What Seven Continents Taught Me About Packing a Kit
Packing a kit for a shoot in a familiar climate close to home is a fundamentally different exercise than packing for a project on the other side of the world, in conditions I may have never personally worked in before. Shooting across all seven continents has forced me to rethink kit planning more times than I can count, and the lessons have generalized into a system I now use for every trip, regardless of destination.
The biggest lesson isn't about any specific piece of gear, it's about the mindset behind how I plan a kit in the first place. If you want the fuller system I use for gear and trip planning, it's part of a bigger framework in The Adventure Travel Photographer's Playbook.
Why a Fixed Kit List Doesn't Work Across Environments
Early in my career, I leaned toward a fairly fixed kit list, a consistent set of bodies, lenses, and accessories I'd bring on nearly every trip regardless of destination. That approach works fine when conditions stay reasonably similar across projects. It falls apart quickly once you're shooting everywhere from high-altitude cold to humid tropical heat to arid desert environments within the same year.
Each environment introduces its own specific risks and requirements that a generic kit doesn't account for. Extreme cold affects battery life and lens condensation in ways that a kit built for temperate conditions simply isn't prepared for. High humidity introduces fungus and moisture risk that a kit built for dry climates hasn't had to consider. A fixed kit list, however well-considered for one environment, is really only well-considered for that one environment.
Recognizing this pushed me to rebuild how I think about kit planning entirely, starting each trip from the specific conditions and requirements of that destination rather than defaulting to a standard list and making minor adjustments. That shift, from a fixed list with small tweaks to a conditions-first planning process, was the single biggest change in how reliably my gear has performed across genuinely different environments.
I also learned that environmental research needs to happen well before packing, not as an afterthought once bags are already half-packed. Understanding the specific climate, altitude, humidity, and access conditions of a destination in real detail, well ahead of the trip, gives enough lead time to actually source or adapt gear appropriately rather than improvising last-minute.
What Extreme Environments Have Taught Me Specifically
Cold, high-altitude environments taught me to think seriously about battery management in a way I hadn't needed to for most other conditions. Cold dramatically reduces battery performance, and a kit that doesn't account for that with extra batteries, careful battery storage close to body heat, and realistic expectations about shooting duration between charges will leave a photographer without power at exactly the wrong moment.
Humid, tropical environments taught me to take moisture and fungus protection far more seriously than I initially did. Gear that isn't actively protected in consistently humid conditions is genuinely at risk of internal fungus growth on lens elements over time, a slow, often invisible threat that a photographer working primarily in drier climates might never think seriously about until it's already caused real damage.
Dry, dusty environments taught me the importance of sealing gear against fine particulate matter that can work its way into moving parts and sensor areas far more aggressively than in most other conditions. What looks like a manageable amount of dust in the air can, over the course of a multi-day shoot, create real maintenance issues that simply don't show up the same way in cleaner environments.
Coastal and marine environments taught me to respect salt air and moisture as a genuinely corrosive, ongoing threat to gear, not just a one-time splash risk to avoid in the moment. Consistent exposure to salt air over multiple days requires an ongoing cleaning and protection routine that a single-exposure mindset doesn't adequately address.
The Redundancy Principle That Emerged From This
Across all these varied environments, one principle has held constant: redundancy matters more than almost any single piece of specialized gear. A backup body, backup batteries, backup memory cards, and backup ways to protect gear from the specific environmental threat of a given destination have saved projects more times than any single piece of specialized equipment ever has.
I think this lesson is easy to underweight before you've actually experienced a gear failure in a genuinely remote location, where there's no camera shop around the corner and no easy way to replace a critical piece of failed equipment mid-trip. Once you've experienced that scenario, or come close to it, the value of redundancy stops being an abstract principle and becomes an obvious, non-negotiable part of kit planning.
Redundancy doesn't mean bringing two of everything indiscriminately, weight and bulk matter enormously, especially on trips involving significant physical travel to reach a location. It means being deliberate about which specific failure points would be most catastrophic for a given project, and prioritizing backup capacity specifically around those failure points rather than trying to duplicate an entire kit.
I've refined this into a fairly consistent hierarchy across trips: camera bodies and memory cards get the most redundancy priority, since their failure is most catastrophic and hardest to work around in the field, followed by batteries and power management, followed by more specialized accessories that, while valuable, wouldn't end a shoot entirely if lost or damaged.
How I Plan Kit Weight Against Physical Demands
Shooting across seven continents has also meant shooting across an enormous range of physical demands, from relatively easy access locations to genuinely demanding high-altitude or physically strenuous terrain. Kit weight has to be planned against those specific physical demands, not against some generic standard of what a "complete" kit should include.
On physically demanding trips, I've learned to make real, deliberate tradeoffs, leaving behind gear that would be valuable in ideal conditions but isn't worth the physical cost of carrying it into genuinely demanding terrain. That means accepting some creative limitations in exchange for actually being able to move safely and effectively through the environment the shoot requires.
This tradeoff calculation has gotten more precise over years of experience, understanding not just what gear theoretically helps a shot, but what gear is actually worth its specific weight and bulk given the realistic physical demands of a given trip. That's a very different question than simply asking what gear would be nice to have available.
I also factor in how physical exertion itself affects shooting capability, not just gear capacity. A kit light enough to allow reasonable energy reserves for actually composing and executing strong shots, rather than one so heavy it leaves a photographer exhausted before the ideal shooting window even arrives, often produces better final results than a heavier, more theoretically complete kit would.
The Broader Mindset Shift This Produced
Beyond the specific technical lessons, shooting across such varied environments has produced a broader mindset shift in how I approach kit planning generally: starting from genuine humility about what a given environment might demand, rather than assuming past experience in other environments automatically transfers. Each new environment gets researched and planned for on its own terms.
I've also become far more comfortable adjusting a kit mid-trip when initial assumptions turn out to be wrong, rather than rigidly sticking to a pre-trip plan once real conditions reveal something the planning process didn't fully anticipate. That flexibility, treating the initial kit plan as a strong starting point rather than a fixed commitment, has saved more than a few projects from real trouble.
I think this adaptability is ultimately the most transferable lesson from years of varied environmental shooting, more transferable than any specific piece of gear advice. The specific environmental threats change from trip to trip, cold, humidity, dust, salt, altitude, but the underlying discipline of researching a destination's actual demands and planning deliberately around them, rather than defaulting to habit, stays constant across every single trip.
My honest advice to any photographer planning a trip to an unfamiliar environment is to research the specific environmental risks of that destination in real detail well before packing, and to build redundancy deliberately around the failure points that would be most catastrophic for that specific project, rather than trusting a generic, familiar kit list to hold up somewhere genuinely new.
How I Research a Destination Before Building the Kit List
Before packing for any unfamiliar destination, I spend real time researching the specific climate, altitude, and seasonal conditions I'll actually be working in, not just a general sense of the region but the specific conditions likely during the specific window of the trip. Conditions can vary enormously even within the same country or region depending on season and elevation, and generic regional knowledge isn't specific enough to plan a kit around reliably.
I also research the practical logistics of the destination itself, what gear is realistically available to buy or rent locally if something fails, how difficult and expensive it would be to ship a replacement part, how far the nearest camera-capable repair or supply option actually is from where I'll be working. That logistics research directly shapes how much redundancy I build into the kit before departure.
Talking to other photographers or guides who've worked in a specific destination before has become one of the most valuable research steps I take, since firsthand, recent experience often surfaces practical gear considerations that general climate research alone wouldn't reveal, small details about dust, humidity, or access that only someone who's actually worked there recently would know to mention.
I try to complete this research early enough in the trip planning process that there's genuine time to source or adapt gear appropriately, rather than discovering a critical gap in the kit plan too close to departure to reasonably address it. That lead time has made a real difference in how confidently I've been able to walk into genuinely unfamiliar environments over the years.
What I'd Tell a Photographer Planning Their First International Trip
Photographers preparing for their first trip to a genuinely unfamiliar environment often ask me what single piece of advice matters most, and my honest answer is to resist the urge to overpack out of anxiety about being unprepared. Overpacking driven by uncertainty often results in a kit that's both too heavy to manage well in the field and still somehow missing the specific redundancy that actually mattered for that destination.
I'd encourage a newer photographer to prioritize research and targeted redundancy over simply bringing more of everything, since a well-researched, deliberately redundant kit built around the specific risks of a destination will outperform a larger, less considered kit almost every time, while also being more manageable to actually carry and work with in the field.
I'd also encourage building in a realistic testing period with any new gear or environmental protection measures before a genuinely important trip, rather than trusting untested equipment or techniques for the first time in a remote, high-stakes location. A weatherproofing method or piece of gear that seems reliable in theory deserves a real trial run somewhere lower-stakes first.
Finally, I'd tell a newer photographer that this whole process gets easier with experience, not because the research burden disappears, but because pattern recognition develops over enough trips to different environments, and what once felt like an overwhelming amount of environmental variables to plan around eventually becomes a more intuitive, faster process built on real accumulated experience.
How Insurance and Documentation Fit Into International Kit Planning
Traveling internationally with a substantial amount of professional gear introduces practical considerations well beyond the gear itself, and I've learned to treat insurance and documentation as a core part of kit planning rather than an afterthought handled separately. Proper equipment insurance that actually covers international travel and the specific risks of remote location work has proven essential more than once.
I also maintain detailed, up-to-date documentation of my kit, serial numbers, values, photographs of each piece, both for insurance purposes and to simplify customs processes when crossing international borders with a substantial amount of professional equipment. That documentation has saved real time and hassle at border crossings where equipment declarations are taken seriously.
Understanding the specific customs and import considerations of a destination before traveling there has become part of my standard pre-trip research, since assumptions that carried over reliably from one country don't always apply in another, and being caught unprepared for a destination's specific equipment import requirements can create real complications right at the start of a trip.
This administrative layer of trip planning doesn't get talked about as much as the more tangible questions of what specific gear to pack, but it's become just as essential a part of how I prepare for international work, since a customs delay or an uninsured equipment loss can undermine an entire project just as thoroughly as a genuine environmental gear failure would.
I'd encourage any photographer starting to take on more international work to treat this administrative preparation with the same seriousness as the physical kit itself, building in enough lead time before departure to sort out insurance coverage, documentation, and destination-specific import requirements properly. Rushing this part of trip preparation at the last minute has a way of creating exactly the kind of avoidable complications that a bit of early planning would have prevented entirely.
None of this diminishes the importance of the physical kit itself, but treating the administrative side of international travel with equal seriousness has quietly prevented more disruptions to my work over the years than any single piece of specialized gear ever has.
It's the unglamorous half of kit planning, and the half most rarely discussed, but in my experience it's just as responsible for a trip going smoothly as any decision about which lenses or bodies actually made it into the bag.
I've come to see thorough preparation on both fronts, physical and administrative, as two halves of the same discipline, rather than one being real kit planning and the other merely paperwork to get through, since neglecting either one carries genuinely comparable risk to a project's overall success, no matter how much more exciting the gear conversation usually turns out to be by comparison.
Building a kit planning process that actually holds up across varied environments is part of the bigger production framework I cover in The Adventure Travel Photographer's Playbook.
Reflection Questions
- Do you use a fixed kit list, or do you plan gear specifically around each destination's conditions?
- What environmental risks, cold, humidity, dust, salt, are you least prepared for right now?
- How do you currently prioritize redundancy across your gear given weight constraints?
- Has a gear failure in the field ever changed how you think about backup equipment?
Dalton Johnson is a professional adventure and editorial photographer with over a decade of experience shooting on all seven continents. His client work includes Patagonia, GoPro, Arc'teryx, Four Seasons, Nike, Rivian, Big Agnes, Ford Bronco, and 160+ other brands. He runs Dalton Johnson Media as a full-service studio, from pre-production through post and distribution.