Traveling with Gear ’24

Traveling is a fun and exciting aspect of our photography! Reaching our destination by plane for many is scary because of the unknown. If we expose the unknown though and go into it with eyes wide open and prepared, your worries will be back to just the normal, on time departures and making your connection. And that’s where traveling with gear starts and most of our decisions lie so lets look at that first.

I’m very fortunate being able to travel to some location of my liking each month which means jumping on a plane. Having to start and end my travels for the past thirty years at a “feeder” airport means I have to get to a hub to make a connection to get to my final destination. This has made me very aware of taking my gear and dealing with overheads/carryon restrictions as well as checked luggage rules. One of the first things I learned first hand was, going for the cheapest fares meant the great amount of stress when it comes to my gear which brings me to my first suggestion, pick an airline and register in their loyalty program PDQ! Because of my travels and feeder airport, United was my choice and they have taken good care of me and more importantly, my gear all these years. Yes, there has been a couple of bumps along the way but that goes with air travel. My second word of advice, always travel with a smile!

Being a Premiere with United pays dividends for my gear. When I pick my flights, I get on the first flight of the day so I’m early in the system and then I avoid puddle jumpers. This sometimes means paying more money but I don’t have to stress about my gear so worth the price to me. Being Premiere means boarding first so I don’t have to worry about overhead space. Before I was Premiere, I paid extra to board early and in that process, I became Premiere faster. In the beginning, I sweated out the 50lbs weight limit for checked luggage but it was a good life lesson. Now that I have the status I can have 3, 70lbs checked bags at no cost, I rarely take advantage of that. One of the nice features of flying United is their app which permits me to track my luggage from the moment it’s in their possession. You want to look at your local airport, figure out the carrier that works best for you and work the system to remove the stress from flying with your gear.

I carryon my camera bodies / lenses and put all the rest in my check luggage. That means exactly what it says, either the ThinkTank Airport Security or Advantage XT (not pictured) or Mindshift MP-1v2 (photopack of my design just for this purpose) have just bodies and lenses in them and nothing else. You can see how I pack my gear in these bags on my YouTube channel. Chargers, cables, spare batteries, tripod, flashes, all go in my checked luggage. My MacBook Pro and SSD drives go as carryon in the Bagsmart Briefcase.

I have depended on the Eagle Creek Trunk 36″ for decades, this is my third one (their warranty repair is amazing!). They are simply the best! The checked in luggage which normally weighs in between 60-65lbs (I have a 70lbs per bag limit) will have all the support camera gear mentioned above not in the carryon, tripod and other personal belongings. I pack my checked luggage thinking it will be scanned, as it better be, by security. This means that I pack thinking vertically. An example is a book, I don’t lie it flat in the luggage but on its spin. So when scanned, there is not a dense brick but narrow spin. The same goes for batteries, flashes, anything that could make a big signature in the scan. I can’t remember the last time my bag required a hand security check.

And that’s it. I keep it real simple which also helps elevate the stress of air travel. Have I ever had my gear damaged in my travels? Knock on wood, I have not. Has my checked luggage ever been “lost”? Never lost but delayed a flight or two. The funny thing, the delayed luggage has always seemed to be on the homeward bound flight so no big deal. Flying 1k miles a year, I have lots of practice flying with my gear. I hope this help you come up with a strategy for stress free travel with gear in 2024.