How to Plan, Pack, and Prepare for a Major Landscape Photography Trip

Thomas Heaton is quickly becoming an industry-favorite landscape photographer thanks, in large part, to the informative videos he’s been creating, and his latest video is no exception. In it, he shows you how he’s planning, packing, and otherwise preparing for a major landscape photography trip to the Alps.

If you’re like Heaton, a trip like this has probably been on your bucket list for years—for some it’s a spot in Iceland, or New Zealand, or Norway… for Heaton it’s a panorama of the Mont Blanc massif. And if you’ve been dreaming of this trip for years, the last thing you want to do is under-prepare and cheat yourself out of the experience you deserve.

Enter Heaton, who spends 13 minutes and 12 seconds covering every step of his preparation process: from the idea that sparked the trip, to location scouting on Flickr, to actually planning his route through Google Terrain, and much much more. You can see the whole process below:

This video is actually Part 1 of 3, Part 2 will cover executing the trip/panorama Heaton is after, and Part 3 will be all about processing and printing the final file. Be sure to keep an eye on Heaton’s YouTube Channel to catch the rest. A photography vlog from the Alps is actually already live.

Once all three parts are up, you’ll have a full, start-to-finish guide that’ll show you how to plan for, execute, and reap the rewards of a major landscape photography trip. Not bad.