Professionally shooting while traveling with significant other

Jims suggestion of early morning and afternoon photography has worked well for me. Your partner can lay in for a while so you can get your early morning shots. spend the rest of the day together then while your other half relaxes by the pool or beach get out and use the best light of the day.

This is a decent compromise which should keep you both happy.

I agree totally with Jim's suggestion. I'm a travel photographer and try to take my family with me on assignment whenever I can. Mostly they understand that Dad's working so I can leave them to go off and have fun for themselves and rendezvous at certain points during the day. So if there's a place I have to photograph we'll all go there together and then I'll go off and get the shots I need and catch up with them later.

But I also get up extra early and go out and shoot stuff in the early morning and then meet the family for (a sometimes late!) breakfast and in the evenings go out and shoot. As long as the family are happy doing their thing and I leave aside a few days for them then everyone's happy.

I definitely don't try and photograph seriously while out with my family, unless I'm taking shots of the kids. I always go somewhere with them and then leave them to their own devices for a couple of hours while I do what I have to. I set aside whole days where we all do stuff together, and whole days where it's just me on my own.

At the end of the day it becomes a compromise for everybody but it sure beats being alone and lonely in a strange destination for a couple of weeks at a time.

interesting thread...

elizabeth, there are a couple of things at play here.

one is that being a photographer is part of who you are. you have a visual eye and a technical background and you "see" things in that way.

the second is that you have a partner who feels your time with the camera detracts from your time together.

both are valid. on one hand, he needs to be able to understand your creative side and nurture you artistically without feeling resentful. on the other, you might want to put yourself in his shoes and think about what it's like for him to just stand there when you're fiddling with filters, lenses, bodies, and multiple exposures/angles, etc. so basically you guys need to be able to compromise.

it's impossible to document every second of life, and sometimes hard to enjoy life when we are always weighted down by equipment. :)

if i were you, i'd make it clear to him that he's the number one priority, but...you're not going to change who you are and its not realistic to expect that. maybe he can think of ways he can be more supportive of you, and maybe you can be more considerate and not get so caught up in something he obviously feels intimidated by for long periods. or make more effort to make it up to him in other ways...

one good solution is to seriously downsize your gear to just one compact all-in-one point and shoot. i'd probably go for the lx3 over the g10 in this regard, mainly because its just as advanced but smaller.

since you might also have to restrict yourself to mainly candids and snapshots, like anyone else traveling---a camera that doesnt require lens changing and is less 'serious' might be more fun for the both of you.

another idea is to get a remote or cable release and get him or both of you into the frame more. i can understand wanting to take the best shots you can while you're there, but you don't want to be a workaholic when you're not technically working. hope that helps.

Hi MD, Jim, Daniel, Kyle, Dave, Paul, and Eric,

Well, you've certainly given me a lot to think about...thank you all for your helpful suggestions! Wish me luck as I broach this

subject with my husband. Thanks again! : )

It's probably a bit late now, but I'm in a similar position to you; i.e. it's my long-suffering wife that puts up with my obsession to photograph everything!

For a while I took my D1, charger, lenses, strobes, etc with me and then something changed - I didn't want to have the weight of this (or the F4 before it) hanging around my neck, it got in the way of me being able to clamber over rocks and so on. It was also annoying (and unfair) to my wife to have to stop every 5 minutes to take another shot of whatever it was that caught my eye.

I still take lots of pictures, but we now try to agree a 'photography day' where I will take my gear and womble off to take pictures, and my wife will go horse-riding (or some other activity). I still carry my camera around everywhere, but instead of the DSLR it's likely to be something like my 1937 Leica II and 50mm Elmar. It's small, compact, capable of capturing great images and it makes me think twice before I run off a roll of film (or tens of pictures on a digital - which I then have to go through). There's a definite cost associated with film (although I do my own processing) and using the little Leica just slows me down enough and makes me think about how I'm framing the shot - do I actually need 36 shots of that building from 12 different angles? Probably not.

So, whilst I still take plenty of shots, I've learnt that I can satsify my need to produce 'arty' images, but at the same time enjoy the company of my wife.

Although, it's also true that I don't always get the balance right ;-)

David.