A few months back my wife and I had to bail on a vacation we were planning to the Maldives. We discovered the cost plus the time needed to get there combined with my wife's PTO made it less than ideal. So, after a sad come-to-Jesus with our friends we started to talk about the top places in the world we would love to visit.

Not surprisingly, we had a number of similar places we wanted to visit. So, we began to hunt for cheap flights and discovered that my dream location had direct flights from Minneapolis round trip for $600 a person. Combined with my flight miles, we wound up flying direct international for 2 people for $400! Needless to say, that trip starts this coming week and we are both ecstatic.

We will be spending 7 days in a van driving across my dream photo location. Starting to pack for a dream photo vacation with only so much room, meant a new Thule bag, numerous new memory cards as well as trying to figure out what to bring and what not to bring camera wise. With a desire to take both film and digital photos, as well as capture video, it has complicated what may and may not fit in our new Thule bag.

Equipment above: 5dMarkiii, Rebel t2i, Pentax K-1000, Powershot S110, Yashica Mat 124g, Portra 160, Kodachrome 64, Velvia 100, Nisi ND1000, Nisi ND64, Nisi GND 0.9 and miscellaneous chargers, batteries, tripod, and memory cards.

As of late, I have spent a number of days working out how to take long exposure photos. To be honest, I became obsessed with photos of Iceland over the last few weeks. With an impending vacation just around the corner, I had no idea how to create the smooth almost blanket like waterfall and ocean photos I saw from some of my favorite photographers. I understood the concept of long exposure but how could those photographers not get over exposed even at f22 iso 100?

Fortunately, the internet was working and I started scouring until I came across the details. To my surprise, the process seemed like something I could have fun with and my next stop was a plethora of filter reviews. Wow! Those things are expensive, in fact a good couple filters will cost you as much as a new lens and there is a significant delineation in quality. In other words, do your homework if you want to start getting into long exposure photography, as you could pay a lot for a filter that reduces your photo's quality and ultimately doesn't provide the level of production you would hope to obtain with a significantly increased exposure.

So, with the help of the internet, I went with Nisi filters, a cheaper, well reviewed, glass slide filter. Thanks to the Nisi slide filters I have been able to extend my exposures for significant lengths of time. I have had the opportunity to use and test the Neutral Density Filter – ND64 (1.8) – 6 Stop and a Neutral Density Filter - ND1000 (3.0) - 10 stop as well as a Soft Graduated Filter- GND.9 - 3 stop.

Don't worry a few weeks ago that sounded just as foreign to me but has as of recent, become one of my favorite tool to create beautiful photos.