Michael Chang

This is what I typically carry around in most outdoor, walk-around shooting situations:

Lowepro 75 AW top-loading holster bag
(great for dusty and damp situations)

Really Right Stuff Arca-Swiss L-bracket
(for tripod shooting)

Singh-Ray LB Warming Polarizer (slim)
(for landscapes)

Hoya Pro-1 S-HMC UV filter
(B+W MRC filters work great, too)

Lens hood

Extra compact flash cards

Extra batteries

WhiBal gray-card reference
(for white balance; “studio” size works well)

Allen wrench for RRS bracket

Gallon- and quart-sized Ziplock bags
(for cold-weather and wet shoots)

My favorite walk-around lens at the moment is the 17-55 f/2.8 DX lens. The eventual prosumer full-frame Nikon DSLR with the new 24-70mm f/2.8 lens would be a dream combination, but the 17-55 DX is no slouch!

In ultra-light situations, I just take the 18-200 VR on a D40/D40x/D60 with a few SD cards and an extra battery. All of this fits compactly in the Lowepro Rezo TLZ 20 toploading holster bag. These consumer DSLRs have such great battery life that I could ditch the bag and just put an 8GB or 16GB SD card and go!

In the no-DSLR, ultra-ultra-light situation, I carry the Fujifilm F31FD point-and-shoot gem. One battery and a 2GB XD (yes, XD, blah) card last for a whole day’s worth of shooting. Stop down a little to avoid the dreaded purple fringing.

The list of items explodes for wedding and event shooting. Flash photography equipment sure takes up a lot of bag space! More on that later…

P.S.  Some online stores say that the D60 + 18-55 VR kit lens will fit in a Lowepro TLZ 10.  Unfortunately, this combo won’t fit.  The D40 + non-VR kit lens will probably fit, but the newer kit lens is just a little to long!  Use the TLZ 20 instead.

Shooting spring flowers is a great exercise in composition.  How do you manage the foreground, background, “middleground”, focal point, colors, perspective, depth of focus, highlights/shadows, etc?  Shooting dense flower beds really helps you to explore your compositional style.

I like shooting dense flower beds, in particular, because you need to strictly control the elements that appear in your frame.  Are you going to keep that leaf, the other flower, or the base of the background flower in the photo?  How can you manage the viewers’ perspective relative to the ground and the sky?  How can you make the picture “edgier?”  In particular, how do foreground and background colors change the feel of the composition?

Anyways, I highly recommend visiting your local park in the spring.  You can learn a lot about your own compositional style, likes and dislikes without having to do much trekking!