A writers guide to what to take on your travels.

Many people like to keep their friends and fam­il­ies updated when trav­el­ling by using the power of the inter­net.  Email and Face­book are fine sys­tems that allow trav­el­lers to pass on news of the wider world in simple bite size chunks, but these are not enough.  Trav­el­lers are often away for longer peri­ods of time and have much more to say in the forms of pic­tures as well as words and even film.  The mul­ti­me­dia rich records of travel can­not eas­ily be emailed without send­ing large files that clog up mul­tiple inboxes.  Neither can you attach a movie to a postcard!

Why wait until you are back to show you fam­ily your pic­tures and film?  Why not let them exper­i­ence the joy of trav­el­ling along­side you in a way that will endure?

You can!  The secret is to have the right kit with you – so that you can blog your way around the world.

My own jour­neys around the world are chron­icled here at outsidecontext.com and my fam­ily, friends and the wider web based world can and do read all about it.  In order to best achieve this I knew I needed a pro­fes­sional travel blog­gers kit.  Here is what I use to keep outsidecontext.com up and func­tion­ing and how I use it.

1. A Laptop Com­puter.  I use a Sam­sung Q45Red laptop in my travels. 

This small 12ich model has exactly the right bal­ance to blog on the web while trav­el­ling.  It is power­ful enough to run the demand­ing soft­ware needed to pro­duce films and yet small enough to fit in a light back­pack.  While there is much debate about the car­ry­ing of a laptop versus the use of web cafés – I think that the advant­ages far out­weigh the draw­backs.  My Q45 comes with a large 120GB hard drive that is bril­liant for back­ing up my film and photo’s.  I have also installed the power­ful film mak­ing soft­ware known as Sony Vegas Pro 8.  This soft­ware requires a cer­tain res­ol­u­tion to run and the pro­duc­tion of even small films uses much in the way of the sys­tems RAM.  I had ori­gin­ally star­ted with a ASUS EEEPC, but this was simply not power­ful enough.  One bal­an­cing bene­fit of a 12inch model is that it comes with a very good key­board and this is again vital to the pro­duc­tion of fluid writ­ing and not get­ting a hand cramp!  I would much rather spend my time out in the coun­try I am vis­it­ing; exper­i­en­cing the people and the place; than stuck in an unin­spir­ing web café.  Also, and very simply, web cafes are only in cit­ies and the lar­ger towns.  It can be many days or even weeks before you can get to one and by then the inspir­a­tion may be gone. With your own laptop you can blog a little or a lot.  You can blog up a moun­tain or knee deep in snow.  You can think of an idea and reach for the means to con­vert it to a win­ning article.

Other choices: ACER Aspire One.  Cesca uses this laptop for her blog­ging and it is almost able to keep up with the Sam­sung with the bene­fit of being only 9inches in width.

2. A Very Good Cam­era.  Our choice of travel cam­era is the excel­lent Canon 40D. 

This cam­era is way above the stand­ard digital snap­per and more costly, but that cost is more than born out when you can pro­duce images of such high qual­ity.  Com­pare the fol­low­ing examples:

The first image was taken on a small and simple digital cam­era, while the second was taken on the Canon 40DDigital SLR (DSLR).  The dif­fer­ence is imme­di­ate.  If you want to take images that excite the read­ers of your journal you must use a high end cam­era and take the time to learn to use it.  Canon do sev­eral appro­pri­ate mod­els.  The 450D is the new pro’sumer entry level cam­era and is an excel­lent bal­ance point if stuck for the fin­ances to go higher.  If you are a ser­i­ous pho­to­grapher then the new Canon 50Dis def­in­itely your choice. 

Among the many bene­fits of a high end cam­era are the abil­ity to focus on a high zoom and the abil­ity to change the lens accord­ing to the situ­ation.  So for example the fol­low­ing two shots were taken on the same camera:

While both of these images are taken of objects close up, the left one is highly zoomed in using a Sigmalens and the right one is zoomed out wide-angle using a Canon lens.  This flex­ib­il­ity is one of the many ways that a DSLR is vital to good travel writ­ing.  No small digital will be able to rep­lic­ate either image. 

But what about situ­ations when the bulk of a DSLR will not work?  Like a party or other place where a large cam­era will inter­fere?  In those situ­ations my sug­ges­tion is to use the cam­era that is built into your mobile phone.  Mobile phone snap­pers are always great for tight situ­ations and ultra light plus you will always have your phone on you.  These are designed to snap people close up and for that they excel. They how­ever are no good when try­ing to take land­scapes.  Con­sider this example:

The left image was taken dur­ing bright sun­shine and the poor mobile phone cam­era just couldn’t cope with the con­trast whereas the right image is close and easy for the same mobile phone cam­era to capture.

Other choices:  Nikon run a range of DSLR’s that rival Can­ons.  It is simply a mat­ter of pick­ing a brand and learn­ing it – there is no great qual­ity difference.

3. A Good Cam­corder.  My film cam­era is the Canon HG10 

This is a bril­liant choice for the travel blog­ger.  It has a very large 20GB hard drive built in and can store 9 hours of film before need­ing to be backed up.  It also has been con­sist­ently reviewed as hav­ing a zoom of a more advanced cam­era.  This is a vital ingredi­ent to being able to make inter­est­ing foot­age that you can then later turn into win­ning films.  The qual­ity of the images is import­ant, but keep in mind that you will be upload­ing only com­pressed foot­age, so I leave the cam­corder on “good” qual­ity and not high defin­i­tion.  Due to the nature of inter­net video being so highly com­pressed a simple setup can pay the same dividends as a much more expens­ive rig.  I use YouTube.com to upload my final films and this is because of its wide prom­in­ence and lax require­ments.  I like to add music from my iTunes col­lec­tion to the films I pro­duce and many upload­ing sites will not let you get away with copy­righted music.  You­Tube is dif­fer­ent – at least for the moment.  In shoot­ing my foot­age I use a num­ber of simple aids.  Firstly I try and take a wide shot, cov­er­ing the whole film area, before I do any zoom­ing or pan­ning into close-ups.  Secondly when I move the cam­era to a totally new loc­a­tion I take a short 2 second clip.  Thus when I am sort­ing the files later I can tell which files go with which sec­tion as they are brack­eted by small files at either side.  I always try and brace my cam­era against a none mov­ing object, but where this isn’t pos­sible I use a tight sling to assist in redu­cing cam­era shake.  If you are think­ing of film­ing people a tri­pod or sim­ilar is a good idea as is an external micro­phone.  Once the film­ing is over and the files trans­ferred to your com­puter you will need some soft­ware to cut the raw foot­age into a film proper and render that in a format that is best for YouTube.com or whatever is your choice of video host.  This is out­side the remit of this art­icle and I will address it another time.  Suf­fice to say that with a proper cam­era the foot­age will not simply trans­fer to Win­dows Movie Maker!

Other choices:  Panasonic also do equi­val­ent camera’s, which are very good.  How­ever, I do recom­mend stay­ing away from the Sony’s.  Again this per­sonal choice, but born out in my test­ing.  This is an area that is under­go­ing a large amount of devel­op­ment and new types of model are com­ing in the near future.

4. Stor­age. All this digital foot­age and images is going to need stor­ing while you travel. 

I use a couple of port­able hard drives for my stor­age and recom­mend the Free­com Tough­Driveas this type are USB 2 (read much faster than USB 1) and do not require a sep­ar­ate power source. Moreover, this model comes with a rub­ber­ised cover that pro­tects the sys­tem from the knocks and abuse you will no doubt inflict upon it while travelling!

Other choices:  The import­ant thing is that you pur­chase a stor­age device that is reli­able.  Too many digital stor­age keys and backup drives are not designed for longer term stor­age. The top makes are Cru­cial or Sony for keys and LaCie or Free­com for drives.

5. A Diary. 

While all the items up until now have required elec­tri­city to run there is yet to be a fully solar powered laptop or cam­era.  Laptops will run out of power, use up their bat­ter­ies and some­times simply stop work­ing.  Also a good diary is vital to remem­ber­ing where you went and when, some­thing that your mind can play tricks on you about!  I use the Mole­skine Pocket Weekly Note­book Soft: 18 Months,which has all sorts of fea­tures.  The most use­ful of which is the abil­ity to plan the jour­ney on the maps included, and the itin­er­ary pages.  I don’t fill in the days in any great detail; it is just an aide to memory.

Other choices:  A simple note­book will suf­fice, but do look at the Molskine’s – it was good enough for Hemingway!

6. A Good Pen.  The choice of pen is some­thing that can­not be ignored. 

Your per­sonal writ­ing arm should be always within easy reach, be able to write on any­thing from fridge doors to slips of paper.  It must be very reli­able and not able to leak all over your equip­ment.  To that end I recom­mend the Fisher Space Pen. I always have the abil­ity to write with me and the Space Pen’s bul­let shape slots into my wal­let and is there whenever I need it.  Its pres­sur­ised ink is able to write at any angle even upside down and will never stop work­ing up until it is run out.

Other choices: A pen is a pen, but the Paper­Mate gel inks are very good.

7. A Bag (to keep every thing in com­fort­ably.) 

It is no use hav­ing all the above unless you can actu­ally carry in on your world­wide adven­tures!  I use the Crumpler Dark Side bag to hold all my equip­ment.  It has a laptop sleeve in the back and a cam­era sec­tion in an easy to reach lower pocket.  I am able to carry everything in this list using this bag no mat­ter what the dis­tance.  The legendary Crumpler built qual­ity is reflec­ted in the price, but it is well worth the extra cost in that it wont break or fall apart on you no mat­ter what!

Other choices: The Max­ped­i­tion range of bags are indes­truct­ible and very well appoin­ted.  Other spe­cial­ist bag makers, such as LowePro, are good but can draw unwanted attention.

8. Read­ing Mat­ter.  Trav­el­ling in this world is for many reas­ons bey­ond simply get­ting from place to place.  Trav­el­ling is about open­ing your mind to new exper­i­ences, but not all of those may be out­side!  I always take a good selec­tion of books with me whenever trav­el­ling.  These are broken down into three sections:

I) Guides.  The guide of choice for Cesca, Ara­bella and I are the fant­astic selec­tion of books from Lonely Planet.  These books con­tain all the inform­a­tion about every­where you are going and what to do when you get there, but they also encour­age you to explore out­side the “bubble” (essen­tial to good writ­ing).  The guides are on many dif­fer­ent sub­jects and not just simply by country.

One other import­ant guide book to con­sider is the WWOOF­ing book.  Will­ing Work­ers On Organic Farms is a col­lect­ive organ­isa­tion that enables trav­el­lers to pick up some work in exchange for free room and board.  This is often out in the coun­tryside and in places out­side an tour group. This is one of the very best ways to meet “real” people and not just other trav­el­lers.  WWOOF­ing is also one of the best ways to drive your inspir­a­tion.  Too many travel blogs are inside the travel “bubble” – where one per­sons exper­i­ence is much the same as another’s.  A good rule of thumb is that if more than 10 people are exper­i­en­cing the view or object with you then you are in the “bubble”.  WWOOF­ing def­in­itely gets you out of this trap and your writ­ing will bene­fit (as will your tan!)

ii) Inspir­a­tion.  I have a con­stant need to renew my think­ing and inspir­a­tion.  Often see­ing new vis­tas with a fresh mind set enables me to write more inter­est­ing prose.  There­fore I always take some books on philo­sophy with me whenever trav­el­ling.  My cur­rent ones include works from Dr. Suzuki and Alan Watts.  How­ever this is a sub­ject­ive list so whatever works for you.

iii) Clas­sics.  I never leave home without at least 10 books that I have liked a lot.  Clas­sics I have loved for years and the latest books from my favour­ite authors.  How can I carry such a load?  Simple!  I use audiobooks from Audible.co.uk   By listen­ing to the book rather than read­ing it I save massive amounts of space in my bags, but also can listen while exper­i­en­cing the world around me.  Noth­ing livens up a trek into the wilds more than a good book.  Aud­ible is an excel­lent choice for audiobooks as a simple sub­scrip­tion enables you to down­load up to 3 books a month.

9. Soft­ware.  For me a good pro­gram should be free.  It should also be light in both memory and space needed.  I have many pro­grams open at once and RAM is at a premium.  The faster and lighter the bet­ter!  If using Win­dows as your plat­form I recom­mend the fol­low­ing software:

Win­dows Live Writer Beta.  This blog­ging plat­form is the choice of many who even hate Microsoft.  It is a unfor­tu­nate law that Microsoft makes great applic­a­tions, but ter­rible oper­at­ing sys­tems.  Live Writer con­nects to almost any blog­ging plat­form and has many fea­tures not found in oth­ers.  It is a light foot­print on the sys­tem and not a sys­tems hog.  It also down­loads your blog­ging theme so that you can look at an entry before post­ing and see how it will look live.  I have used it for years and can’t recom­mend it enough.  The beta ver­sion is very stable and has many fea­tures not found in the cur­rent release.

Paint.net.  The use of high end photo soft­ware is always a toss up.  Pho­toshop is bet­ter than any­thing else but it also takes years to learn prop­erly.  If you are simply present­ing pho­tos to use on the web and mak­ing the odd graphic for the page then a light pro­gram is best.  Paint.net is a free pro­gram and very robust.  It is also a light footprint.

Google Chrome.  When check­ing your web­site, its per­form­ance and who is link­ing to it you will have many tabs open as stand­ard.  In other browsers each tab takes a memory chunk that is not erased (killed) when the tab is closed.  Fast is the best in browsers and thus I use Google’s Chrome.  Chrome is new and still in the mak­ing, but its per­form­ance is light years ahead of Fire­fox and when a tab is closed the RAM comes back!

FileZ­illa FTP.  This free soft­ware is my choice for the FTP’ing of files up to my server.  Not neces­sar­ily needed but being able to take a full backup of your site is import­ant to get­ting a good nights sleep!  If using Word­press you may also be using the excel­lent Auto­matic update plug-in.  If so, the last thing you want is the site being broken dur­ing this pro­cess.  Being able to FTP off the files is vital.  FileZ­illa also self updates.

Sony Vegas Pro 8.  This is the only paid applic­a­tion that I use.  The free video cre­ation sys­tems are simply not as good, as power­ful or as easy to use as Vegas.  Pro­fes­sional soft­ware is a per­sonal choice, but I would never go back to a lesser software.

Other choices:  Mac users have it easy with their soft­ware.  Many of the fea­tures are in the pack­age iLife.

So there you have it.  With these items stuffed in your travel bags your will be able to pro blog your way around the world!  Here they all are – along with everything else – in my bags:

If you feel I have missed some­thing vital in this list – PLEASE leave me a com­ment and I will incor­por­ate your suggestions!

Check back again soon for another “Kit List”!

Regards,

Basho

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