101 Tips for Travel Photography - 06 - Try an environmental portrait for a change...

To celebrate the launch of my new PDF ebook ‘101 Tips for Travel Photography’ and because July and August are top travel months worldwide, I’ll post 10 tips from the book over the months of July and August. This sixth tip comes from Chapter 4, which is all about photographing people.

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Beyond the classic close-up portrait
Give environmental portraiture a try

Everyone knows the typical travel portraits of beautiful character faces that you encounter on a trip. You can find several of them in this book. The recipe for such portraits is quite simple: a bit of soft light (whether or not you made it yourself with a flash) and a fast portrait lens, such as an 85 mm f/1.8 on a full frame or a 50 to 60 mm on an APS-C camera. By using that lens at it’s fastest aperture (lowest f-stop number), you can blur even the ugliest background into oblivion. If your subject is a bit photogenic, and you can focus on the eye closest to the camera, you’re going to have to try really hard to screw up a shot like that.

But… portraits like those have one drawback: they offer very little context. For example, I think the photo of the man on the right is quite a nice portrait that completely follows the recipe I listed above. Of course you don’t pass up on such an interesting character face. I photographed it with Fujifilm’s 110 mm portrait lens for the GFX. This lens has a large maximum aperture of f/2, comparable to an 85 mm f/1.4 on full frame. The only thing is... you have to take my word for it that it was made in Ethiopia, because you don’t see anything of the environment. It might just as well have been made in New York or in Brussels. That is why you should also try an environmental portrait: a portrait in which you photograph someone in their natural surroundings.

With those portraits you usually use a much wider lens (like a 24 mm on full-frame format). Make sure that you get close enough to your subject – otherwise they will be too small in the image frame – but not too close either, because then you risk getting distortion. Also make sure that you include enough interesting context, but not too much clutter.

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“I’d like to add one tip to the 101 tips: buy this book!”

— Johan Depoortere

Did you like this tip? In my new ‘101 Tips for Travel Photography’ you can find 100 more! This PDF ebook is available in two editions: with the Standard Edition, you get the 252 page PDF ebook as a download but 90% of buyers opt for the Deluxe Edition. The Deluxe Edition is currently on sale (US$39.95 instead of US$59.95). So, for only US$ 10 more than the Standard Edition (US$29.95), you’ll also receive access to a 3 hour video tutorial in which I show you how I photographed and edited 10 of my favourite images from the book.

Here’s a sampler of the layout and the contents of this 252 page PDF ebook.

Included in the Deluxe Edition is this three hour video tutorial in which I explain my approach to and the editing of 10 of my favourite images from the book.

101 Tips for Travel Photography - 05 - Using Layers

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⬇ Click the link below! ⬇

To celebrate the launch of my new PDF ebook ‘101 Tips for Travel Photography’ and because July and August are top travel months worldwide, I’ll post 10 tips from the book over the month of July. This fifth tip comes from Chapter 8, which is all about composition. One of the more advanced tips - not so much in terms of difficulty but rather because you have to be “ready” for it as a photographer - is to use layers in your image.

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Layers aren’t only for clothes.
Make sure to have them in your images, too

This is tip #69 from the book ‘101 Tips for Travel Photography’: Layers aren’t only for clothing. Make sure you have them in your images, too…

A photo only has a height and a width, while the reality you are trying to capture in that photo is three-dimensional. One of the challenges for a photographer is therefore to try to convey that depth in the photo. There are various techniques for this. Some we discuss elsewhere in this book, such as using backlighting and working with a frame within a frame. A slightly more advanced idea is to work with layers. By “advanced” I don’t mean that this technique is difficult, but rather that as a photographer you need a certain creative maturity to start to include it in your photographic toolbox. I myself have experienced the power of layers almost accidentally. Until a few years ago I would have found the small photo on the right page to be the better one, and the large photo on the left, less strong. Now, my opinion has changed. The small photo is a nice registration. But the big photo on the left page is much more immersive: it gives you the feeling of being there. And that’s what travel photography is all about. The primary layer in this photo is still the background, but the secondary layer, the foreground, helps to frame the subject, literally and figuratively. To ensure that your secondary (and sometimes even tertiary) layer does not become too dominant, you can do the following:

• Make the secondary layer smaller than the primary – I obviously didn’t do that here!

• Darken the secondary layer.

• Make sure the secondary layer is not completely visible. By not including the front man’s face, the viewer’s eye is automatically sent to the faces in the back anyway.

• Make sure that the secondary layer is not the sharpest part of your photo, for example by working with motion blur or shallow depth of field. To help your luck a hand, you can set the camera to continuous shooting (“burst”) mode.

A flash just outside of the frame to the right, parallel to the wall, also helped to ensure that the rickshaw wallah in the back was put in the spotlight.

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“I’d like to add one tip to the 101 tips: buy this book!”

— Johan Depoortere

Did you like this tip? In my new ‘101 Tips for Travel Photography’ you can find 100 more! This PDF ebook is available in two editions: with the Standard Edition, you get the 252 page PDF ebook as a download but 90% of buyers opt for the Deluxe Edition. The Deluxe Edition is currently on sale (US$39.95 instead of US$59.95). So, for only US$ 10 more than the Standard Edition (US$29.95), you’ll also receive access to a 3 hour video tutorial in which I show you how I photographed and edited 10 of my favourite images from the book.

Here’s a sampler of the layout and the contents of this 252 page PDF ebook.

Included in the Deluxe Edition is this three hour video tutorial in which I explain my approach to and the editing of 10 of my favourite images from the book.

101 Tips for Travel Photography - 04 - How to approach people?

To celebrate the launch of my new PDF ebook ‘101 Tips for Travel Photography’ and because July and August are top travel months worldwide, I’ll post 10 tips from the book over the month of July. In this fourth tip, I talk about how you can approach people to make their portrait.

SAVE US$20 ON THE DELUXE EDITION

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How to approach people… can’t buy you happiness
“No” you have, “Yes” you can get…

This is tip #28 from the book ‘101 Tips for Travel Photography’: How to approach people. “No you have”, “Yes you can get”.

One of the most frequently asked questions about travel photography is how you approach people to portray them. It helps to imagine that you have nothing to lose, except maybe a small dent in your ego: “No” you have, “yes” you can get. Take it from someone who once had to sell life insurance door-to-door for an entire week as part of a job training: there are worse things to try to sell than a photo. That week never seemed to end! By comparison, asking complete strangers to photograph them is a walk in the park. Below are a few tips:

• Watch your non-verbal communication: make sure you come across as friendly and non-threatening. Also pay attention to your intonation.

• Most people understand what you mean when you smile and in the mean time wave your camera at them. I then pause briefly and wait for a response whether I can continue or not.

• Respect it when the other doesn’t want to be photographed. It’s no use to steal a photo when the subject is looking cross at you.

• While cycling through Iran, where I made the photo on the left, I had an Iranian friend write in Farsi “Can I take your photo?” on a sticker that I had stuck to my lens hood. I then showed the lens hood to my potential subjects. I also brought a card (again in Farsi) with more explanation about who I was and what I was planning to do with the photos.

• Try to memorize a few words of the language, even if only phonetically. For example, in Hindi I can (more or less) say “Look here please”, “Look over there” and “Look into the light.”

• Finally, in this app era, we shouldn’t forget our smartphones: a free app like Google Translate allows you to translate sentences online. For foreign scriptures, such as Hindi, you will also be shown a phonetic translation and you can even have the sentence pronounced.

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“I’d like to add one tip to the 101 tips: buy this book!”

— Johan Depoortere

Did you like this tip? In my new ‘101 Tips for Travel Photography’ you can find 100 more! This PDF ebook is available in two editions: with the Standard Edition, you get the 252 page PDF ebook as a download but 90% of buyers opt for the Deluxe Edition. The Deluxe Edition is currently on sale (US$39.95 instead of US$59.95). So, for only US$ 10 more than the Standard Edition (US$29.95), you’ll also receive access to a 3 hour video tutorial in which I show you how I photographed and edited 10 of my favourite images from the book.

Here’s a sampler of the layout and the contents of this 252 page PDF ebook.

Included in the Deluxe Edition is this three hour video tutorial in which I explain my approach to and the editing of 10 of my favourite images from the book.

101 Tips for Travel Photography - 03 - To pay or not to pay?

To celebrate the launch of my new PDF ebook ‘101 Tips for Travel Photography’ and because July and August are top travel months worldwide, I’ll post 10 tips from the book over the month of July. In this third tip, I’ll tackle a question I get a lot: Should you pay when you make somebody’s portrait? Find out my take on this after the break.

SAVE US$20 ON THE DELUXE EDITION

Save 33% on the Deluxe Edition. No discount code needed. Now only US$39.95 instead of US$59.95 for the 252 page PDF ebook + a 3 hour video tutorial detailing how I photographed and edited 10 of my favourite images from the book.

Money can’t buy you happiness
There are many ways to pay for a picture

This is tip #25 from the book ‘101 Tips for Travel Photography’: Money can’t buy you happiness… There are many ways to pay for a picture.

One of the frequently asked questions about travel photography is ‘Do you pay for portraits?’ You could write quite the philosophical essay about the subject, but I’m trying to stay pragmatic on this page: you’re the one who wants the photo, so if the other party wants money for it, that is their good right. So I have no problem paying for a portrait, if I really think it’s worth it. If I put a sadhu on a boat on the Ganges for half an hour to make his portrait , I would even find myself quite stingy not to pay him for his time... The same goes for portraits in the Ethiopian Omo Valley. They won’t let you take pictures there if you don’t pony up. And I don’t blame them. I’d ask to get paid, too if I looked that photogenic! It’s just a matter of supply and demand. Besides paying explicitly with cash, there are many other ways to ‘pay’ in a less transactional way, however:

• One of them – the Instax print – even has its own tip (number 11). Although I don’t really see it as payment, more as a thank you.

• What I also often do, is buy something from the person I was photographing. For example, I bought the bubble blower from the man on the left after I took his picture. He was happy, my son was happy and I was happy. Triple joy for only 50 rupees (less than one euro).

• There are also quite a few occasions where I don’t pay, because the situation just feels that way. A simple, heartfelt ‘Thank you!’ is something almost everyone understands and often is enough.

The payment for the travel portrait on the right page, that I made during a bicycle trip from Georgia to Armenia consisted of purchasing a far too heavy bag of carrots.

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“I’d like to add one tip to the 101 tips: buy this book!”

— Johan Depoortere

Did you like this tip? In my new ‘101 Tips for Travel Photography’ you can find 100 more! This PDF ebook is available in two editions: with the Standard Edition, you get the 252 page PDF ebook as a download but 90% of buyers opt for the Deluxe Edition. The Deluxe Edition is currently on sale (US$39.95 instead of US$59.95). So, for only US$ 10 more than the Standard Edition (US$29.95), you’ll also receive access to a 3 hour video tutorial in which I show you how I photographed and edited 10 of my favourite images from the book.

Here’s a sampler of the layout and the contents of this 252 page PDF ebook.

Included in the Deluxe Edition is this three hour video tutorial in which I explain my approach to and the editing of 10 of my favourite images from the book.

101 Tips for Travel Photography - 02 - Take It Easy

To celebrate the launch of my new PDF ebook ‘101 Tips for Travel Photography’ and because July and August are top travel months worldwide, I’ll post 10 tips from the book over the month of July. Where the previous tip was very practical ("What kind of photo gear do I take with me on a trip?"), this one is of a more philosophical nature: how do you deal with "travel photography stress", the sometimes overwhelming and frankly paralysing urge to score great images when travelling?

SAVE US$20 ON THE DELUXE EDITION

Save 33% on the Deluxe Edition. No discount code needed. Now only US$39.95 in stead of US$59.95 for the 252 page PDF ebook + a 3 hour video tutorial detailing how I photographed and edited 10 of my favourite images from the book.

One good image a day…
… is more than many pros can say

This is tip #22 from the book ‘101 Tips for Travel Photography’: One good image a day… is more than many pro’s can say

Do you know travel photography stress? It is the pressure you feel as a traveling photographer to return home with a series of killer images. Or maybe you make it even harder on yourself by wanting to update your Instagram or Facebook feed while traveling. The fact that we are all continuously exposed to a stream of high-quality travel photos from others through the same social media channels does not help things, of course. Personally, I prefer quality over quantity: one really good photo per day that you are traveling, is already fantastic. The great Ansel Adams, one of the giants of landscape photography, considered as little as twelve good photos a year to be ‘a good crop’. So don’t try (or expect) to put together your entire travel portfolio over an extended weekend and if you do succeed, you should be writing this book instead of reading it! I took this photo of a charcoal monger in Old Delhi at the start of a two-week trip. I was so happy with this image that any other good photo I took on that trip would just be icing on the cake.

“Twelve significant photos a year is a good crop”

— Ansel Adams

The man stood outside in harsh, unpleasing sunlight. I tried toexplain to him that I wanted to do the portrait in his shop. There was much less light over there, but the light that still came in was of a much better quality. In addition, I could also keep the background dark. I was only too happy that I had a fast portrait lens on my camera instead of a travel zoom (see also tip 8). Even at an aperture of f/1.2, I had to raise my ISO to 1.600 to get a fast enough shutter speed.

I also tried a wider environmental portrait as you can see in the bottom right of the screenshot, but I like the classic portrait shot much better, mainly because of the strong look in his eyes.

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“I’d like to add one tip to the 101 tips: buy this book!”

— Johan Depoortere

Did you like this tip? In my new ‘101 Tips for Travel Photography’ you can find 100 more! This PDF ebook is available in two editions: with the Standard Edition, you get the 252 page PDF ebook as a download but 90% of buyers opt for the Deluxe Edition. The Deluxe Edition is currently on sale (US$ 39.95 instead of US$59.95). So, for only US$ 10 more than the Standard Edition, you’ll also receive access to a 3 hour video tutorial in which I show you how I photographed and edited 10 of my favourite images from the book.

Here’s a sampler of the layout and the contents of this 252 page PDF ebook.

Included in the Deluxe Edition is this three hour video tutorial in which I explain my approach to and the editing of 10 of my favourite images from the book.

101 Tips for Travel Photography - 01 - What's in my camera bag?

To celebrate the launch of my new PDF ebook ‘101 Tips for Travel Photography’ and because July and August are top travel months worldwide, I’ll post 10 tips from the book over the month of July. We’ll start with one of the more frequently asked questions: what camera do you take with you? Read my thoughts below these links.

SAVE US$20 ON THE DELUXE EDITION

Save 33% on the Deluxe Edition. No discount code needed. Now only US$39.95 instead of US$59.95 for the 252 page PDF ebook + a 3 hour video tutorial detailing how I photographed and edited 10 of my favourite images from the book.

The ideal travel camera…
… is the one you already have at home

This is tip #6 from the boek ‘101 Tips for Travel Photography’: The ideal travel camera…. is the one you already have at home

It may seem crazy, but the specs of your camera body should probably be the last thing to worry about in travel photography. All cameras purchased in recent years offer a potential image quality that travel photography giants like Steve McCurry could only dream of in their heyday. A 24 megapixel camera, nowadays about the entrylevel resolution, delivers photos of 6,000 x 4,000 pixels. For large format printing, a resolution of 150 dpi (dots per inch) is sufficient. So, you can easily print your travel photos up to 40 inches or one meter wide. With special software such as Gigapixel AI from Topaz Labs, you can even double those dimensions without too much loss in quality. Unless you’re planning on cropping heavily (as is sometimes necessary with wildlife photography), the camera you already have may be enough and that hard-earned cash you’re lusting to blow on a camera upgrade might be better spent on a plane ticket or a fast portrait lens (see below). If you do plan to purchase a new camera, consider a mirrorless one. This type no longer has an optical viewfinder but an electronic one, which has its advantages:

• Due to the absence of a mirror, a mirrorless camera is smaller, lighter and quieter. These are all advantages in travel photography.

• With a mirrorless camera, you can already see the photo in your viewfinder before you make it. So you have less chance of getting over- or underexposed photos. That real-life preview is also very useful for flash photography.

For a lot of you reading this, you probably don’t have to travel far to have more sun than in your home country. The bright sun can make assessing your photos on the LCD screen of a DSLR quite difficult. With a mirrorless camera, you can review the photo in the electronic viewfinder, with your eye and head providing shade and therefore a better viewing environment. Another aspect that you may want to pay a little more attention to is whether your new camera is sufficiently dust and (splash) waterproof. When traveling, your gear is exposed to the elements a lot more than at home.

Finally, a second camera body is not a superfluous luxury. It can serve as a backup in case of breakage or theft. I have traveled for years with two identical bodies: two Fujifilm X-Pro 2s or two Fujifilm X-T3s, with a wide-angle zoom on one and a portrait lens on the other. I barely had to change lenses, which allowed me to keep my sensors clean. Those two APS-C bodies weighed the same as one full-frame camera, but they did offer me extra flexibility and security. Now that I mainly work with Fujifilm’s GFX system, I sometimes use the super compact Fujifilm X100 as a backup camera.

In addition to my camera, I also bring a fast portrait lens and a wide angle zoom. I find that two lenses cover 95% of my travel photo needs. If you are shooting wildlife, you will probably want to bring a fast telephoto zoom or an even faster long prime like a 400 or 600 mm. Personally, as I don’t photograph wildlife, I like to save some weight on lenses, because I also like to bring a flash and something to diffuse my light, like an umbrella or a softbox. More about those in a future blog post.

One last remark: I sometimes get asked by photographers who already have a camera, which (cheaper) camera they should buy for their travels, the idea being that they don’t want to take their main camera because it’s too expensive and they’re afraid of theft. I have never found that a good reason not to bring your best camera to a trip. Unless you’re going to a really dangerous place, I see no reason to bring, let alone buy a cheaper camera out of fear of getting your better camera stolen. I’d rather use (part of) the money to get a decent insurance for my photo gear wherever I am, because statistically, as you’re probably more home than abroad, chances are that if your camera ever gets stolen, it will be where you use it most.

So, let met know in the comments: what is your travel camera?

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“I’d like to add one tip to the 101 tips: buy this book!”

— Johan Depoortere

Did you like this tip? In ‘101 Tips for Travel Photography’ you can find 100 more! This PDF ebook is available in two editions: with the Standard Edition, you get the 252 page PDF ebook as a download but 90% of buyers opt for the Deluxe Edition. The Deluxe Edition is currently on sale (US$39.95 instead of US$59.95). So, for only US$ 10 more than the Standard Edition, you’ll also receive access to a 3 hour video tutorial in which I show you how I photographed and edited 10 of my favourite images from the book.

Here’s a sampler of the layout and the contents of this 252 page PDF ebook.

Included in the Deluxe Edition is this three hour video tutorial in which I explain my approach to and the editing of 10 of my favourite images from the book.

Review: Western Digital WD My Passport Pro for Mac. The ultimate portable harddrive for photographers?

Ever since I saw my buddy Matt Brandon from www.thedigitaltrekker.com use one on our Rajasthan photo workshop, I've been using a Western Digital WD My Passport Pro myself. The difference being that I opted for the 2 TB version. After over a year of using the drive, it's time for a review. Is it the ultimate hard drive for photographers? Well, although there's no such thing as perfection, it does come close!

What is it?

The WD My Passport Pro is an external hard drive specifically for Mac users: it uses a fast Thunderbolt connection. The drive draws it power from your computer, so no need to lug a power adapter along. Some may disagree, but I find the fact that the cable is attached a nice feature: when not in use, it wraps around the side of the drive. So, for someone as disorganised as me, it's a good thing I cannot loose the cable anymore. Unless I loose the entire drive, obviously...

Inside though is where things really start to get interesting: the WD My Passport Pro does not contain one but two classical rotating 2.5 inch 5400 RPM drives. Two 1 TB drives in the case of the My Passport Pro 2 TB and two 2 TB drives In the case of the bulkier 4 TB version. Speaking about size, here's how the two models differ:

Images courtesy WD

What makes it special: three ways to configure it:

The WD Utilities software lets you set up the drive in three different ways. 'Mirror' is the one that I use and that offers the protection your images deserve.

Using the supplied and easy to use WD software, this means you can set up the drive in any of three ways:

1. JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks): this means that the two drives inside the My Passport Pro will also show as two separate drives on your Mac. It's a bit like using two separate external drives, the difference being that they're conveniently stored in the same housing and there's only one cable. However, this is not the use I make of it nor is it the use I recommend making: there's cheaper and more efficient options for that, such as the newly announced My Passport Ultra, which exists in up to 3 TB of storage. 
   UPDATE: check out my friend Mike's workflow in the comments section: he does use the drive in JBOD mode and makes some valid arguments for that, too. And... he works in IT so he knows way more about this stuff than I do!
2. Raid 0: this means that the two drives act like one big 2 or 4 TB drive (depending on the model). Especially for the latter, that's a lot of mobile storage! The risk however is that if one drive fails, all your data is gone because it's effectively spread across the two drives. So, unless you have an airtight backup system (which would mean you would have to backup to another WD My Passport Pro or a similar capacity drive) and, if you don't want to interrupt your workflow, also carry that backup with you, this is probably not the way you want to store your precious photographs.
3. Which brings us to the third option (the one I use and is most recommended for photographers who, unlike Mike, aren't IT experts :-) : use the drive in Raid 1 mode. This means that the drive behaves as a 1 or 2 TB drive on your system and whatever you save on that drive is automatically mirrored on the second drive. If drive one fails, your data is still intact on the other and vice versa. As Mike rightly points out in the comments, this only protects you from drive failure, though. If you accidentally delete a file from one drive, it's automatically gone from the second, too... 

It's the latter option which makes the drive interesting for photographers who generally are paranoid (or should be) about losing their precious images. 

Scenario 1: using the drive as a temporary drive while traveling

I see two big scenarios in which this drive really shines: the first is as a travel drive to store your photographs (and other essential data) on while you're traveling. This means the setup would look something like this:

This is the scenario I follow when I'm traveling: using Lightroom, I'll import my images from the SD card to the My Passport Pro. My Catalog and Previews are on an external 512 GB Angelbird SSD drive. When Lightroom prompts me to back up the catalog when I quit it, I altnernate that backup between the internal drive of my laptop and the WD My Passport Pro. This adds an extra layer of security for my Catalog, as I will always have a fairly recent version in at least two extra locations. I only backup the catalog itself, by the way, not the previews, as they are too bulky and can always be re-rendered if necessary. 

If your Lightroom Catalog is not as big as mine (I have over 130.000 images in it), you could also put the Catalog, Previews and Smart Previews on the internal drive of your laptop or... on the My Passport Pro as well. Lightroom will just run slower because of the slower read and write speeds of this type of drive compared to solid state memory. Ultimately, you're the only judge of whether 'slower' still means 'fast enough' or 'too slow'. 

Especially if you're using a MacBook Air for traveling, due to its limited internal hard drive space, I'd recommend against putting the catalog and previews on the internal drive.

Additional security precautions while traveling

Having my images and a backup of my Lightroom catalog on the My Passport Pro protects me against drive failure, but it does not protect me against theft or loss of the drive, obviously. That's why I never reformat my memory cards while I'm traveling: memory cards are cheap so I just bring plenty of them. By not reformatting them, I have an extra, super light backup which I can easily take with me. I also make it a habit never to leave the My Passport Pro and my laptop unattended together (like in the hotel room): I will always carry one of them with me. That's also an advantage of the 2 TB version over the 4 TB version: it's slightly lighter and quite a lot smaller.

If the internet is fast enough wherever I'm traveling, I'll try to upload my best pictures of the trip (say the 5 star ones) to Dropbox as yet an extra layer of security.

When I'm back home, I will connect my catalog drive and the WD My Passport Pro to my desktop computer and - using Lightroom ! -I will  transfer the files over to my main storage system (currently a Drobo 5D Thunderbolt, although I have been investigating the options of NAS storage), freeing up room on the My Passport Pro for the next trip.

Scenario 2: using the drive as your only dedicated photo drive

For this workflow, I would recommend the 4 TB version because... you never can have enough storage, right? In this case, you just use the My Passport Pro as a convenient, small Raid device with the added benefit that should you ever want to take it with you, it's small and light enough to do so. 

This gives you 2 TB of mirrored hard drive space. In the case of my Fujifilm Raw files, which weigh about 30 MB per image, this means I could safely store some 66.000 images on the 4 TB version. That's a lot of images! If you're planning on organizing and storing more images than that, you're probably better of using a bigger, heavier (and more expensive) Raid System or NAS system. 

UPDATE: SCENARIO 3 - See Mike's comment for a possible third scenario I hadn't thought of myself.

Pricing

As you might expect from the feature list: these drives aren't cheap. If you're more of the DIY variety, you could get two separate drives and use separate backup software to do something similar. Personally, I prefer to avoid hassling with too much gear and software so I prefer to pay a premium for the portability and the convenience of the WD My Passport Pro. The 2 TB version will set you back some 289 € (that's at Dutch online retailer Bol.com) while the 4 TB version - if you're lucky enough to find a dealer that has them in stock - retails for about 432 €. As often is the case, it pays to surf around a bit and also, if you're reading this from the US, consider yourself lucky as prices are cheaper there.

The verdict

If you're a photographer using a Mac, the My Passport Pro is a very convenient tool to add an extra layer of security in your photography workflow, whether you're on the go or in your studio. The 2 TB version is very compact for its features and although not exactly shirt-pocketable, even the 4 TB version is still easily transportable. I've been using the 2 TB version for over a year now and other than one of the rubber feet getting MIA, which I replaced by a bit of Sugru, it has performed flawlessly! 

Highly recommended!

The WD My Passport Wireless is another drive that can be of interest to photographers, as it features a built-in SD Card Reader

By the way, if you're mainly needing an external drive to back-up travel images to, Western Digital has given itself some internal competition in the form of the My Passport Wireless, which I will review on this blog shortly. Suffice to say for now that the built-in SD card reader of this particular drive should be enough to draw a photographer's attention.