There’s No Such Thing as Packing Light

Before we jet off next week, I wanted to re-up this old post about going on assignment. So much of what we do at National Geographic is devoted to the final product, the fancy photos and deeply reported stories, that we don’t often show the process. In fact the question we hear most often on the road is “What do you take with you?”

So here’s the rough look of what happens when you lay out our gear end to end. It’s mostly cameras and equipment to hold or move the cameras or store its data. The rest is a bunch of notebooks and a pair of laptops that have been to the ends of the Earth and somehow still turn on.

The next question people usually ask is whether they can come along. That question is best answered with another question: how much weight can you lift?