There is an underlying desire in every travel or street photographer to be able to carry one lens to cover all contingencies.

I realized the importance of taking location notes years back when preparing a large selection of slides for a stock agency. I was going through my “Italy” file and began to segregate out images of church interiors. Spectacular and, at the time I shot them, unforgettable locales quickly turned into a confusion of altars, statues, and naves, most of which I couldn’t honestly...

As the mixed bag of camera reviews in this month’s issue shows, there are many ways you can travel the photographic road these days. These range from the arcane to the elaborate, from pocket-sized digicams with extensive controls to full-fledged pro systems with interchangeable film/digital backs. The system you choose will necessarily match what you like or need to capture, be it casual...

I tend to separate light into two distinct areas—that supplied by the one true light source, the sun, and the other by the inventiveness and ingenuity of people, namely flash, a controlled explosion, and continuous, usually some form of filament, spark, and vapor, or controlled burn. My tendency is to seek out natural or ambient light whenever I can, mainly because I like the hunt and the...