A Travel Photography Checklist

Inspired by my Digital Packing Checklist, I decided to make a similar one for photo gear.

Deliberately walking through this checklist, I've found I can sidestep a number of photography traps. From the annoyance of DSLR pictures with incorrect timestamps, to the agony of capturing important photos with the quality setting set to low, to a smattering of issues in between, this list has me covered.

I'm careful to review this list for each camera I'm bringing, though obviously some steps don't apply to some devices.

• Clean lenses and look for damage.
• Consider replacing UV filters used to protect lenses.
• Insure batteries are fully charged, and noted as such.
• Insure the date and time is properly set.
• Set the timezone where you'll be shooting pictures. Insure the daylight saving option is correctly set.
• Review photo quality setting, insure the highest quality setting is selected.
• Review the age of SD cards and consider replacing them.
• Purge SD cards of old photos.
• Purge backup areas of old backups.
• Run your photo backup procedure, insuring all cards are backed up.
• Check cloud backup settings to insure 'Original' photos are being saved. Review Roaming and Upload over Cellular options.

Happy shooting!