Chances are you will be going somewhere out of town before summer ends... And being the scrapbooker that you are, you’ll be bringing your camera with you, right? We don’t think you need help in taking the perfect summer shot. Our previous articles particularly on natural lighting was written just for that... and so was our most recent one about getting that perfect pose from your kids...

We wanted to help you with something else. We wanted to help you PACK the right and needed additional camera equipment for your trip. We figured that difference between a scrapbooker and a true-blue scraphead can be seen by the amount additional camera equipment that will be lugged in together with a digital camera.

We are not talking about size or array of additional equipment. One, great equipment can come even in the smallest of sizes and two, additional equipment can be so expensive it will make your wallet cry.
Oh! And we are also not taking over Din Cordero’s equipment-focused column! He’s the techie, we just shoot! However for this particular upload, there’s no escaping tackling equipment together with shooting pictures.

TRAVEL LIGHTLY with your digital point and shoot or even SLR camera. How can you get great scrappable photos when you travel heavy lugging so much equipment you can’t even move? If you have an SLR, make sure to bring your mid-range telephoto lens (70-200 mm) and one fixed wide angle lens (24 mm). With these two types of lenses you will be ready for effective people pictures and beautiful landscape and scenery photos. Of course, you don’t forget to bring your flash!

BRING YOUR TRIPOD or monopod with you – the lightweight kind – if you intend to be part of the pictures you’d be scrapping soon. Most pictures turn out blurry, off-focus, shaky. A tripod is the easiest way to eliminate all of that. There’s a “debate” going on between bringing a tripod/monopod with you versus just shooting at higher speeds. They both have their pros and cons. You can’t however beat having a tripod/monopod if your primary reason is to be in a picture. So there! On the other hand, if you’re traveling to the Banaue Rice Terraces and you’ll be trekking for hours, think twice. The tripod will feel 10x its weight by the time to reach the top. Think and weigh the pros and cons if there would be a bit of “heavy” traveling to where you are going.

STORAGE! Bring bigger capacity memory cards or several 512s or 1G cards with you if you will be out the entire day. If you have an video Ipod, all you would be needing is a cable (about P3K) and you can take as many photos as you want downloading them to your Ipod immediately and shooting again. Gravy: you get to view everything immediately too!
Bring extra batteries, recharger, power adopter (charging from the car, wallsocket, etc) just in case. Enough said.

ONE BAG! Limit yourself to one small, lightweight bag. Water repellent if you can help it and IF you’ll be shooting near water. If you have a point-and-shoot digital camera, have a small camera bag (PLEASE! WITH NO BIG BRAND LOGOS ANNOUNCING TO ALL BAG SNATCHERS THAT YOU ARE CARRYING A CAMERA! Use something low-key!) with pockets to put your extra batteries and your additional memory cards. If you have an SLR, have the bag hold you camera and your two lenses. If you have BOTH, keep your SLR bag and put your point-and-shoot in your pocket where you can easily grab and shoot. Beware of pick-pockets though!

CLEANING GEAR , anything to wipe the dust off easy your lens or smudges from your view finder like a lens cloth, a cloth for wiping down the outside of the camera and a bulb blower. Bring he small stuff to be able to keep your equipment decently clean from wear and tear.

THE MOST IMPORTANT: Finally, bring your SENSE OF HUMOR and your SENSE OF ADVENTURE AND FUN. Put down your camera every now and then and simply enjoy the moment. Scrappers in particular tend to forget that they can actually FEEL the essence of what they will be scrapping soon IF ONLY they will take the time to enjoy them. You CAN'T capture EVERY MOMENT, EVERY "surprise", EVERYTHING to your scrapping heart's desire. You can't play photo-god! RELAX! Please! (Paging all hard-core scrappers! You even color-coordinate the clothes of your family to match your latest favorite scrapping line! A-ha!)

Funny how scrappers sometimes try to hard to capture FUN and take so much time communicating it in their scrapped pages when they can actually live “FUN” and THEN communicate it much easily having experienced it.