The Expedition Photographer: Gear, Endurance, and the Long Trail

Course Overview

This is an intermediate (200-level) expedition course for the photographer who is ready to leave the day-hike behind and carry a professional kit deep into the mountains for weeks at a time. It grows directly from the Dean’s guide to hiking with professional camera gear, and from more than two decades of backpacking as a professional mountaineer — the yearly month-long returns to the Himalayas, the Annapurna Circuit walked again and again, the Thorong La Pass crossed from both sides — and it begins exactly where he begins: with the conviction that the heart of adventure travel lies in the concept of the journey itself, in the desire to explore and then show it to the world in rich detail.

The course rests on one demanding idea the Dean states plainly: whether it is your camera or your backpacking gear, you must choose it with expertise, or it will take away all the joy that nature offers. Carrying at least seventy pounds over twenty miles a day through mountainous terrain can give you exhaustion, disappointment, and frustration — unless you prepare for it by good planning and training. Long before the perfect moment appears, then, you must train your body to carry the load, learn the three governing factors of gear, build a camera kit you can actually walk with, and pack it so the weight becomes bearable.

Across eight lessons you will learn to time a Himalayan season and route; to train for the long day under a heavy pack; to weigh the real cost of going unprepared and to choose between travelling solo and in company; to judge gear by performance, durability, and weight; to assemble a full-frame camera kit for the trail; to pack the 40+10L system and arrange the weight; and, at last, to manage food, language, and the logistics of the long trail so the expedition stays a joy rather than a trial. You will finish ready to plan a multi-day expedition and to put that hard-won experience in the frame.

Faculty & Resources