Tony and Jo Ann's Travels: What to bring to Alaska to get good photos?

Over the winter, I started planning for the photography at Brooks Falls. I needed more zoom and researched telephoto lens on the market. Not wanting to spend $10,000 on a “hobby” lens, I finally settled on a new Sigma 50-500mm Telephoto Zoom Lens, which is effectively 750mm on my camera. It’s a big lens to me, but one of the smaller of the large zoom lens; 4.3 lbs by itself but it can be handheld and still get decent shots. Between my older Nikon D90 and this lens, I sacrificed speed, but I still get some great pictures and you just have to remember it’s a hobby not a career!

So, all winter I have practiced with this lens, determining what settings work well, practicing on birds in motion,

Osprey with fish at Wakodahatchee

as well as stationary birds

Tricolor Heron at Wakodahatchee

or nesting birds in Florida, trying to get interesting shots.

Great Blue Herons at Wakodahatchee

It was over the winter that we found several bird rookeries in Florida and I practiced there every week, becoming a birder along the way.

Great White Egret at Wakodahatchee trying to attract a mate.

Our trip was ultimately a month long and included a week on a Princess cruise. However, for us, hiking clothes, photo equipment and technology stuff was more important than formal wear, so we opted for hiking boots rather than high heels, Columbia tek shirts rather than dress shirts and rain slickers and packable down vests rather than sports coats. We still had TOO MUCH luggage, but with some creative storing of luggage along the way, it worked and we were happy.

In June when visiting my brother Bob in Richmond for Alec’s graduation, I entertained myself taking pictures of his resident hawk. After aiming up at a tree limb for 15 minutes with my 50-500 lens, waiting for the hawk to do something, I realized I couldn’t hold it for hours on end as I would need to for a 3 day trip to Brooks Falls. At that point, I knew that a tripod would be a must and had to look for a quick solution.

I opted for a travel tripod, which I later decided was a little too small for my lens fully extended. I also wanted a gimbal head on the tripod to be more flexible when wildlife was moving. I don't think I would have been able to get Bald Eagle in flight shots at Brooks Falls without it.

On the cruise I watched this poor man trying to photo whales with a ball head on a tripod, every time he got it readjusted - the whales had disappeared under the water. He was very frustrated. I was glad I opted for a small Jobu gimbal head that works perfect on the travel tripod and a welcome addition to my Florida setup. Tony’s my photosherpa schlepping my Florida tripod; however, he has limits as to just how much of stuff he will sherp!

There were a few big shooters at Brooks, including a video team making a Disney documentary. But surprisingly, my setup was in the top 10% and was manageable as compared to the big guy's monster lenses and tripods! Managing a larger tripod on the deck would have been very difficult with all those people, so compact was good.

So I thought some of my photographer friends might be interested in what I used to get the pictures of the bears. It’s a lot of stuff to schlepp around for a month. But we got some great pics and video and I used all the equipment at some point or another. Below is a picture of what was in my 21” carry-on which weighed about 30 lbs.

See the packing list below

Of course, for those people who don’t want to carry around 30 lbs of “stuff”, you can always get the same camera that we bought Crissy for her birthday, a Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ200.

With its f 2.8, 600 mm lens and its quick shot to shot ratio, Crissy used that the entire trip and had some beautiful pictures. Much lighter and flexible! I keep convincing myself my equipment is superior, but sometimes it’s hard to tell!

Here’s my packing list of photographic equipment; (2 cameras, 1 video camera and 1 smart phone):

Nikon D90 Camera

· portable Nikon battery charger