And that was my time in Paris, on the last night I met up with my new Parisian friends, it was a great way to end my stay in Paris and a great way to end my trip and my time away for the year.
2014 was the most memorable year to date, so many experiences, so many new people met, I cannot wait to do it all again this year (2015).
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Scott Pedder and Dale Moscatt of Australian Rally Championship fame have made their debut together in the World Rally Championship.
Competing in a Ford Fiesta R5 prepared by RMC Motorsport, Scott and Dale recently tackled the newly formatted Rally de Portugal, here are just some of my images of Scott during the event, unfortunately an off during Heat 1 and mechanical issues during Heat 3 meant Scott’s first WRC outing wasnt all he had hoped for, nonetheless he is back in action this week in Italy for Rally di Italia Sardinia, check back for a feature on Scott’s efforts after each round, with perhaps some behind the scenes images of the team.
More of this amazing city, there are no words that can describe how I felt in this city, it was like coming home and around every corner my heart would skip a beat, I have to say, I am in love with you Paris.
The famous Berthillon Ice Cream parlor, the shop and owner have been around for quite a while I was told only serving the freshest in season sorbet flavours, yum!!.
A Cafe Et Lait just before I walked through Luxembourg Gardens.
Its like … hmm perhaps the Botanical Gardens in Sydney … maybe Hyde Park … maybe Central Park in New York… All i know is I could sit here for days, it seems most people do 😉
The Palais du Luxembourg.
Enjoying the warm sun and the peaceful tranquility of the gardens.
Hey you have to right?
This loively elderly couple stood there like this for no joke 20min, I waited for in the hope they would hold hands, turn to each other and look in to each others eyes, but no, they seemed mesmerized by the birds 🙂
The top of Paris, the Montparnasse Tower where you can see for 50miles on a clear day.
Not so clear a day, all the same, WOW!!! but freezing.
After almost a week my first glimpse of the royal higness, the pièce de résistance, the main event, the pretty lady, The old girl, the Eiffel Tower.
I had seen it before, had been up to the top before but never really walked around the bottom, so that I did.
And a view I have never seen before.
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After a couple of days in the magical city and a few late nights walking around taking photos I decided to have a bit of a lazy day, my first stop was my favourite coffee shop were I had my first duck meal, damn sooooo good.
After spending a few hours enjoying lunch and filling up on Cafe et laiT I made my way across the Seine to Notre Dam. I am not architecture connoisseur but this place really is special, no matter where you go where you can see it it is impressive.
There is no mistaking that Paris is the city of Love, its everywhere.
One way to remove tourists from images? find a hedge, get low and shoot high and BAM I had the place to myself :).
everybody loves a selfie in Paris.
I had to do it :).
and another.
Stalls line the Seine River with people selling anything you can imagine, from Paris merchandise to 100 year old books.
A boat ride down the Seine is a special moment for so many.
The famous Pont des Arts or better known as the‘Love Locks’ bridge, couples place padlocks on the bridge to celebrate their love, this has caused a few problems in Paris over the last few years with a bridge collapsing from the weight, the local councils have removed quite a few, the problem now though is that people are placing locks on other monuments around the city.
If you come to Paris you have to come here, sit and watch the people go by, this and the Eiffel Tower I found to be one of the busier parts of the city.
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In less than a week I leave for 3 months away from home, as I write this I have already left home and am in Canberra, from here I fly to Europe for 31 days, I then fly back to Australia to Brisbane for a week of the ARC, from there I fly back to Europe for 45 days and then I finally fly home to Sydney the first week in August, it doesn’t stop there though, the very next day I fly to Alice Springs for 3 weeks, my point here is, I need to consider two important things, 1. all the flying I will be doing, in and out of planes, airports, taxis, airline staff I will have to deal with and the second, that I need to have everything for a 3+ month stint away from home.
Last year my problem areas were, I took to much stuff, I had to deal with airline staff, let me just say it is more often than not a real struggle, lastly my carry-on bags were just to heavy, so this year I have managed to condense most of my gear and go smaller with my carry-on baggage, the downside or upside depends on which way you look at it is that I have gained an extra checked bag, omg you are saying what about the fees, well here is the trick, all my flights except 2 internal European flights allow 30kg and multiple bags, as long as you keep under the 30kg limit, that’s easy and much easier when you can split it between two bags, for the two internal Europe flights, 1 I can leave a bag with some friends and pick up when I come back to that city and the 2nd its only 30EUR for an extra bag if I booked and paid for it at the time of buying the ticket, so much cheaper than if I get to the airport and so much safer than if they tried to make me check in my heavy backpack.
My other strategy this year which may seem silly but I think it will work in my favour, I have packed my new Mindshift Gear 180 Rotation PRO bag in my checked duffle, why? well it attracts attention, just like my Lowepro 400AW did last year, having the luxury of 30kg spread across 2 bags meant I could easily pack the backpack, which in turn meant I could take my small ThinkTankPhoto Airport Airstream roller bag, a winner for cramming a hell of a lot of gear in, a winner for looking a lot smaller, in fact looking quite a lot small than the carry-on bag limit and the saving my back from carrying around heavy bags at airports.
Now to the actual gear and some of my tricks.
Gear Tip
The age old question for photographers, take this, take that, remove this, remove that, add this, add that, hell with it I’ll just take it all. The problem with this is you just cant, when it comes to traveling with gear you rally have to take a different approach and its a new approach for me.
The first step is unconventional but I think it will pay off, just stick with me.
You need to jump on your computer and start looking at your images, actually lets lay it out step by step.
Open Adobe Lightroom (thats what I use), you can use whatever software you are comfortable with, it just needs to be able to sort by EXIF data, EXIF data? yes, so here goes.
In Lightroom go to your Library Module, then click on the folder that has your images from your last trip, make sure they are all visible as thumbnails, if you had a big trip you might have thousands of images
Click on the Filter title just above the thumbnails, you should see ‘Text | Attribute | Metadata | None’
Click on the ‘metadata’ title, you will see a 4 tab section drop down
Click on the right hand side of one of the tabs, there is a small arrow and it should bring up a set of camera settings, you need to choose ‘Lens’, what this does is filter all the images by Lens
The result? you guessed it, you can see which lenses you used the most on your trip, for me what this meant was I was able to eliminate the lenses I used very little or if at all, I removed 3 of the 6 lenses I was taking with me, 50mm 1.2L, 35mm 1.4L and the 300mm 2.8L, a saving of well over 3.5kg, for me that could be the difference between being harassed at an airport or not.
For anyone that has traveled with gear they can attest to this, its frustrating, annoying and downright nerve raking, you just don’t know if you are going to come up against someone who just wont let you on unless you check your bag and we don’t want to do that.
Clothes/Laundry Tip
That’s my main Gear Travel Tip, with everything else I have found the best thing to do is do a little research about where you are going and if there are any laundry services near you, if there are I can safely reduce the amount of clothes I take because I know I can get them cleaned, and in Europe its damn cheap, in Portugal last year I had from memory 6-7kg dry cleaned (I wasnt able to wash clothes for 2 weeks) and cost 15€, that’s less than 2€ per kg, try that here? crazy expensive.
Clothing Tip 2
Take a big jacket with you, even if you are traveling to somewhere hot, you are not bringing the the jacket to wear, you will be using it as another carry-on item, yup, the perfect way to get your gear on if you have already been busted or you feel like you might be. You need to make sure the jacket either has a lot of deep pockets or in my case, my jacket has an internal zipper that gets in between the outer layer and inner lining layer, you know the next stop, load up that jacket with anything and everything, I preempted this action so I made sure the lenses that I was going to throw in were either in lens bags or in soft cases, all my external hard drives, cables, cords, Pocket Wizards, Go Pros, and any little heavy items, when I left Barcelona last year my jacket weighed almost 15kg, the airline staff so far haven’t said or done anything, it is essentially on your person and they can’t do much about it, of course if they want to they can but I know many photographers who do this.
Extra shoes
I wear my heavy hiking shoes, I also take a pair of athletic training shoes, grab a couple of carabiners place them between your laces and clip the shoes on to your bag, when I had trouble in Paris last year and the security weighed my bag I un-clipped the shoes to weigh it, security said nothing, a perfect way to carry an extra pair of shoes without it being counted in your checked luggage
“No you must check that bag sir it is to heavy’ – Tip
We have all seen videos of how baggage handlers handle some of our luggage, its not good, and when you know you have expensive gear being thrown around the way they do its a little scary, recently I found this video of the Airport Baggage automated system and its scary.
Scary right? there is also this video of the actual handlers, so here is my tip, I have transferred a few of these videos to my phone, its all well and good to tell the airline staff that you have expensive equipment in the bags but I feel if you show them these videos they may just step back and let you through, either that or make you pay a little for the extra baggage, if an airline asked me to pay an extra 50-100 per return flight (not each way) to allow me to have 20kg of hand luggage I would do it every single time, they dont want law suits, they dont want negative publicity because their baggage handlers mistreated your bags resulting in damaged goods, I know some people will argue that ‘them the rules’, give me a break, how can anyone take anything on as hand luggage with a weight restriction of 7 or 8kg? a laptop these days is close to 2kg, add an ipad, wallet, a camera body, and a lens and you are at 5 maybe 6kg? add a few misc items and you are over, and checking bags in is not worth the risk (refer videos above), anyway thats my tip and what I will do.
The Gear itself
➝ Canon 1DX (2)
➝ Eneloop AA Batteries (36)
➝ RRS – TA-3-LC-HK: Series 3 Leveling Base
➝ Canon 14mm F2.8L II
➝ AA Battery Charger
➝ RRS – MPR-192 & FAS Clamp
➝ Canon 16-35mm F4L
➝ Olympus Om-D EM-1
➝ RRS – B1DX-L L-Plate for Canon EOS-1D X
➝ Canon 24-70mm F2.8L II
➝ Olympus Om-D EM-5 MkII
➝ RRS – BOEM1-L Set: L-plate for OM-D E-M1
➝ Canon 70-200mm F2.8L IS II
➝ Olympus 12-40mm F2.8 PRO
➝ RRS – TVC-34L Tripod
➝ Go Pro Hero 3+ Black
➝ Olympus 40-150mm F2.8 PRO
➝ RRS – BH-55 LR Ballhead
➝ Apple MacBook Pro 15′
➝ Olympus 12mm F2.0
➝ RRS – TA-3-FS Foot Spikes
➝ Canon 600EX RT (2)
➝ Olympus 25mm F1.8
➝ 3LeggedThing Brian Carbon Fibre Tripod
➝ Canon St-E3
➝ Pocket Wizard III (3)
➝ Trigger Trap (Canon and Olympus triggers)
➝ Canon LP-E4 Battery (2)
➝ Pocket Wizard Remote Cable (2)
➝ K-Lite Selfie Stick
➝ RØDE Stereo Mic Pro
➝ LEE Filters (100mm/Seven5)
➝ Olympus RM-UC1 CABLE REMOTE
➝ RØDE smartLav+
➝ LEE Neutral Density .3, .6, .9 (2)
➝ iPad Mini
➝ WD 2TB Portable Hard Drive (3)
➝ LEE Little Stopper (2)
➝ Garmin GPS
➝ Samsung SSD 850 PRO 1TB
➝ LEE Big Stopper (2)
➝ Ram Mounts
➝ Leatherman Multitool
➝ LEE Circular Polariser (2)
➝ Canon Timer Remote Controller TC-80
Obviously some items are missing from these images, I wanted to keep them packed for now.
Now the important clothing
Clothing & Misc.
Freehands Fleece Silicone Screen Grip Palm-X
New Balance Runners
Merrell Moab Mid GTX
Jumpers (2)
Winter waterproof jacket
Kathmandu Long Johns
Northface cargo pants (3)
Kathmandu woolen (6)
Kathmandu ankle socks (6)
Underwaer (10)
T-Shirts (6)
Dress Shirts (2)
Rain Jacket
Aquatech Rain Jackets (3)
Aquatech Rain pants
Bathroom products
Various painkillers, health supplements.
All this, plus a few other items and the MindshiftGear bag all get crammed in to these two duffel bags, actually there is still plenty of room.
That’s what it takes for me to get my jobs done for 108 days around the world, for some its probably to much, for many probably not enough, you just have to make it work for yourself, keep your gear safe and make sure you can still do your job if your checked bags go missing.
Don’t forget to checkout our work on our social media pages, and if you need to contact us dont be shy.
Anywhere you walk in Barcelona you are sure to find a few things, restaurants, cafes, people enjoying themselves and street performers, La Ramblas is famous for it, the guys in the images below performed daily and always drew a crowd.
There is so much to see in Barcelona and my time was coming to an end, the architecture, the people, the parks, the nightlife, the restaurants, like most places I wish I had more time here.
The busy lane ways through the old town.
The Arc de Triumf in Barcelona, not quite as big as Paris but still a picture postcard.
One of the many parks in Barcelona, Ciutadella Park is attached to the Barcelona Zoo, I was there on a weekday and it seemed so was most of Barcelona, ok not quite but it was bustling, families, couples, friends all enjoying the sun and their company, funnily enough as I got to the entrance of the zoo it thinned out and at one point I was in an area all to myself, it was great to just sit relax and take it all in.
The Cascada Monumental, a fountain with a monument 🙂 well thats how I describe it, locals seemed to really enjoy it as did the tourists.
The streets of Barcelona as the day came to an end, as did my time here. I must say Barcelona was a real surprise, everyone I spoke to before I came here said I would love it, said it was a real party city full of life, I like to make my own opinions and well I cannot wait to come back.
And that brings an end to my adventures in Barcelona, a city that has everything, the people are amazing, the food is amazing, the history is amazing, it really was ama….. no stunning, awesome, a real surprise packet, get your bums to Barcelona the first opportunity you get.
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In October of last year I got to return to Paris in France where I spent 9 days exploring the city, the last time I was here was back in 1999 and I was so excited to come back.
I just come off a long trip around Europe. I started in Strasbourg France for the WRC Rallye de France, after spending a week in Strasbourg i spent two weeks driving through Switzerland, Austria and Germany, I then headed to Barcelona Spain for my last WRC event of the year Rally Spain, following the rally I spent another week in Barcelona, it was the first time I had been back since 1999 as well, so 5 weeks on the road it was great to finally have a home base and get back to Paris.
The plan was to see a few of the key sites of Paris but mainly to experience the parisian lifestyle, grab a fresh loaf of bread, some fresh cheese and a bottle of wine and watch the world go by on the Seine river, and that I did.
My accommodation was in the heart of Paris, just 15min walk to Notre Dam, 15min to the Louvre, 15min to the left bank, 15min to my favourite cafe, so you can see 15min to most places, it was about an hour to the Eiffel Tower, but that was fine as I really wanted to explore other parts of Paris.
The night I arrived I decided to splurge and went to a restaurant recommended by a few different people, L’Escargot Montorgueil, it was a quick walk from my apartment and was definitely worth the long wait and price tag, fresh Escargot, an amazing steak and complementary wines, it was great watching the staff carve the food in front of the patrons, really impressive wathcing them carve a duck, it was a perfect way to start my time in Paris.
The next few days I spent walking around the most beautiful city I have been to, all my memories came flooding back and I felt like I was home again.
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