Travelling Light with New Airline Fees

I have to say that the Think Tank Airport International has made travelling a lot easier on airplanes as I can really fill it with gear.

However, the recent changes to airline baggage fees have made it a little bit more difficult, and requires a lot more forethought. No longer can I easily check in my regular baggage and carry-on my photo gear without incurring expenses. And, being injured and unable to lift heavy things (i.e a bag filled with camera gear) makes it doubly hard. (And this wasn't a big production wedding requiring assistants, additional lights, and the ilk, but really small scale).

So, on my upcoming trip to shoot a wedding in a very enclosed location required a bit of thinking and pre-planning.

Normally, I would bring several camera bodies, a general zoom, a longer telephoto zoom, 3-4 flashes, Pocket wizards, and assorted accrutements, including a tripod.

This time around, I planned on going a lot lighter on gear. Luckily, the wedding locale (a local pub) had a website with gallery photos that allowed me to get a handle on what exactly the situation was going to look like. And it wasn't good -- extremely low ceiling (less than 7'), yellow tungsten lighting, reflective surfaces everywhere, several big screen t.vs in several locations, etc. And it was going to be a small intimate wedding (insofar as weddings go) and there was going to be a lot of movement. The tripod might be a deteriment.

so, I decided that a flash bracket and a cross fill light would probably be my best bet. The wedding was small, so I didn't need the longer telephoto, but opted for the (much) smaller and lighter primes instead. I also decided to chance one single camera body.

All of this fits neatly in the Think Tank along with my clothes (not taking much), and weighed half it's normal fully-packed weight. Then, my small carry-on could just be filled with the bare essentials for a long plane trip.