Taylor Roades

Commercial, Travel | Last Updated: January 15, 2021

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The rain was starting to get to me, and though I’d been I’d been thinking about it on and off for a while, I made a decision on a lazy Sunday in December and booked a flight to Santiago, Chile. The surreal feeling is only just starting to wear off now. I’ve been back in Vancouver, my home base, for just over a week now and as I get into my editing I remember being in the heart of Patagonia, and I am transported right back.

My name is Taylor Roades and I am a commercial outdoor adventure/travel photographer, I’ve worked with brands like Lufthansa Air, Gestalten Press, and Athleta.

Over the past four years, photography has taken me across Asia to China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and Cambodia. I’ve carried too much photo gear through the Canadian Rockies, to the Scottish highlands and the Welsh Countryside. I’ve been all over the Caribbean and the US, and I have clicked a shutter thousands and thousands of times – I’ve had a very well documented couple of years.

My personal work finds a way into my professional portfolio often; I have an extensive map collection that I’ve been sharing along with travel musings over on www.terraincognita.ca that has opened the doors into writing jobs, and an interest in the tourism industry culminated into a photo project called the Culture of Tourism, published in Canada’s Photo Ed Magazine.

My trip to Patagonia started as a personal project – documenting women in the wilderness in one of the harshest landscapes on the planet. It took on professional legs and I couldn’t be more proud of the work that came from this trip.

Traveling has shaped my worldview, and moving around so extensively has taught me to scale back my photography kit to the necessities. I was in Patagonia for seven weeks and spent just under 20 days of that in the backcountry. I carried camping gear, clothing, and food sometimes for up to a week as well as my camera kit. Though I now literally have quads of steel, I was very careful not to pack more than I needed.

I shared a little bit of trip prep over on Instagram under #taylorplansachileanadventure and quite a few of my favourite images there too.

Below I’ll break down how I packed for a backpacking/hiking/professional photography trip.

For Patagonia this is the final revised camera travel kit:

Canon 5D Mark III – My go to body.

Canon 24mm f/1.4 – My favourite lens. Wide with minimal distortion, perfect for landscapes and a challenge to get close enough to people to get the intimate shots that I love.

Sigma 50mm f/1.2 – A beast of a lens that is pretty much good for everything.

Canon 135mm f/2.0 – For all the Guancos I plan to see in the distance.

3 Canon 5D Mark III Batteries – I thought about bringing only two but video eats batteries for lunch.

Fuji Instax Wide 300 – I was fully inspired by a few photographer friends to bring this. In 100% honesty, I wish I hadn’t and ended up leaving it behind locked up while I went into the backcountry.
Manfrotto Lightweight Tripod – For night photography, time-lapses, and video. I’ve been using this as a makeshift monopod as well.

H4N Audio Recorder – I will lovingly call this piece of equipment “The Brick.” It weighs a lot but also cut the wind out of my audio as best it could.

11″ MacBook Air – This thing was old and slow and I missed my work beast the Macbook Pro often, but seven weeks is a long haul to be gone running a business remotely, and for this trip I specifically invested in a used Macbook Air (thanks craiglist, you never fail). If I could have done this whole thing without a computer I would, but unfortunately an iPhone just can’t do it all.

Other gear items include a LensPen, Lens Cloth, Various CF and SD Cards, Card Reader, Two 2TB Hard drives, iPhone 6, Journal and Chargers.

www.taylorroadesphotography.com

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