The style of photography reflects one's personality and the value he pursued.
I am just a moderate armature photographer. I haven’t attended any formal course. I just learn taking pictures from the technique presented in the Internet. I found the material is more practical and details enough for me. For certain scientific matter I will refer to the right books. Actually I am not very professional at Photography. However I like to think hard to compose every frame of picture during travel. It is a personal mastery of performing well at each shot to control the outcome. Most of the time I force myself not using P mode (Fully Auto exposure), though this takes more time before firing. I practice manual mode and wish to prove my concept of framing and exposure. This sometimes doesn’t work but occasionally it is a great satisfaction if I frozen the desired mood of a scene in the journey that contain my visionary. I love independent travel. But I don’t like taking movie or DV. I have tried using DV once during the travel. I found I miss the place if I visiting there with the DV always sticking in front of my eyes. Then the still picture cameras become my only tools of recording. The highest the quality of your tools, the more joy and excitement you would have in the travel. Because you will have high expectation in your pictures. You don’t know the final result until the rolls are developed. This is the challenge and the reason why I love analog film so much, rather than digital. I love the decision making process of shooting in addition to just locking the view on the film. I also bring a SONY 717 DC but I seldom use it in traveling. I started photography at 16 with a Nikon point and shoot camera of which I forgot the model number. At that time I realized the incapability of such a simple machine to cover all lighting conditions and angle. But at that age I hadn't think of developing my skill. I had many friends whose love photography in the 80’s. So I had many chances to borrow great cameras, without thinking of buying one for my own use. Although I forgot some model numbers, I still remembered what I had played with: Canon SLR, mechanical shutter, FD mount; Minolta SLR ,electronic shutter; Nikon FM2 (three bodies); Nikon FE2; Rollie twin lenses, 120 format. I cannot remember which lenses exactly I had used but most of them were primes. However at that age I couldn’t differentiate the quality of those brands. I just satisfied in using different camera. Later I knew a journalist friend. I learnt his way of taking pictures and discover that my weakness was composing, or framing. He let me use his whole set of camera. I then impressed by the punchy result of fast lenses. The equipment list was: Nikon F3 Press body, High Eye-Point Titanium Prism, MD4 motor, 50mm f/1.2, 105mm f/2.5 and 20mm f/2, with several Cokin P series graduate and warming/cooling filters. The images taken by those great lenses were sharp and high contrast. The control was excellent over all those equipment I had used. Although the images were less sharp with filter on, the creation of using filters was fun. Thus my first purchasing of camera was triggered. After discussion with many friends, my best strategy was to buy the Nikon body, choosing the next best to F3P, since I could still borrow great Nikon optics from a large Nikon users/friends community. Then I bought a Nikon F2AS accompany with a manual 28mm f/2.8. I love landscape so this was my optimal basic lens/body combination. This set of equipment served me for some years until the auto focus system arrived........ Thanks F2, you are so nice. Now my current system is built around the Canon EOS5 with vertical grip. This body is great in performance-to-money ratio. My lens list are: 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5, although this prosumer grade zoom is noticed slight distortion, the angle range is best suit to my requirement during travel. I bought the a 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 before I own the 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5. This 28-105mm prosumer grade zoom lens is sharp and compact enough for both my daily and travel use. Since my recent travel are mainly focusing on mountain hiking, so I need a wider zoom and I then use the 24-85mm instead of 28-105mm in my recent trips. I have a 70-200mm constant f/2.8 L zoom. I love this L lens for its sharpness, though it would be less sharp at wide open at f/2.8 and rather heavy in travel. Many of my important shots are done by this lens so in my travelling this lens is a must pick item. I love mountain hiking so sometime I just bring a serious point and shot camera. I use Ricoh GR1 and GR21 depending on the state of travelling. These cameras sometimes is more sharp then Canon and the colour is more sweet than the Canon L lens. For the filter I always put Heliopan UV or Contax L37 or Nikon UV41 filters on my lens for protection, while I would sometimes put on Cokin 81A warm, ND8 soft grad or even red intensifiers. I love the traditional A-TTL flash rather than the annoying pre-flash of E-TTL flash. So I attach a EZ540 GN35 flash on top of the EOS5. I also have a auto Metz GN28. The Metz is extremely neutral while the Canon EZ540 is a bit warm but actually very peaseful color so I keep both flashes. For the leg I use Manfrotto 308 Pro-ball head, 055CLB tripod and 479-4 monopod. These form my basic support in travel. I use Lowepro Street and Field bag to bring all the camera stuffs. Although slide film has more accurate color, I still use print film because my Kodak projector made me some trouble at home since DoDo is afraid of dark environment. Maybe some years later I could project slide film at home. For silde I use Velvia 50 and Provia 100. Print film I use Reala 100, NPC160, NPR400 and Kodak PJ800. I prefer Fuji except its Professional 800 which is always wash out the color. Kodak is outstanding in the 800 arena. Sometime using Kodak PJ400 is fun because the color is very saturate but a bit shifting from the actual. Reala has punchy color so in use in my most landscape shot. NPC160 is accurate in color and more sharper than Reala I found. But if I want more wonderful color I would use Reala instead of NPC160. NPR400 is better than the Kodak counterpart PJ400 but in fact I found they are of different things. The use of which one is depending on situation.