Thoughts from the road

 I am back home after my trip to visit family in England. I was blessed with good weather and I returned with a lot of pictures of green, English vistas from my frequent walks in the Buckinghamshire countryside. Since I didn't rent a car on this trip, I stayed mostly close to my sister's home village but I found plenty to photograph nonetheless. The horse chestnut trees were in bloom everywhere, with their distinctive, cone shaped flowers. I followed public footpaths through the fields with my small, crop-sensor, mirrorless camera strung across my body. The mirrorless Canon R7 is my travel camera. I bought it after taking a couple of trips where my big DSLR was just too heavy to carry day in and day out. I must say, I haven't used it much at home, preferring to take the camera I know best for paid jobs and family gatherings alike. When you are driving around, it doesn't much matter how much the gear weighs but when you have to carry it all yourself, it's a different story! I took both cameras on this trip and my hand luggage weighed a lot. In actual fact, I used the big camera only one day in two weeks. The rest of the time, I used the mirrorless with just two inexpensive lenses. 

There are a lot of advantages to taking a smaller camera on vacation. It is lighter to carry, less obtrusive and, for landscape photography and candid shots, it works just fine. I could very easily have left the big camera at home and saved myself a lot of struggle.  The question is, can I bring myself to travel without the big gun? This is a psychological dilemma. 

For years, I have taken the best camera I own on trips, to capture the best possible photographs. The cameras have gotten bigger and heavier as I upgraded. While I love the photos I can get with my 5D Mk iv, I am questioning whether the extra weight is worth the incremental superiority in image. On my next trip, a once-in-a-lifetime trip to New Zealand, will I be able to bring myself to travel light?  In many ways, this trip was a dry run for the bigger trip to New Zealand with my husband in the fall. I practiced sharing pictures with the family on a shared album in my Forever cloud account, so that they could follow my trip. It worked well, since wi-fi is available everywhere, and I could share without making everything public on Facebook. 

Travel is all about experiences. While I will never travel without a camera to help me relive them, my goal from now on is to travel a bit lighter and enjoy the trip that much more.