Finally... Some Time to Relax

Well, I’ve been a little quiet lately as you may have noticed. I have a good excuse though. I am one semester from obtaining my MBA and for two of the last three weeks I have been studying for finals and completing all my required assignments. This, along with work, kept me extremely busy as you might imagine. And this past week, my wife took a short trip to Florida. It was nice to finally get some time to relax for a few days.

Siesta Key Beach (near Sarasota) has some of the whitest sand of any U.S. beach.

This photo was not altered. The sand is very fine, which makes it super soft.

Also, because it is so white, the sand is not hot, which makes it much nicer

for walking around in your bare feet.

We actually stayed at the Hilton on Longboat Key, which is just a few islands north of Siesta Key Beach, but it is one of the only major name hotels on the islands and we had HiltonHonors points to use anyway, so that is why we chose to stay there. It was right on the beach and only 10 minutes from St. Armands Circle, where we spent every evening eating, shopping, enjoying ice cream, and people watching. If you are ever in the area, make it a point to stop by Lido Key and walk around the circle. If you are hungry, you have to eat at the Columbia Restaurant and get ice cream at Kilwin’s. They are both excellent!

What I actually want to talk about in this blog post though is packing photography gear for a trip like this. Since this was intended to be a fun and relaxing vacation, I decided not to bring a lot of my professional gear. Instead I simply brought my Nikon D50 with my all-purpose Nikon 18-200 mm VR lens. I also brought my Nikon 10.5 mm Fisheye lens and my SB-400 flash, just in case, as well as a bean bag for resting my camera for long exposure shots. Other than that, I brought six 1 GB memory cards and my 12-inch PowerBook for storing my images.

That was the extent of my gear and I was able to get a lot of good shots. Sometimes photographers can go overboard when packing for trips. They tend to bring more gear than they need and end up lugging it around all over the place, without ever pulling it out of the bag. When I am packing, I make a promise to myself that if I put a piece of gear in my bag, I will use it. For this trip I did pretty good. I used everything except the SB-400, but that was a “just in case” item anyway.

So, the next time you go on a trip, pack only what you will use. Remember, it isn’t the gear that makes the photograph, it’s the photographer. If you want to see the photographs I took while on vacation, you can check out my flickr photostream. Enjoy!