Traveling to Remote Places

General Thoughts

When traveling to remote places, it‘s important to bring everything with you, that you might be needing during your trip. If you run out of memory cards in the middle of nowhere, you‘ll have to start deleting photos one by one to free up some space. Even worse, if you forget to pack batteries for your camera, you won‘t be able to buy any replacements in a remote location.
We usually start preparing our trips weeks in advance and are working with our personal checklists, that we have developed over the years. This way, you‘ll still have time to replace anything that‘s not working anymore. Or to buy additional accessories you might need for your expedition. If you just happen to notice this the evening before your trip, it‘ll most likely be too late.

Batteries and Chargers

Will you be able to charge your batteries during your trip? If not, bringing extra batteries is key. But even if there should be electricity, keep in mind, that it might be unreliable. Remote lodges often operate on generators or solar panels. Sometimes, power is shut down at night, which happens to be the time, you usually would like to charge our batteries. So, it‘s always a good idea to bring some extra batteries, anyway.
If you are bringing different cameras, make sure that batteries and chargers are compatible with all cameras. Many cameras nowadays offer USB C charging. While this might work as a backup if your charger breaks, it‘s not usually the preferred method. First, it‘s usually slower than charging your batteries on an external charger. Second, in cold climates, your camera will probably be left outside or will need some time to acclimatize. Having an external charger will allow you to start charging, even if your camera is still deep frozen.

Memory Cards

In remote areas, there are no camera stores. But there will usually be plenty of wildlife and beautiful landscapes. Therefore, memory cards fill up quickly and you won‘t be able to buy additional ones. Therefore, bringing enough cards will be key. If your camera features two card slots, you might even consider saving the files to both cards simultaneously to have a backup, should on card fail. However, you’ll need twice the number of cards. Even if your camera just has one card slot, you should not be deleting photos as soon as you have transferred them to a backup device (e.g. a laptop or tablet). Keep your memory card as a backup.
This might sound expensive, and initially it is. But once you‘re back home, cards can safely be formatted and reused. Therefore, consider this a one time investment.
Just a brief note on memory cards in general: from the cheap 8GB cards to the high-end ultra fast 256 or even 512GB card, selecting the right cards is a real challenge. We‘ll discuss that in a separate post more in detail, but as a rule of thumb, except for the most advanced tasks like recording 8K video or shooting 30 frames per second continuously, you won‘t need the fastest (one therefore most expensive) cards.

Spare Camera

If your camera breaks during a remote expedition, you will have no option to repair or replace it. Sure, you could still take pictures with your smartphone. But if you are a bit more serious about your photography, this might still spoil your trip. Therefore, bringing a spare camera as a backup makes sense. This can be an older, smaller, cheaper camera. However, there are certain advantages of having two identical (or at least similar) cameras: they will be using the same batteries, memory cards, lenses etc.

Computer or Tablet

It depends on the nature of your trip, whether this is a good idea or not. If you won‘t have any electricity for your entire trip, you can easily leave your IT gear at home. However, if power (and possibly even an internet connection) will be available, bringing your laptop or tablet might be useful. First, and most important, this will allow you to download your photos from your memory cards and to effectively create a backup. Second, you can already start to sort through your photos. And third, you might already want to send photos to friends, post them on social media or share them with your fellow travelers.
A laptop computer is probably the most affordable option. But computers tend to be larger and heavier than tablets. On the other hand, there are applications, that will only run on Windows or Mac computers but not on tablets. Therefore, it really comes down to your needs and preferences. And to the baggage allowances when getting there.
We have been traveling with our iPad Pro for many years now. To us, it‘s the most lightweight and comfortable solution. But given the amount of storage you‘ll need for backup purposes, you’ll unfortunately end up buying one of the more expensive configurations.

Backup Your Photos

As a rule of thumb, you should always have at least one backup version of your photos. At home, this can be a backup drive or some cloud storage. But on remote expeditions, even if you happen to have some kind of internet connection, it won‘t offer the bandwidth to make cloud backups. Therefore, you need to find a way to backup your photos on the go.
There are several ways to achieve this:
The easiest, but also least secure, way is to use a camera with dual card slots and to simultaneously write your photos to both cards. This protects you from hardware failures. But if you drop your camera in the lake or from a cliff, your photos will be gone anyway.
Having a backup copy in a separate location is always a good idea. This can be your laptop or tablet, or a backup drive with a card slot. Chances are, that you won‘t loose your camera (with the memory cards) and your computer at the same time. However, this will only work, if you do not delete your photos from the memory cards when copying them onto your computer.
If you need to reuse your memory cards, make sure to make a backup from your computer. There are lightweight, affordable SSD drives that easily connect to your computer for backup purposes.

Other Useful Accessories

Water and air tight bags: To protect your gear from the elements. Or to wrap you camera air tight to acclimatize when bringing it from extremely cold temperatures inside.

USB sticks: To share photos with fellow travelers. Buy the smallest and cheapest ones, so they won‘t need to even return them to you.

Tripod: Even if you don’t regularly use a tripod at home, it might be useful on an expedition trip. What, if you can see that stars in the sky without any light pollution? Or if the aurora borealis is making a magical display in the sky? Or if you want to take a spectacular shot during the blue hour?
If your tripod requires a special kind of mounting system, e.g. the Arca Swiss mount, don‘t forget the adapters!

Lens and sensor cleaning tools: Your camera, lens and even your sensor will be collecting dust on your trips. Therefore, a soft cloth (for lenses) and an air blower (for cameras, lenses and sensors) are always useful.

GPS tracker: While most smartphones will do this, very few cameras are saving the GPS position with your photos. If that‘s important to you, you might be looking for a smartphone app, a standalone GPS tracker or even a satellite communicator to record your positions.

Camera bags: Camera bags are designed with the needs of photographers in mind. They are usually padded, have a flexible setup and offer plenty of pockets and zippers to stow your extra batteries, memory cards etc.