A Wedding In Galveston: The Gear

Originally, I had written a 2800-word blog post (give or take). Yikes! Way too long! I think the human attention span tends to get a nervous tic over anything past 1200 words (which is the length I try to stick to but oftentimes never successfully manage). I personally can’t stand reading uber-long posts, no matter how helpful they may be; I tend to skim over them and just look at the pictures. I’d forgotten about this, though, in my 2800-word zeal to get everything down about my experience photographing this wedding. Then, I started reading some short but neat blog posts by Scottseyephotos about his photographic trip to Hallo Bay, AK, and I realized I was far more interested reading his numerous, interesting short blog posts than I would have been had he combined all of his bear articles into a single post. So, I’ve separated this original post into several shorter ones.

Here’s the First Post, which I hope whets your photographic-blogospheric appetite for the next post:

I had the great fortune to photograph Josh & Maegan’s wedding in Galveston, Texas, back in late April (2013). The venue was the San Luis Resort. I reserved a room for the weekend and prepared for the event.

What I took with me:

Canon 1-DX body + 3 spare batteries
Canon 5D Mk III body + 4 spare batteries
A rented Canon 6D body (go read my previous blog for my take on this body)
Canon 85mm f1.2L lens (which I absolutely loved but never used for this event)
Canon 50mm f1.2L lens
Canon 24-70mm f2.8L II lens
Canon 70-200mm f2.8L II lens
A rented Canon 14mm f2.8L lens (go read my previous blog for my take on this lens)
A 7’ parabolic white umbrella
2 Canon 600 EX-RT flashes (one of them was a rental)
Canon ST-E3-RT transmitter
Gary Fong flash head diffuser dome
2 lightstands (of which I only used one of them)
One 500-watt studio light (which I did not use but now wish I had for the groomsmen shots instead of my flash – that way I could have seen right away how the lighting situation would look).
Induro 8X CT314 tripod legs and Induro BHD3 ballhead (I only used it for the HDR shots of my room interior and balcony view, believe it or not – all of the wedding shots were hand-held)
42 memory cards, both CF and SDHD in 4GB and 8GB capacities
15” Laptop
2 portable hard drives
2 memory card readers (in case something happened to one of them)
Battery charger for each type of battery
My portable MiFi (never used it since the resort had free WiFi)
All the assorted cords and connecters needed to power up the other items listed
My LowePro Slingshot AW 202 camera backpack
My Think Tank Airport Commuter camera backpack
My Photoflex Transpac to carry all my lighting equipment (it turned out to be rather large and exceedingly heavy, so I plan on ordering something smaller to take with me for my next gig)

I’ve written a TripAdvisor review including photos of my room and the resort. Suffice to say that I enjoyed my stay, liked my room, loved the view, but wished they had provided me with a different type of coffee maker . A small complaint, but coffee is a mainstay for me when traveling and working with photos on my laptop. I usually pack my own coffee and filters with the assumption the room has a 4-cup coffee maker. It didn’t work with this particular room.