Everyone who knows me knows two things; I love being outdoors with my camera and I love exploring the world. I had recently turned 31 and was moving back to the UK from Australia. Unable to face the idea of heading straight back to a cold, dreary British winter. I made a rash decision. I was going to travel South and Central America for six months, and I was going to do it armed with over £10,000 worth of camera gear.
My route was beautifully vague. A one-way flight from Melbourne to Rio de Janeiro. One rucksack filled to the brim with clothes and contact lenses and a smaller backpack straining at the seams with a Fujifilm X-H2, two lenses, a DJI Mini 3 Pro, a massive 5TB LaCie SSD, a 16-inch Macbook Pro M2, an iPad Pro, a Nikon AW130 and my brand new Google Pixel 9 Pro. The backpack was at least twice as heavy as my rucksack.
My goals were simple: travel Latin America, capturing the stunning natural beauty of a continent I’d never stepped foot on, and try my absolute hardest not to be robbed at gunpoint. I knew I would likely travel through tropical beaches and islands, trek through rainforest, climb mountains and glaciers, walk through favelas and party on the streets, journey across vast deserts and hike up active volcanoes. My camera gear would journey with me everywhere and I would need to keep it capable of operating in the humidity of the rainforest and the dust of the desert. It would be my greatest photographic challenge yet.
With the scene set, let’s jump into the 10 things I wish I knew before I started. Hopefully these will help save any budding backpacking photographer out there!
1. The two-bag rule and how to travel with 6 months worth of ‘stuff’ and all your camera gear.
Most backpackers I met on the road were traveling light with just one rucksack. No cameras, no drones, no pricey laptops. Just clothes, shoes, and toiletries. It’s safe to say I was jealous of their setup as we piled into crammed chicken buses (colourful, old US school buses now used as public buses across many Central American countries) or crossed land borders. But here’s the good news: the two-bag setup is absolutely doable. I always had my large rucksack on my back and my smaller backpack on my front, and I survived! Sure, it was uncomfortable, having two bags on my lap on some small buses, and flying meant always paying extra for hold luggage, but the creative payoff was worth every awkward transit
The golden rule, however, is that two bags are the absolute limit. I found that as I travelled from country to country, place to place, I’d occasionally give in to temptation and buy a new t-shirt or a souvenir, resulting in a temporary third tote bag. The moment both of your hands are no longer free, travelling becomes a massive logistical nightmare. Stick to the two-bag rule religiously.
2. The locker life - how to keep your expensive gear safe in a £10 a night hostel.
By far, my biggest anxiety before setting off was keeping my gear safe while sharing dorm rooms with up to 19 strangers. I wouldn’t have the luxury of securing my camera equipment in a private, locked room. I would be relying on lockers and a padlock. I learnt three vital lessons: firstly, a good, sturdy padlock with a 4 digit code was to be my best friend, and I made sure I travelled with three of them, knowing I’d inevitably lose one along the way. Hostelworld reviews were a close second-best friend. Before choosing my hostels, I read through the reviews left by fellow backpackers. I looked for specific comments in the reviews about the lockers that the hostel had (how big they were, how secure they were, whether anyone had anything stolen from their lockers during their stay). The reviews helped me to make an informed decision on which hostel gave me the best chances of keeping my camera gear secure. Finally, I learnt that my crossbody sling bag that could fit my Fujifilm X-H2 and 12-70mm lens was a God-send. I would have been devastated if I’d have had my camera stolen, but if I was ever in doubt about my camera gear and how secure it all was in a hostel locker, I would simply head out of the hostel with my camera on my person, in a cross body bag that had anti-pickpocketing zips. That way I knew that, even if someone broke into my locker and stole my drone or laptop (which of course would be devastating) at least I would still have my camera!
3. The backup habit and why multiple external SSDs are an absolute must.
This lesson I learnt in the most agonising of ways. I started my trip with a single 5TB LaCie SSD. It was robust, massive, and I stupidly decided it was a great place to store my entire trip's data alongside seven years of historical photography archive. What could go wrong?
The trip started off great with the LaCie performing really well - it was tackling the large uploads of photo and video with ease, my MacBook and LaCie working in conjunction perfectly. And then I got to Bolivia. A group of 5 of us started a four-day road trip through the south-west of the country. Phone signal was non-existent, the accommodation was in the middle of nowhere and electricity was turned on for a few hours in the event to allow us to briefly charge our phones and cameras. After a great day of shooting, I plugged my laptop in, backed up the day's cards to the LaCie, and put it away. Or so I thought. The next day was a photographer's dream. We cut through the Desierto de Siloli, passing alpine lagoons filled with Andean flamingos, and hitting the world-famous Uyuni Salt Flats at sunset. Back at our lodge, I eagerly reached into my bag to upload the new shots. The drive wasn’t there. That’s weird. What pouch have I put it in? Panic set in. I couldn’t find it. It was nowhere. I emptied every single part of both of my bags onto my bed and thoroughly checked everywhere. It had disappeared.
My Spanish was terrible at the time, so my Spanish friend in the group had to translate the crisis to our Bolivian driver. The driver's initial response? "You will never see that again. Sorry." Thankfully, my friend refused to take no for an answer, knowing how much that hard drive and the photos on it meant to me. He pressured our Bolivian driver to call his friend who might have been driving another group of gringos through the same route the next day. Somehow our Bolivian driver and his friend had signal but we didn't. It was incredibly unclear if I would ever see my LaCie again and the photos not only from the first couple of months of my trip, but also from the last 7 years.
Against all odds, the drive was recovered and delivered to me just an hour before our bus left for La Paz. I swore I’d buy a backup SSD the second I hit the capital. Did I? Of course not.
I was on a wildlife conservation research vessel deep in the Amazon River. It was boiling hot, and the humidity was hovering around 300%. I had just captured some of the best photos of my life: spider monkeys, northern caiman lizards, and orange-winged parrots. While sitting on the deck using the boat's temperamental Starlink, I plugged in the LaCie. Suddenly, the little orange status light flickered off, and a warning popped up on my MacBook stating the drive had been improperly ejected. I unplugged it and plugged it back in. The power light was solid, but the MacBook refused to acknowledge the drive's existence. The drive was dead. Out of the 3TB of data on that drive, professional data recovery specialists were only able to salvage 450GB. The rest of my seven-year archive was lost forever, and my stubbornness cost me an additional £650 in recovery fees.
Don’t be like me. Always carry multiple SSDs.
4. Being an invisible photographer.
Fitz Roy mountain, Argentinian Patagonia. Ipanema beach, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Both places are breathtaking in their own ways. Both places are deserving subjects for photography but they require completely different approaches. In El Chalten, the small village at the foot of Fitz Roy, my camera lived in my hand, on open display. Breathing the mountainous, chilled air of Argentina’s Patagonia, I had total freedom to live with my camera always in my hand. Here, my photos were more planned, my compositions more thought out. I knew my subjects (the mountains, the lakes, the glaciers and the trees) weren’t going anywhere, so I had time to plan how I wanted to capture the scene in front of me. I hardly always needed my camera out in my hand. Walking along the sun-drenched promenade of Ipamena beach in Rio, my camera stayed firmly in my crossbody sling bag, its anti-theft zips securely shut. In Rio, life moves quickly and subjects move in and out of frames at speed. As a photographer, I can spot an opportunity to capture a subject quickly, but with my camera tucked firmly away in a crossbody bag, hidden out of sight, the shot slipped past. I could sometimes sense my disappointment. What a perfectly framed shot that would have been. The lighting was perfect just then. I would have to let these thoughts drift out of focus just like my subjects did. I wasn’t willing to keep my camera at hand constantly just in case the perfect shot presented itself. I had to make a decision to occasionally be an invisible photographer. Taking photos of the perfectly composed subject, with immaculate lighting and technical precision completely in my head.
To the people around me, they had no idea I was taking pictures. And neither did my camera, sleeping in my dark bag, but at least it lived to shoot another day.
5. Drone ethics and when the rules were bent.
Generally speaking, I’m pretty liberal when it comes to my interpretation of rules and regulations that govern the use of drones. Once, whilst flying my drone legally on a public footpath in aUK national park, a middle-aged man in his 50s with a face weathered unkindly by the years and hair that was attempting to flee his head, stopped to aggressively tell me I wasn’t allowed to fly that drone here - the fields around us were private property. I smiled, apologised, and pretended to land it while continuing to shoot my footage. (A post-flight Google search confirmed I was entirely within my legal rights).
I brought that same pragmatism to Latin America. I researched ahead to ensure drones weren't flat-out illegal to cross borders with (for example, Nicaragua bans them entirely, so I skipped the country altogether to avoid smuggling horror stories). Beyond that, I adhered to three simple principles: never disturb wildlife, never fly near airports, and don’t be an idiot. I have always drawn a strict line at respecting indigenous lands. In Panama's stunning San Blas Islands, the autonomous Kuna people strictly prohibit drone flights. While living on a sailboat surrounded by entirely deserted, tropical paradises, the temptation to fly was enormous.
On our first morning, we befriended a local Kuna man celebrating his 45th birthday at a small beach shack. He and his friends were drinking beers by 10am and insisted on buying our rounds. The next morning, he rowed up to our sailboat in a motorised canoe to sell freshly caught lobster to our captain. Our captain casually asked if he’d mind if the gringos flew their drones over a remote part of the reef. Thankfully, he agreed without complaint.
Bending the rules with local permission is one thing, but otherwise, keep the drone grounded if it disturbs wildlife or goes against the wishes of local people.
6. Climate control.
If there’s a recurring theme to this blog, it’s that I’m remarkably bad at learning from past mistakes. A few years ago, I was working in Tonga assessing coastal tsunami damage after the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai volcanic eruption. I was driving along the coast looking at humanitarian risk profiles, and I spotted a powerful photo opportunity. I had it my mind; this was some real Nat Geo stuff, showing the impact of a tsunami on local people and infrastructure on a small island country many people may not have heard of before. I hopped out of the air-conditioned car, raised the camera, and... complete opacity. The exterior humidity instantly hit the chilled glass of the lens, drenching it in a layer of condensation that wouldn’t wipe away. The takeaway should have been simple: usezZip-loc bags and silica gel packets to transition gear temperatures slowly. Did I learn this lesson? Absolutely not.
Fast forward three and a half years and I am moving across South and Central America, encountering the same problem. The problem came to a head in the Amazon rainforest, onboard the same research boat that my LaCie SSD broke. Inside my cabin, the aircon could be on for small portions of the day (when there was enough solar power stored in the batteries). But, when I rushes back into my cabin to retrieve my camera, having seen an incredible species from the deck of the boat, my camera steamed up and I missed the shot. Next time, I will learn. I swear.
Something that I did get right, however, was always having a camera cleaning with me in my camera bag. Whilst not an issue in the Amazon Rainforest, dust and sand particles were a threat to the camera in places like Brazil, northern Argentina (around Salta) and southern Bolivia. My small camera cleaning kit, consisting of various microfibre clothes, lens brushes and an air blower, was a lifesaver, removing small dust and sand particles that could have scratched the lenses or possibly the electronic lens mounts.
7. Powering up devices across a continent.
Like most photographers, my worst nightmare is my camera battery going dead right as the light turns perfect. Despite this fear, I only have one battery for my Fujifilm X-H2. Yes, I could invest in another battery to give myself some more redundancy, but I was already carrying an ungodly amount of weight; my bag was literally straining at the seams, and I flatly refused to add more weight.
So I opted to face my fear and find ways to keep my devices charged at all times. I don’t get affiliate payments, but one piece of kit I absolutely swear by was my LENCENT 120W international travel charger. This thing has three USB-C slots and a traditional USB-A slot, and you can plug it in anywhere in the world. It has the correct prongs for the UK, the USA, Australia and Europe, meaning that it also has the correct fittings for the Americas, Asia and Africa. It has built in voltage protector mechanisms so it really can be plugged in anywhere and, because it is 120W, it charges things really quickly, including my MacBook Pro. This little thing meant that whenever I got the chance, I could plug in my camera or my drone (or both at the same time), and even with just 15 minutes of charge, I could ensure I was able to shoot for the whole day ahead.
The added bonus is that this thing is now my daily charger and my forever travel adapter that goes everywhere with me.
If you don’t want to spend the extra money on an additional battery, this is a great alternative that can be used for photography and out in the real world at home or when travelling in general. You just need to plan your charges a little more than you would if you could rely on a backup camera battery.
8. The shot vs the moment.
While security concerns often forced my camera into its bag, there were other times I chose to put it away.
I vividly remember walking through La Paz, Bolivia, the world’s highest administrative capital, sitting at 3,650m above sea level. Life feels like it is partially stuck in the 1950s. Many indigenous Aymara and Quechua women, including young adults, still choose to wear their traditional cholita outfit, made up of a pleated pollera skirt, a bowler hat (bombín), and manta shawl. I don’t really do street photography much – I have never managed to get over my uneasiness taking photos of people in the street. But in la Paz, I really wanted to. The women look amazing in their cholita outfit and with the city, full of its steep walkways and jumble of architecture, provide an incredible backdrop. Yet, my camera stayed in its bag. I wanted to observe this difference of culture, not to capture it through a viewfinder. The cholita outfit is a mix of Spanish colonial influence and indigenous pride. To these women, this outfit is a cultural identity that symbolises both strength and cultural resilience. I deeply admired them for continuing to wear it when the world is dominated by Nike and Zara. The experience of walking amongst them was much more powerful as a lived experience rather than a photo.
The only time I broke this rule was near the Peruvian border. Our bus ran directly into a massive political roadblock organised by indigenous farmers protesting government corruption. Traffic was backed up for miles, and we were instructed to disembark and walk our luggage through the demonstration on foot. Ahead of me, a Quechua woman in her cholita began marching determinedly past a wall of gridlocked trucks. The visual metaphor of cultural resilience meeting modern geopolitical chaos was too powerful to ignore, so I took the photo.
We walked past numerous people, tyres aflame, laughing and chattering as they sat in small foldout chairs blocking the road. The men were dressed in modern outfits whilst the women wore their traditional cholita outfit. Again, the temptation to get the camera out was overwhelming, but it remained away. I observed the local community members as they sat there. I smiled at them and they smiled back at me. That was enough for me - no photo needed.
9. Gear specific insurance and why you need it.
Finding a travel insurance policy that would fully cover all of my camera gear and electronics (as a reminder, it was the following: a Fujifilm X-H2, two lenses, a DJI Mini 3 Pro, a massive 5TB LaCie SSD, a 16-inch Macbook Pro M2, an iPad Pro, a Nikon AW130 and my brand new Google Pixel 9 Pro) was a mammoth challenge. I needed a one-way insurance policy that started in Australia and finished in the UK, that lasted for over six months, that covered cruises, had adequate medical coverage, that covered 9 different countries and that covered £10,000 worth of electrical equipment.
Spoiler alert: that policy didn’t exist. I searched and searched for a policy that would allow me to have coverage for electronics up to that total amount but couldn’t find out. I was willing pay a large premium too. The best I could find as a policy that covered me for £3000…
Still, at least I knew that I had some level of insurance cover for my camera gear. Whilst I knew that not all of my gear was covered, some of it was. t gave me enough peace of mind to trust hostel lockers and sleep through bumpy overnight bus rides (though my camera bag was always padlocked and wedged directly under my feet, never in the overhead racks).
Thankfully, I only needed to use my insurance policy once, when my phone fell out of my sports shorts pockets when aggressively dancing to cumbia music in northern Argentina. Although I couldn’t buy a replacement until I got to Cusco in Peru some 3 weeks later, leaving me to use my iPad as a phone and try to connect to WiFi wherever I could and use it to take quick photos that I would normally get on my phone, my insurance kicked in and paid for my replacement phone.
Cover your gear as best as you can, but above all else, make sure you have solid medical insurance.
10. The best backpacker hubs for glass.
If you are planning an epic photography trip through Latin America, two regions stand out. The first is Patagonia. I went to the Argentinian central part, around El Calefate and El Chalten, but I know plenty of other people who crossed the border into Chile and others who headed as far south as Ushuaia in Argentina. Wherever you go in Patagonia there will be backpackers and endless opportunities for stunning photography. Subject topics range from majestic glaciers to expansive savannahs, and wild horses to birds of prey. Hotels can be on the pricier side, as generally things in Patagonia are priced higher than in other parts of Latin America, but it’s worth it.
If Patagonia doesn’t fit within your backpacking budget, then southern Bolivia certainly will. The Uyuni Salt Flats are one of the most famous landscapes in the world. There were a few occasions when I couldn’t believe my eyes on this trip, and seeing the mirror-perfect reflection of the Salt Flats was truly a life-altering landscape. Further north, La Paz sits as the world’s highest administrative capital. The streets are highly walkable (though you will be out of breath because of the altitude and the enormous hills). From La Paz, you can go just about in any direction and find adventure and great photography opportunities. The Death Road (Camino de la Muerte) is just a short drive from La Paz and offers spectacular views of Bolivia’s mountains as well as an amazing mountain biking route that drops 3,600 metres in elevation over an ~80km distance. Also close to la Paz lies the Huayna Potosí mountain, a 6,100m high snowy, glaciated peak. Once the peak is achieved, incredible views extend below. It can then be back to La Paz and the infamous Wild Rover party hostel for a few nights (or weeks as some of my companions decided to do) of cheap boozing and partying. Bolivia is the true backpacker hub for photographers, and it is only a short stone’s throw (or 20 hour bus journey…) away from Cusco in Peru, home to Machu Picchu, one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.
I travelled to Bolivia in March 2025. At the time of publishing this post, Bolivia is experiencing significant social unrest and travel there may want to be reconsidered.
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