Almost a Digital Nomad

Whilst I used to travel a lot and may have been a digital nomad before the term was invent, i’m not really one anymore yet I still want to be able to edit and manage my photos anywhere I happen to be. HoweverI need a bit more power than smartphones and social media offer. I have a HP Spectre, a 2 in 1 style tablet/laptop and whilst I have travel with it many time before. This trip as first time it was my only computing option. It worked wonderfully.

I also limited the accessories I carried. Two identical backpack style hard drives for backups (rotated weekly) a wacom bambo stylus/pen. usb c to usb A and hdmi dongles, hdmi cable anf a wireless mouse and  usb c charger (not shown)/ The real magic is in the software, although I have lightroom installed I didn’t touch it once. I mainly used picasa to load my photo from an old SD card reader and Photo Mechanic to quickly review rate,cull and add metadata. I then select my best and dragged those on PhotoLemur (an AI based automated postprocessor from Skylum).This was usually time for a coffee, shower &/or get ready for dinner and generally only 5 minutes after inserting the SD card.

I only use Photo;emur to show what might be possible, although I did find often that I would use photolemur Jpeg as the image to upload to instagram and very occasionally flickr. Usually then I would use either On1 Photoraw (for stitched Panoramas) and Aurora HDR (for Bracketed HDR) and either to postprocess RAW files. If the place I was staying had a suit Big Screen TV with HDMI Port I was able to review and edit my photo larger, easier on my old eyes. I had downloaded a trial version of Skylum 3 but stop using it after 2 days because I was only playing and it didn’t offer me any capability I didn’t already have.

Of course I was dependant of WIfI being available to access the internet and sometimes that wifi was a biyt unreliable. I would say I wasn’t totally committed but I did manage to post a photo a day to flickr for my 365 project and keep Instagram clicking over. I was very happy with this very light weight yet powerful IT team in my backpack.

My (Repaired) Camera Bag

I have my much loved ThinkTank Mirroless Mover camera bag back in service (with a repaired zip). It is perfect for my little OMD 10 mkiii Olympus mirroless camera plus two extra  lenses. (I also acquired a forth lens along the way which also fitted in easily). It was never overcrowded and very light compared with carrying my older Pentax DSLR and just one lens.

The big bonus for me is I have enough room to carry an A3 sketch book (or two) and also my mini Cotman sketchers palette and a couple of pens and water brushes giving me the ability to sketch anytime I was out with my camera, which was always. Even if I just sat down for a coffee or waiting for a lunch order, I could sketch.

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Hervey Range Tea Rooms :: #sketches in #watercolour (#waterbrush & #cotmansketcherspocketbox) & #pencil

A post shared by Norm Hanson (@normhansonart) on Aug 17, 2019 at 5:00pm PDT

As I was only carrying one camera body I made sure I had my smartphone and the old but reliable pink FujiPix compact camera as backups (not required). Again I can report that I used everything I took (see my Flickr posts)

The small tripod is really small and just ok for my light Olympus, importantly it fits in my suitcase, as does the various chargers and cables on the pink microfiber cloth. I didn’t normally carry them around.

My slimmed down Art Kit

I thought I should recommence semi-regular blogging with a couple of short posts about the creative tools I took on my recent travels. Traveling out of a suitcase does put a big restriction on what you can reasonably include. Further on other trips I have carried items I never used.

This time I wanted everything to fit into the little red Pocket Backpack (it looks like a soft purse but expands out in a simple backpack. I had considered long and hard and decided to take a very sketch oriented set of tools (two palettes of watercolours, inktense blocks and pencils my watercolour brush roll, a roll of sketching pens & pencils and a variety of papers) and a small drawing board (see if you can find it). Whilst travelling on planes this fitted nicely at the base of my case but the rest of the trip was always on hand in the red backpack. I actually had a small extra sketch kit in my camera bag but that can wait till the next post.

I can report back that I used  all of it as some time and because everything as always at hand I used it often. You can see some of my work over at @normhansonart on instagram.

Travelling without free WiFi

_{Whilst access to WiFi is becoming pretty ubiquitous in most cities and tourist traps. Even if the hotel still charge too much, a trip to the local coffee shop (ok you have to wait a while for that captive log-in screen to load and then given a throw away email address) or steps of the local library will let you get on-line. Some towns like Freemantle have free WiFi zones. (for example this street artist was photographed on my phone and uploaded to Flickr using the free WiFi, elapsed time not even 2 minutes). Could the on-line life be any simpler?}

_{My travel kit, particularly the computer side, has become very small, light weight and portable (all based around the little HP Spectre 2-in-1) and accessories. This leaves the issue that the only way to communicate is via WiFi. Whilst my android phone can be a WiFi hot spot, I also now carry a neat little 4G WiFi modem, which is fast and has more & cheaper data capacity (data over the mobile phone network is still very expensive in Australia) This is great when the hotel are charging an arm & a leg for net access, or there just isn't WiFi available (such as at the beach or a tranquil picnic spot).}

_{However once you get off the beaten track, there is a lot of Australia with no wifi and little or no mobile phone coverage either. Be warned, intermittent mobile coverage is more frustrating for net access than none at all.}

_{So there is silence, the hustle and bustling modern world and social media will have to wait (or not even bother you at all). Life if simpler and you can wander around and just enjoy living. It’s quiet an experience, definitely worth a try, even if WiFi is available try pushing that WiFi slider to the left and turn it off for a day, an afternoon or even a couple of hours and get back to living.}

The Challenges of Blogging while Travelling.

My Endless Summer project should be giving me lots of content for this blog. Certainly there have been some considered post mainly around my art but the more routine posting of photos has suffered.

There are a few reasons.

1. When you are travelling, taking photos and sketching there isn't a lot of time left to blog.
2. My travels have been in poor low band width areas (eg NBN satelitte service in East Gippsland is pathetic).
3. My mobile phone was dying.
4. My 4G mobile WiFi modem often just refused to work (related to point 2, lowband width poor reception).
5. Instagram is easier to use.

I have replaced the phone, and this blog post is directly from it (the blogger app is still a bit tedious) but I'm not sure how to address the other issues. Keep tuned as I look for and hopefully find some solutions

Refining the Travelling Kit

This is my third endless summer trip and I am starting to refine the gear I am carting around. I can almost carry everything at once but normally I don’t have too, The backpack in which I carry two computers, (why two computers? why not) is fine for travelling on an airline, where one of the camera also goes in the backpack and the second camera (normally the Pentax) becomes my hand carried ba). The art gear travels in my luggage for flights.

In the field I leave the computer back in the room (or car) and just carry one of the cameras and the sketching gear, with papers (A4 or quarter watercolour sheet size) already taped to my A4 plus sized drawing board that fits inside the little red backpack.

For more established and longer sketching I have an A3 sized sketch board in the blue folio which takes half sized Watercolour paper, it also has a bolt on the underside that can screw into a tripod for a make shift portable easel. The blue folder also holds about half a dozen watercolor sheets and a couple of extra sketch book.