A little over a week ago I came home to Portland from a two-week trip in Thailand, leading a workshop alongside Michael Bonocore with The Giving Lens. A few days after I was home I had a quick trip to San Diego to play with the Sony mirrorless camera with some other photographers (more on that in an upcoming post), and so it just is now feeling like I’m finally staying put and not on the move. I think I love to travel about as much as I love being home, so it can be quite the conundrum.

While I was in Thailand, I seriously had another amazing, life-changing adventure. Part of the mission of The Giving Lens workshops is to support an NGO in the country we visit, and in Thailand the NGO is COSA. I was there last year and so it was really great to return and see some of the girls that were still there. I have a feeling that I’ll be going back and visiting them again in the future.

Overall, the workshop was wonderful. We saw temples, monks, mountain hilltribes, people working in fields, and even baby elephants! BTW, if you are ever in Chiang Mai and want to see the elephants, the absolute best place to see them is at Elephant Nature Park. It is one of the most ethical, caring parks in the country; other places just don’t compare and may even have questionable practices (but you would never find out, they all tout themselves as “ethical”, even if they are not).

On this trip, I also decided to bring the Fujifilm X-T1. I have to say that it was such a great decision! I didn’t have all of the gear I needed for the trip, so I rented a few things from LensRentals.com (click here to see the gear I brought on my trip). I mostly used the camera for hand-held work, so I still haven’t tested it again as a landscape camera, but so far I am very impressed. The focusing was fast, my images are sharp, and it just felt good using it. Also, for trips like this, weight is a huge factor in why I want to use a mirrorless. I’m on my feet the majority of the time, and because the Fujifilm cameras and lenses are so small I was able to carry around two cameras, each with their own lens, and it wasn’t too heavy at all.

Click here to view the gear used on this trip.

A little over a week ago I came home to Portland from a two-week trip in Thailand, leading a workshop alongside Michael Bonocore with The Giving Lens. A few days after I was home I had a quick trip to San Diego to play with the Sony mirrorless camera with some other photographers (more on that in an upcoming post), and so it just is now feeling like I’m finally staying put and not on the move. I think I love to travel about as much as I love being home, so it can be quite the conundrum.

While I was in Thailand, I seriously had another amazing, life-changing adventure. Part of the mission of The Giving Lens workshops is to support an NGO in the country we visit, and in Thailand the NGO is COSA. I was there last year and so it was really great to return and see some of the girls that were still there. I have a feeling that I’ll be going back and visiting them again in the future.

Overall, the workshop was wonderful. We saw temples, monks, mountain hilltribes, people working in fields, and even baby elephants! BTW, if you are ever in Chiang Mai and want to see the elephants, the absolute best place to see them is at Elephant Nature Park. It is one of the most ethical, caring parks in the country; other places just don’t compare and may even have questionable practices (but you would never find out, they all tout themselves as “ethical”, even if they are not).

On this trip, I also decided to bring the Fujifilm X-T1. I have to say that it was such a great decision! I didn’t have all of the gear I needed for the trip, so I rented a few things from LensRentals.com (click here to see the gear I brought on my trip). I mostly used the camera for hand-held work, so I still haven’t tested it again as a landscape camera, but so far I am very impressed. The focusing was fast, my images are sharp, and it just felt good using it. Also, for trips like this, weight is a huge factor in why I want to use a mirrorless. I’m on my feet the majority of the time, and because the Fujifilm cameras and lenses are so small I was able to carry around two cameras, each with their own lens, and it wasn’t too heavy at all.

Click here to view the gear used on this trip.

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Nicole is a photographer, published author, and educator specializing in Lightroom, Photoshop, and photography. She is best known for her books on food photography but is widely versed in various photographic genres, including landscape, nature, stock, travel, and experimental imagery.

6 Comments

  1. Robert March 31, 2015 at 5:41 pm - Reply

    Great photos. It looks like you had a trip of a lifetime. You mentioned purchasing the Canon 6D? Are you at all uneasy about the camera? the 11 point focus system?

    Thank-you for sharing…

    • Nicole S. Young March 31, 2015 at 6:47 pm - Reply

      I’m not really worried about the focus system on the 6D. Most of my photography with the Canon cameras is manual focus (landscape or food), so I rarely use AF as it is.

  2. Tan Han Cheng April 3, 2015 at 11:28 pm - Reply

    Great photos from your trip to Thailand!

  3. jpbarcelos April 6, 2015 at 6:53 am - Reply

    I’ve got the 6D. Wonderful camera for professional work. I work with family photography, so I find the 6D is faster in operation than the Fuji: this is actually something I rarely see people complaining about. Try to put in manual focus in you canon, and shooting sequentially (not burst mode – single shot mode). You’ll be able to shoot about 3 shots in a second. With the fuji, it nearly takes one second for you to be able to shoot again. Sometimes you need the BAM BAM BAM… three shots in a row, and the fuji doesn’t allow me to do that.
    Besides that, its a wonderful camera, and all my traveling photography is done with it.

  4. Brian April 24, 2015 at 1:03 pm - Reply

    Nicole, for landscape with the Fuji shoot raw and try a demo of irridient….Scenes with lots of detailed green foilage irridient is simply amazing….even the free silky pix which has the color profiles so your raw files will match fuji jpeg film simulation modes is decent…Irridient now has a color matching as well……..Fuji jpegs do extremely well with landscape, but it depends on the scene…

    • Nicole S. Young April 24, 2015 at 1:08 pm - Reply

      I have heard that Iridient is good with Fuji (and I tested it out myself). But honestly, I have no desire to start using a separate application outside of Lightroom. I use Lightroom for more than just processing my images, and having to use something else just for Fuji files is just not going to happen.

      I prefer my Canon camera when photographing landscapes, so for now, I’ll stick with that.

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