Some of these photos were taken by Juliane, with my old Canon 500D.

Passout 2011-2012

Juliane in Wolfenbuettel.

Shaggy dogs.

Luke and Juliane in Wolfenbuettel.

In the Schloss.

Resting in bed at Passout.

Fußball!

Testing camera and lighting for portrait session.

Drinks ready for midnight.

Dinner entertainment.

Decorations.

Spaghetti game.

Pinata club bash.

Pinata hat aftermath.

Pinata juggling challenge.

Big group shot.

Group shot.

Getting ready to go outside for midnight.

More drinks ready for new midnight.

Almost time…

Happy new year!

Firework dispay!

High tech pirotechnics.

Happy new year.

Hand-holding-untangling game.

The game lasted a long time.

Italians preparing drinks.

On Tuesday I got slightly obsessed with this old chestnut. Thankfully lots of other jugglers tried it too, so it wasn’t just me annoying everyone with the noise.

EDIT: On Facebook, Norbi mentioned “I think we both did that (or similar) in our duo.” This refers to an act we performed together in 2005, and after this reminder, I do have vague memories. So I’ve been doing this trick (or similar) since then.

This is also shot on my new(ish) iPhone, as a test of the video quality. As the video is turned sideways, it is difficult to judge the exact quality, but I think it’s acceptable. The aspect ratio is weird though. 3:2, not 16:9 or 4:3. Not sure why. Maybe I’ll be able to use this for capturing International Juggler video clips.

Previous classroom videos:
#3 club slide to balance
#2 club hit-launches
#1 club squeeze catches

Number 4? I guess I didn’t mention that here on the blog. So here it is:

“I wasn’t sure if this trick looked impressive or not, so I videoed it. I’m still not sure.”

But first a quick test.

In December I visited Tasmania for the first time. I only had one goal: to spot a wild platypus and take a photo. Thankfully I found a very cheap and handy bike hire place and cycled out to a small reserve near Burnie, the port where our ship had docked.

Burnie, Tasmania

A platypus! I tried taking a good photo, but this was the best I could do.

Bike ride.

Broken knife!

Thankfully this happened during a practice session, not during a show.

The 2011 Juggling Log

I know I’m not the only juggler who keeps track of this stuff. I’m not even the only professional juggler called Luke who lives in Germany who keeps track of this stuff. However, in 2011 I decided to go all-out, and track everything I felt might be interesting.

Fact 1 – total time spent juggling.

In 2011 I juggled for 404.05 hours.

Is that a lot? Personally I don’t think so. I think back in 2003 I juggled way more than that. But how can I be sure? I don’t have a juggling log from 2003.

Still, that’s almost entire 17 days I spent juggling. Or, at a daily rate, 1.11 hours per day.

Fact 2 – days off.

Of course, I didn’t juggle 1.11 hours per day, because I only juggled on 265 days in 2011. That means exactly 100 days when I didn’t juggle at all.

404.05 divided by 265 days is 1.52 hours per day.

Fact 3 – sick days.

I was too ill to juggle on 19 days. Personally I didn’t think I got ill so much, but when I do get ill, physical activities like juggling are the first things that get kicked out the schedule.

Fact 4 – travel days.

39 travel days. On these days I don’t have time for a full juggling practice session. If there was time (and I have the energy) I spent it practicing ball-on-head tricks, spinning a 10cm stage ball on my finger (getting pretty good!) and basic contact moves.

And if I was passing through somewhere interesting, or visiting a new country, I’d spend 2 minutes getting a video of me juggling.

Fact 5 – days working.

I’m a professional juggler. As a professional, I keep track of how many days per year I perform.

25 days.

That really doesn’t seem like much work to earn a living. Believe me, there’s a lot more to being a professional juggler than just those 25 days where I have an audience!

I performed my 50-55 minute juggling and multimedia and comedy show 23 times. Usually I perform this twice in one night.

On top of that I performed 26 shorter shows. On cruise ships these are typically 10-20 minutes, usually way less comedy and more time actually juggling choreographed routines. I also performed at some juggling conventions in return for (admittedly very little) money, and each one of these acts last about 8 minutes.

That makes, of course, 49 shows in total.

Fact 6 – dropless shows.

Being a professional juggler doesn’t mean I don’t drop on stage! To the contrary, I drop quite a lot.

In 2011 I performed 8 dropless shows. Of these 8 shows, 7 were short shows or juggling convention gala show acts.

I performed a grand total of one dropless 50-55 minute show. Yay me. And, to be honest, that is not just in 2011, that is in my entire career as a professional juggler!

Fact 7 – total drops on stage.

In non-dropless shows (the vast majority) I made 151 drops. 151 drops in a total of 49 shows sounds really, really bad, right? But then you’ve got to remember my shows are typically much longer than the average 8 minute variete show act.

After some rough calculations I estimate that I spent about 1650 minutes on stage in total this year (this doesn’t include hosting shows at the EJC or other conventions).

1650 divided by 151 drops means that I drop in stage, on average, once every 10.93 minutes.

Suddenly it doesn’t sound so bad!

Fact 8 – Combat!

I love 3 club combat. I decided to keep track of every “match” “I” won. This included two kinds of combat:

• Team Combat – If I was on a winning team, I counted that as a win.
• First to five combat- everyone agrees to play until one juggler wins five games.

I played 169 combat matches and won (or was on the winning team) 119 times. This means I won 70.41% of the matches I played.

On top of that I played countless games of the traditional melee combat. Not included in the juggling log are many memories from late night convention sessions. For example, at the EJC in Munich I wrote this in my diary:

“And then combat. I did pretty well. Won quite a lot. My hands felt like they were working. As some others dropped out, I felt in total control. Even with the Irish guy distracting me all the time.

I won 3 games in a row, and didn’t mention it. And took it to 5. And then up to 9. At the tenth game I got to the last two, and then we made each other drop.”

Or, from the French Juggling Convention in Rennes:

“Combat.

Not epic. The French jugglers aren’t good enough, although as time went on some better players joined in.

So instead I made it epic for myself. I set myself a goal, and said to Kyle and Namer “3 wins in a row, no, 5 wins in a row” and they said “And end with a double pirouette.”

And I did it! It really makes me focus. Bring out the high level skills. Not mess about. And most importantly, not fuck up in stupid ways.”

And at the same convention:

“And then combat! Flo joined in too. And Patrik Elmnert, who I’d been watching in the gym.

And Kyle reminded me of the challenge: “Swap all your clubs for another three different clubs, and then win.” This is really tricky! Fucking hard, in fact. Just making it so you drop your own club, and not one you’ve already stolen, is a brain fuck.

But I rocked it! I had just one of my own clubs left, and just Flo was left in, and somehow I managed to catch his high throw and knock him out. Yeah!

Epic! I think these challenges are fun. Hopefully nobody else thinks I’m taking the piss.”

Fact 9 – 5 club backcrosses

In the spring I decided to get 100 catches of 5 club backcrosses. I knew it would take a lot of work. I put in a lot of work. In February, March and April I worked on it on 69 days. Sometimes I’d work on it for over an hour.

The longest unbroken streak was 27 days in row when I practiced the pattern. What a fucking pattern.

Removing the days I didn’t practice, here are my best runs per day.

This shows pretty good progress, I think. My top record was 50 catches. But better than just improving my all time record, it improved my average run in my average juggling remarkably. Even in November, I visited Dunedin in New Zealand, and the jugglers where wanted to film me doing some hard tricks. Even without practicing it seriously for six months, and with very little warmup, I was confident enough to say “I’ll go for 20 catches of 5 club backcrosses.” It took (I think) three attempts, which is about all anyone will wait for if they have a camera on you and want to see something cool.

The two “off” days in the middle of the chart, where my best run drops down to 15 and 13, really stands out. I took a look at the juggling log, and I’d taken 5 days off from juggling completely before those days. It looks like this:

ill
very ill
still very ill
travel day
illness recovery

So if I was doing so well with 5 club backcrosses, why did I stop? Well, it was totally fucking up my hands. And my shoulder. The only way I improved my skill level was by pushing my body beyond its comfort zone. In the end I had to make a decision: good health to enjoy all my juggling, or get better at a single pattern. I think I made the right decision.

Fact 10 – I had fun.

I tracked a whole lot of other info, but not enough of any one thing to be worth analyzing here. One thing which is almost impossible to quantify is how much fun I have juggling. Should I track how much I’m enjoying my self in practice sessions, on stage, and at juggling conventions? This would be meaningless, I think. I’m not sure I can bring myself to be that much of a nerd.

But tracking the juggling I do do has been fun, and has, in some ways, allowed me to have more fun with juggling this year.

I love to read comments and feedback about my blog posts. Please email me, I reply to every message: luke@juggler.net

Well, last year I didn’t post my “list of plans and goals for 2011” to the blog, and I don’t think I referred to it here during the year. One reason was that my new year’s resolution (if you can call it that) was something like “Set fewer goals for the year!”

I didn’t want to be beholden to what January 2011 Luke wanted to spend time on when October 2011 Luke had changed his mind about it. On a weekly basis I have a larger creative output than almost anyone I know, so I have nothing to prove to myself or anyone else that I’m wasting my time, or that I’m a failure if I succeeded at only “35.05 out of a possible 50 plans and goals.” And yes, that was my success rate in 2010.

So in 2011 I intentionally didn’t work towards to plans and goals on my list. If I had time free, I’d look over the list, and see if it inspired me, but otherwise I just worked on what I wanted.

And, as it happened, some of the things I most proud of accomplishing weren’t on the list at all. For example:

• The list said “Perform live set of my own music” inspired by spending time in New York with some awesome live performers.
• I started performing at small music open stages in Berlin, and discovered that people really enjoyed my performing. They liked the fun songs, and how I chatted between, but hardly anyone commented about the pop songs and love songs that I’m so proud of.
• I discarded other music plans and concentrated on writing more quirky and clever comedy songs, that I perform with just me at the piano.
• This led to me performing more at comedy shows than music-only shows, and my comedy songs got a great reaction.
• I now have 10-12 “comedy” numbers that I could, if the opportunity arose, put together into an hour-long show.

In January last year I never imagined I’d have the skills and material to do a whole new hour-long show. This is on top of the two hours of juggling material I have, AND on top of the (maybe) two hours of other music I could perform, and all of it original material.

I think that’s pretty cool. Right?

Who knows, maybe this year I’ll actually do a full-length solo music show, rather than just performing sets in longer shows.

All that aside, here are a few things from my list of plans and goals for 2011 that have been fun to track.

Travel

• Visit another 20 new countries.

Partial win! I don’t have much control of this one, as I don’t make most of my travel plans. As it happened I visited 18 new countries in 2011.

I also made sure I got a video of me juggling in every country I visited in 2011 (win), even those I only passed through without leaving the airport.

Juggling

• Berlin and EJC and at least two other conventions (to be confirmed), one in a new country.

Win! Berlin and the EJC, plus the French Convention, Brianza Convention in Italy, Portland in the USA, and Passout in Germany at the end of the year. I’d never been to a convention in Italy before, so that was cool.

• Win Fight Night Combat (against JJ for bonus)

Win! I won in Berlin, but JJ didn’t take part. I lost badly at the EJC. No bonus.

• Run open stages and other events at EJC (with zero stress)

Win! 8 open stages over 8 nights. There was stress in the organization as a whole, but I deflected it all by being more professional and confident than others, and hopefully the stress didn’t leak out too far into the venue I had to control.

• Track and break some personal records.

Win! I broke a few. The most “impressive” record was 5 club backcrosses. I worked on it many hours in the spring, up to an hour day for many days, and smashed my old record. It now stands at 50 catches, though my 5 year plan back in 2001 was to get 100 catches. I’m okay with never reaching that goal, even after 10 years.

• Practice more (log hours per day).

Win? I’m not sure if I did practice more or less than previous years, because this is the first year I’ve tracked how much I juggle. I think I’ll release the nerdy numbers as a separate blog post.

Other juggling and performing goals included working on new material (win), building new props (win), developing routines which don’t need more equipment than I already carry (win), finishing the construction of “The Room” set (progress, but nowhere near finished), writing the show “Powercut” (fail), and working with other jugglers and artist on material for the above shows (win).

Writing

I had some writing goals, but this was tricky. Half way through 2010 I decided to keep a diary, and writing about 1,000 words per day for my private diary took up so much of the energy that would normally be spent writing fiction. I did manage to make progress on various novels. I even completed one novella and recently published it on my website.

Photography

I intentionally left this even more vague than others. Photography is something I’m still getting better at on a monthly basis, and until that stops, I don’t think I need to think about setting myself other goals.

My only goals were to learn more about small strobe photography (win), to learn more about self-portrait photography (win), and to set up a photo studio in my juggling studio at home (partial win).

Conclusion

By the numbers:

• I had 31 plans and goals for 2011.
• I succeeded at 15.9 of them.
• I failed at 11.1 (the decimal is from visiting 18 and not 20 new countries).
• At the end of the year I was still actively working on 4 projects (for example, an audio recording of one of my science fiction stories).

The numbers are nowhere close to last year’s success rate, but last year I put down loads of things that I knew I would succeed at anyway. Things like “continue to record the SFBRP podcast”, and even without trying I put out 32 episodes of science fiction reviews. And a lot of them were really simple too, like “buy a new camera bag”. How much effort does that take? Nothing compared to writing a whole novel!

And, as I said before, I decided to be happy to go on flights of fancy with my plans and goals and dreams.

I’m super happy with 2011, and how much I achieved in terms of life accomplishments and creative output. I even found an awesome girlfriend, and she is going to be included in many of my plans and goals for 2012.

But that will be a whole other blog post.

New for 2012: I’m turning off comments on my blog. Since early 2009, when I started this blog, there have only been about 10 comments really worth my time reading and approving. And for each of those, I responded individually by email, or created a new blog post. All the others were fine, but not worth wading through the spam.

So from now on, I’ll just leave my email address at the bottom of each post. If you have something to tell me, please email me. I’ve done this since 2008 on my SFBRP podcast, and have developed really strong relationships via email with my listeners. I’d love to replicate that here. Just so you know, I reply to every email:

luke@juggler.net

Thanks to everyone at Passout 2011-2012 for taking part!

I have no permissions from any of these jugglers, so while I’m sure they wouldn’t mind you printing out a calendar, don’t try to make money with these images or anything like that. I released all these photos on my blog under a creative commons 3.0 license, which means no commercial use without my permission. And to get my permission, email me here: luke@juggler.net

Here is the zip file of all the high resolution jpgs, or click each image to see the individual high resolution versions.

Find the names of all the jugglers below.

The jugglers are:

January: Tina Lange. Wes Peden and Jay Gilligan.

February: Alexander Koblikov. Spiral.

March: Jacob Sharpe. Asaf Poiboy More.

April: Duo De Fracto. Marco Paoletti. Patrik Elmnert.

May: Francesca Mari. Nikolas (Juggledeaf).

June: Declan Mee. Guy Kaplan.

July: Namer Golan. Aileen Lawlor and Noel Yee.

August: Alexander Kulakov. Kyle Johnson.

September: Owen Reynolds and Inaki Sastre of the Gandini Juggling Project. Stefan and Cristiana in Tangram.

October: Matthias Romir. Yuta Asano.

November: Piryokapi. Valerie Sealey

December: Svetlana Zueva. Luis Sartori Do Vale. Joris de Jong.

Today I put together some ideas I’ve had over the past few years on the themes of “magic” and “cause and effect” to make this routine. It’s not often that I’ll work on choreography that I know I’ll never perform on stage, but today was that day, it seems.

As I get better at photography, and share more of my photos, many people ask me what camera I use. Many photographers take this as an insult, as in “You don’t ask a good cook what oven he uses” or “You don’t ask a good pianist what kind of piano she uses…” Personally I take it as a compliment!

So I’ve decided to make a single blog post where I list all my photography gear. The above photo includes all the gear and bags I use regularly, but instead of the rest of the blog post being a boring list, I’ve decided to give it a different spin. I’m going to list my gear by how important it has been to me in the pursuit of improving as a photographer.

Why? If you are new photography, buying an expensive camera isn’t going to help. Instead you need the smaller things that most lists like this push to the end or neglect entirely.

And if you are already a pro-level photographer, and know all about gear, my choice of camera body is hardly unique. The more subtle things will explain my photography mindset far more clearly.

The most important piece of gear is the strap on my camera. It cost €12, if I remember correctly. It goes around my wrist. When I’m out and about with my camera, or at a show, or any event, my camera is in my hand.

To get better at photography, you have to take lots and lots of photographs. That’s the only way to improve! It’s not that if you hold down the shutter on burst mode one of the shots will come out great. Think about it this way: Every photo you take is a small lesson in how to do something right or do something wrong.

So if the camera is in a bag, you won’t take photos. If it is on a strap around your neck, you might pick it up in time, and get a snap, but maybe not. If the camera is in your hand, you can’t forget you have your camera with you! This wrist strap means my camera is unencumbered, and I can easily slip it off my wrist if I need to, but only if I want to. If a strap is around your neck, you can’t easily swing the camera into the right position to get fun images like this one:

My next piece of gear is software. You should buy Lightroom or Aperture before you buy a new camera or a new lens. This is obvious to anyone who has already downloaded either application.

Why?

First, if you are taking lots of photos, and remember, that is the only way to improve, it’s a real pain to sort through them manually. Spend the money on either Lightroom or Aperture, as they make sorting through even thousands of photos a complete breeze. Even if you disregard all the editing features, having an easy way to sort, select, export and archive your photos means you will be happy to take more and more.

Second, you learn a million things about photography by fiddling with the settings in Lightroom or Aperture that are impossible to explain just by pointing at the settings on a camera body.

Third, by using the editing tools you get better results than the raw images from the camera. Obviously. I take many photos knowing I’ll do an edit in Lightroom. Nothing drastic, but I know I can rely on adjusting some parts of the image later.

I have two camera bags that I use regularly, but they are only for transporting my gear between home and wherever I’m heading in the world. I love my Lowepro Slingshot for airline travel (works as a “personal item” on every airline), but these days I rarely take it with me when actually photographing. Instead I use a lens case. Sometimes two. These I can throw in my lightweight day bag, or if I know I’ll be swapping lenses often over a short period of time, I’ll attach one to my belt.

Why? Well, one of the most annoying things ever is to not have the right lens on the camera when you need it. Sure, you can use two camera bodies, but that’s overkill for the vast majority of us. I can switch lenses super quickly, doing a little routine to make sure I’m not going to drop anything, and swapping lens caps.

They weigh next to nothing. Also when I took a helicopter trip in Hawaii we weren’t allowed bags of any sort. But a case attached to my belt? Technically not a bag! With a lens case on my belt I look like a dork, but a dork who is taking lots more photos, and a dork who isn’t going to be in any of those photos, as the camera is pointing away from that dork.

This is a negative gear pick. It might sound like sacrilege, but I don’t bother with the rear lens caps if I’m swapping lenses often over a short period of time. If the environment is full of sand or volcanic ash (and this can be the case when I travel), of course I’ll make sure my lenses are sealed, and if I’m not going to use the lens again for more than five minutes. But if I’m taking photos of a juggling show? The most important part is getting the “capture”. If I’m fiddling with a rear lens cap, the chances are I’ll miss a lot. For example, I know for a fact that my telephoto lens was sitting in the lens case on my belt with no rear lens cap when I took the following photo, and Wes wasn’t about to do this a second time:

Two of my lenses are suitable for full sized sensors, and two are for cropped frame cameras. If this means nothing to you, don’t worry. Needless to say, I make sure all these caps fit on both kinds of lenses, as there is nothing more annoying than trying to fit something that doesn’t fit onto something else when you’re in a hurry.

Removing and replacing front lens caps is now such a honed action that it doesn’t slow me down at all.

Holy shit, how awesome is the GorillaPod? I used one for almost every single non-hand-held clip in my International Juggler video series. I’ve used three different sizes over the years, with different video and photo cameras, and now I’ve settled on one that is slightly too weak for my DSLR with a long lens attached, but I don’t mind that due to the weight and space savings.

There are many shots that I’ve not managed to get because I didn’t have a full size tripod with me, but an order of magnitude more photos because the Gorillapod was small and light enough to put in my pocket. It’s even light enough to leave on the bottom of my camera, while carrying my camera in my hand for a full day, and not get in my way.

I have a Manfrotto tripod, but it never leaves my home studio where I use it for video projects.

To take long exposure photos with a Gorillapod, you need to leave the camera steady when activating the shutter. I sometimes use the cable remote, sometimes use the IR remote. For self portraits, the IR remote is the only way to go, and you might as well not bother with self portrait photography until you buy one.

GorillaPod plus cable remote means you can get shots like this, and don’t have to carry a heavy tripod up the side of Yosemite Valley:

Have too much storage than you think you might need. Seriously, if you’re worried about filling up your SD cards, you’ll take fewer photos, and one of the photos you didn’t take might be one that taught you a very important lesson. I have another 4GB card, but that was in the camera I used to take the above photo.

And if you take lots of photos, storage is cheap enough these days that you can throw away nothing. Not deleting images is a blog post all of its own, but I think having lots of hard drives makes you a better photographer.

My favourite lens is the Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5. It is awesome. It’s designed for crop sensor cameras only, but that suits me fine.

Why do I like it so much? Because it’s light! I can carry this around all day, and not worry about my arm getting tired. Why else do I like it? Because it’s awesome value for money. The image quality is amazing for a lens that only cost me €600. Previously I had a cheap Tamron version, which was shit, and broke under heavy usage in under a year, but that model will probably do if you are experimenting with wide angle photography.

This isn’t the place to get into why I love a wide angle lens as my go-to walk-about lens, but once you get the hang of it, it makes for very distinctive images. With the Gorillapod and a cable remote it’s a really fun setup for landscape and nature photography. And during events you can’t get too close to any subject, or fail to get everyone in a large group in the frame.

The other lens I always carry with me is my telephoto zoom. It’s a Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS. For a start, it’s a good “budget” lens for getting in close without getting close. It only cost €500. Previously I had a cheap Tamron version, which was shit, and broke under heavy usage in under a year, but that model will probably do if you are experimenting with a telephoto zoom.

I use this for portraits, for candid photography at event (when you don’t want to get in someone’s face), for wildlife and bird photography, and almost any time I’m snapping a juggler on stage.

It’s the heaviest lens I use, which is a pity, but in this case there is just no way to compromise further in weight savings. I’d love a better telephoto zoom, and could easily afford one, to be honest. But it’s not just weight in this case. The way I treat my lenses isn’t with the greatest of care, to say the least, and I don’t mind if this lens only lasts me two years before I inevitably throw it out of a taxi by accident (a story for another blog post).

The “IS” stands for Image Stabilization. This adds an extra f-stop of low light capability to the specs. Kinda.

The camera body I use is a Canon 60D. I love it! I’m not going to go into a feature list here, as you can check out many other exhaustive reviews.

I had two versions of the Rebel-level Canon DSLR cameras, a 400D and a 500D, which are the perfect cameras when starting out. If you don’t know why you need a better camera than the current Canon Rebel (or equivalent Nikon or Sony), then you don’t need a better camera like a 60D or a 7D or a 5D mark II.

When the 7D came out, I thought about buying one. Until I picked it up. The 7D has a magnesium chassis, and was waaaay heavier than the Rebel-sized camera I was used to. A year later the 60D was announced. It had all of the features I liked in the 7D, but had a fully plastic body, which saved just over 100g.

The one feature which made me order this camera from amazon the moment it was available was the fully articulated LCD screen. I never use this for when taking photographs, but for videography it is indispensable. I video myself juggling a lot, and without the articulated screen it always took me three attempts of running backwards and forwards, testing the shot, making sure I was in the right place, etc. Now I just set the shot up as close as possible, flip the screen, and walk out to the exact right spot. Sweet.

My long considered “hey, the 60D is awesome” blog post will have to wait. I still have my Canon 500D, but it’s held together by electrical tape after accidentally throwing it out the door of a taxi. I use it as a spare body sometimes, but as it is very broken it’s hardly worth trying to sell, and as a gift it would only be a burden.

Before you buy the above lenses, buy the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8. I don’t use it much anymore, but should probably go above the other lenses in this list if you are just starting out with DSLR photography. It’s a perfect learner lens, and everyone should use one to really understand what photography is really all about. Needless to say, if you are already a pro-level photographer, you most likely already own the 1.4 and/or the 1.2 version.

If you don’t already know, it’s good for portraits and shallow depth of field:

The Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS came as the kit lens with my 500D. I use it only for video projects, never for photography, but I’m always getting video of me juggling around the world, so it is a constant companion. My 70-300 is almost always too tight to capture a video of me juggling, though it sometimes works, and the 10-22 is sometimes too wide. The 18-55 fills the gap in focal length.

That is it for my lenses!

Sharp eyed readers will be wondering “Hey Luke, if you don’t use the 18-55 for photography, what lens do you use if the 10-22 is too wide or the 70-300 is too narrow?”

The truth is that I just don’t bother. I like my photography to look different to what I can see with my eye. The reason 35mm is such a standard is that it captures what the human eye sees, or near enough, and that is why the kit lens always covers the focal lengths around that number.

I love the 10-22 because it lets me capture a wider angle than a human can, including many more details than you can get in the blink of an eye. And I love the 70-300 because it can capture any one of those details in more detail than you can with a human eye.

The 22 end of the 10-22 lens, on a crop sensor camera, is close enough to a true 35mm to me, or as close as I care for. Every time I use the 18-55 lens for regular photography, I just don’t know what to do with it! I feel totally uninspired, and when I see the results on my laptop, they look insipid. This is my failing as a photographer, I know, but I don’t take photos for anyone else. I take photos to have fun, and the more fun I have, the more other people are happy with my photos. I just don’t have fun with the 22-70mm range that is the basis of a majority of the photographic output of the majority of photographers.

If I need to capture more, I step back. If I want to capture less, I step forward. It’s more handy than changing lenses anyway, and gives my photography a distinctive look.

The telephoto lets me focus on the person having the experience, the wide angle lets me focus on the people around the experience.

If you’re unsure how well I can cover an event with just two lenses at the extremes of the focal length range, check out my previous blog post about the King Neptune Ceremony. The event lasted maybe 25 minutes, I took 166 photos and thought 70 were worth sharing. 70 out of 166 is a pretty good success rate, I think. As you scroll through you can see I swapped between my two lenses. I got loads of great reactions to these photos (a common on being “Your photos are way better than the professional photographers’ shots!” but that says more about the skill of cruise ship photographers than my own) but none of the comments were anything like “Hey, why were all of your photos either telephoto or wide angle shots, and nothing in between?”

Other equipment:

Whenever I’m anywhere interesting I geotag all of my photographs. I do this with an Amod AGL3080 GPS data logger. I attach this to my bag and it blinks every 5 seconds as it records my current location. Later I use HoudahGeo to put the gps coordinates for every photo into the metadata. I’ve yet to find a use for this data in regards to sharing it easily with other people, but it’s nice to keep track of what I took where. Some places I’ll remember where I took the photo, but street maps aren’t that handy when sailing in Antarctica, or hiking in jungle in the Amazon, or visiting other extreme locations.

My camera bags are mostly used for transporting my gear. When I’m actively taking photos, I don’t use them much (see my points above). I’ll take this slightly out of order so it makes sense.

The Lowepro Slingshot 102 (or similar) is the perfect size for holding my 60D, 10-22mm, 70-300mm, 18-55mm, 50mm, a small Gorillapod, memory cards, cable and IR remotes, Amod GPS tracker, battery charger, and 5 juggling beanbags. I always want to have the beanbags with me in case I need to get a video of me juggling while traveling. It’s a tight fit, but I like to have it all in one bag which never leaves my sight.

Also the “slingshot-ness” of the bag is good for swinging it around the body to change lenses quickly and easily.

In fact, I love the slingshot action so much that I modified my other camera bag’s straps to enable me to do the same thing. It’s a bit tricky to explain in text, so maybe I’ll make a video of the modification some day. The Cullmann Lima is a pretty sturdy backpack which is big enough to hold all my photography gear, plus my 15 inch Macbook Pro, plus has space to spare.

When I went to Oregon and California this autumn, I took only this bag, and it held everything I needed for a two week trip. My camera gear, and my laptop, and my clothes and other travel stuff. It even survived a bear attack in Yosemite National Park. I’m planning to do many more trips with so little gear in the future, including an East Africa safari trip, and it’s a joy to travel without my juggling show gear.

So when I’m not transporting gear, I just use a cheap and light day bag. This folds totally flat and fits in my other travel cases.

An even cheaper and lighter option is the drawstring bag. This rolls up and fits in a pocket!

As they take up so little space and weight, they are way more practical for day trips out and about than a camera bag. If you pad the lenses inside the bag, there’s no need to have the entire bag padded, like the camera bags above. Why have a protected pocket for memory cards or a padded compartment for your water bottle? Just chuck that stuff in the lightest bag possible. It saves on weight and bulk.

I have Canon Speedlite 580EX II Flash which is totally awesome, but I rarely travel with it, meaning that it sits unused for the majority of my photography, due to its own weight, and the weight of all the other accessories needed to use it effectively. I like using it for projects at home, or in Berlin, and plan to use it more in the future.

To go with the strobe I have various other equipment, like the FlashZebra Off Camera ETTL Cord for Canon — 7.5 Meter. And the Honl Speed Strap for attaching filters. And a set of Honl filters and gels. I have an old umbrella too, and some old stands, and some adaptors to fit it all together.

I’m listing this last because so far it hasn’t helped me become a better photographer. In fact it has kinda got in the way of me being a better photographer. It’s like a distraction. When I need it for a photo, this gear lets me get a better result for that photo, but as I don’t have it with me like the gear above, it’s not a constant help.

And I have a Flip camcorder. It comes in handy for when I want a 2 hour long video, rather than a 12 minute video (all a DSLR can manage). I’m thinking of getting a GoPro HD, but it’s hard to justify paying more for something I wouldn’t use that much.

So that’s all I want to share! Leave comments if you want, or email luke@juggler.net.

I love my job! I get paid to juggle, and as a cool side effect, I get to see the world. Sometimes I see more of the world than I first expect, and sometimes I see more than I want. For example, on my next flight between ships.

I’m currently on the HAL Zaandam, sailing from Hawaii to Pago Pago, American Samoa. This takes about six days, with five days at sea in a row. That’s cool, because I had a few amazing days in Hawaii.

My schedule said I would leave the Zaandam on the 14th of November, and join the HAL Amsterdam in Sydney on the 15th. Then I’d stay on the ship in Sydney overnight, and sail out on the 16th. Shouldn’t be a problem. Right?

But someone at head office didn’t think this through, and I didn’t catch the mistake either. Not at first. I realized that due to crossing the International Date Line, I’d lose 24 hours. If I set off from Pago Pago on the 14th, I wouldn’t arrive in Sydney until the 16th. But if the flights worked out, I could still make the ship.

The flights didn’t work out. There’s good news and bad news.

Good news:

My flight from Pago Pago isn’t until 2320 on the 14th. This means instead of going directly from the ship to the airport and seeing nothing in American Samoa, I’ll be able to explore the island for the entire afternoon.

The bad news:

I have an overnight flight to Honolulu. I arrive at 0530 on the 15th.

The good news:

I have 5 hours free in Honolulu. I intentionally didn’t do any tourist stuff in the city when I was there a few days ago, instead I opted to take a bus ride to the North Shore to see Sunset Beach and the Pipeline. I thought “If I return to Honolulu, I’ll not have time to do such a trip again, but I will have time to visit Pearl Harbor.” It turns out I was correct, but I didn’t expect to return within a week.

The bad news:

A nine hour flight to Tokyo. I take off on the 15th and land on the 16th.

The good news:

My first visit to Japan! Also, according to my records, this will make Japan the 100th country I’ve ever visited, according to the Travelers’ Century Club country list.

The bad news:

I won’t have time to do anything in Japan except walk around the airport.

More bad news:

My next flight is ANOTHER overnight flight. Twice in one trip. And this is what breaks my brain: each of the three times I fly I’ll take off on one day and land the following day, but I only have two overnight flights.

The good news:

I arrive in New Caledonia at 0730 on the 17th. This means I have the whole day to do whatever I want on the island. Considering New Caledonia is a place I’ve wanted to visit for the last 20 years or so, since I first saw photos in a book about dinosaurs, I’m very happy with this development.

More good news:

Instead of spending two days at sea between Sydney and New Caledonia, I’ll be spending those days on New Caledonia. That means I get to spend two nights in the hotel, and a second full day exploring the island.

And then I’ll transfer to the ship on the 19th, probably do my show that night, but then have ANOTHER two days on various islands of New Caledonia.

From there we sail to Fiji. From Fiji I then transfer to another ship in New Zealand. Who knows what will happen during that connection. I really, really hope I get two days to do what I want in New Zealand before the ship turns up.

The bad news:

10,791 miles flown between two islands in the Pacific. How close if I could get a direct flight? Maybe 1,000 miles.

So balancing the good and the bad, I’m sure this will end positively. At least I hope this will end positively. Two overnight flights in a row is a small price to pay for unexpected adventure opportunities.