Inside My Bag | Motiejus Salkauskas

Hey guys! My name is Motiejus and I’m a destination wedding photographer from Lithuania living in London and shooting weddings all over the world. The yellow-eyed little assistant of mine is called Pumpkin. Although not very helpful (but super curious), he always sneaks into my camera bag each time I’m preparing for a wedding.

Shotkit always was a go-to website for inspiration and learning ever since I discovered it and it’s such a huge honour to be featured here. Thank you, Mark :)

When I first started my affair with photography 10 years ago, my first camera was Sony DSLRA100. Although, very unpopular choice by many (sweet irony, huh) in the industry dominated by Canon and Nikon, it was a great tool to learn and experiment with photography.

At the time Sony had quite a limited range of lenses and accessories so I’ve quickly learned that I needed to join the big boys club and got my first Canon 5D. Like every person learning and experimenting with photography, I’ve probably bought every imaginable accessory only to learn later that most of the time, they are absolutely unnecessary. It is, of course, a learning curve and thankfully I’m (nearly) at the point where I only keep the equipment that can be useful on the wedding day.

At the time of writing this, my other main cameras (I call them grandads) is the Canon 5D Mark III. They are very good cameras and they pretty much never let me down. Although I’m well aware of the new and better stuff out there, I’m deciding whether to stick with Canon or go completely mirrorless.

Thinking about it, I do have and love my Fujifilm X-T2 with Fujinon 23mm f/2 R WR XF which has proven to be a great camera for travel and personal use, yet not as amazing as Canon for wedding work, in my personal opinion of course.

With regards to lenses, I swear by primes and never owned a zoom lens. I have and use a Canon 35mm f/1.4 lens together with a Canon 85mm f/1.8 for most of the wedding day. As for the second combo for smaller spaces and particularly evening and party coverage, I switch to the Sigma 24mm f/1.4 Art and Canon 50mm f/1.4.

The Holdfast Money Maker strap, which I’ve owned for more than two years, has proven to be a lifesaver and like probably every (I mean, every) other wedding photographer on the planet using it would (if not already) tell you – it does look super stylish and there hasn’t been a single wedding where no compliments were given about it.

Most of the time I shoot in natural light. However, when needed I use my Canon 580 EX II and Yongnuo 568EX II. The Canon has proven to be an amazing flash and hasn’t failed me in years. The Yongnuo, however, has broken down at least 4 times, but I really don’t mind it as they are super cheap. I do use Yongnuo YN560-TX manual flash controller for some off-camera flash work from time to time.

Last year, I started using Magmod flash modifiers and they have been great. Although I’ve purchased a full kit including the gels, snoot, beam and other stuff, I found myself only using grid, mag bounce and sphere. The rest of it seems to stay in the bag for most of the time and will probably soon find a space in the cupboard.

As for my camera bag, I have a Lowepro 200AW backpack. It’s a decent size camera backpack which fits all my stuff + laptop, hairspray, perfume and Snickers and I can easily take it on any fight.

I also have a Zoom H1 recorder as it’s a great little device to record some sounds and interviews with families of the bride and groom so I can later implement it in the slideshows for them.

Lastly, all the fun behind standard equipment is all the technology to make sure that business is running smoothly. I do use a retina 5K iMac for editing and general office work together with a Wacom tablet and Loupdeck editing console, which is an absolutely amazing thing. When travelling, my 13″ MacBook Pro is always with me, as well as my LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt 2 TB External hard drive.

For backup, I’m using Synology DS415+ which was probably the smartest investment I’ve made. Once copied, the files are automatically uploaded to an unlimited Dropbox account so it’s all safe and sound.

For all my client communication and business CRM, I use Tave, which is a lifesaver, and Pic-Time for online client galleries – another great and beautifully designed photography studio management software solution (see more).

www.motiejus.com