Overview

Here are some photos from my part of our trip.

Lessons Learned

1.  Synchronize Time Stamps Across Cameras Before you Start

Over their 38-day trip, my wife and her friend took thousands of photos.  Unfortunately, we hadn’t considered checking the time stamps on their phones before they left.  So, my wife’s phone was an hour off from the actual time.  Of course, we didn’t discover this until they got back home, and we tried to compile and organize all their photos.  I ended up having to manually adjust the timestamps on my wife’s photos in order to create a slideshow that was in time sequence.  This wasn’t fun, and I hope I don’t make this mistake again.

2.  What Camera and Lenses Should I Take?

When you’re carrying everything on your back, this is not a trivial question.  During the final two months before she left for France, my wife fine tuned her cargo repeatedly.  She was able to get her pack down to 17 lbs.

For me, although I considered bringing my Nikon D5100 DSLR, which would have limited my options for other equipment, I ended up taking my D500 DSLR, DX AF-S NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8G prime lens, DX AF-S NIKKOR 10-24mm, f/3.5-4.5G ED wide angle zoom lens, and my Nikon SB-5000 speedlight.  In addition, I brought a small assortment of portable tripods and light modifiers.  All this equipment was heavy, but I don’t have any regrets.

3.  Sometimes You Even Need to Overpower the Sun

For the shots at Finisterre, especially those showing Patty at the “0.0 Km” marker, there was strong back/side lighting that put her face in shadow.  I think this was the first time I used a speedlight outdoors.  The results would have probably been a little better if I would have set the speedlight to Through The Lens (TTL) metering (instead of Manual), with Spot Focusing, so that the camera would have adjusted the flash intensity based on the exposure at the focus point, which I put on her face.  These are the adjustments that, over time, will start coming to me automatically.

4.  Hiking is a Great Way to See the World

Our experience in Spain has gotten both Patty and I hooked on long-distance hiking. For our next trip, we’re planning to hike Scotland in the first half of 2017.