the virus. We will see how it goes. Luckily we are both very experienced travelers and are going in eyes open.

If you are considering big travel right now, I hope we can paint a useful picture of what it is like to be out in the world right now.

Ultimately we are taking a leap of faith together. Time to hold hands, and jump!