Nate and I are now back in the United States after having traveled on the Trans-Siberian railway for 3 1/2 weeks from Beijing to St. Petersburg, with side trips in Shushenskoe for the Sayan Ring Music Festival and Kyzyl, Tuva.
Russia is a far more beautiful and fascinating place than most Americans realize.
I have thousands of photos to download and process, dozens of videos to cut, and many pages of writing to do. Expect to see the full release of my work in a week or so.
Today was a productive day of photographing the most famous Tuvan in the world in the morning and getting tickets and sim cards in the afternoon. Tomorrow we will take a taxi to Abakan and get on a train for Moscow. We will be riding the train non-stop for 72 hours (getting off every few minutes in the major cities).
I have been traveling for almost three weeks now and have been in Russia since around July 5th. While Nate and I were on Baikal Lake, the largest lake in the world (with 20% of the freshwater on the planet), we met a German in a bar that spoke of a three day music festival called Sayan Ring starting in a few days. This is the largest music festival in Siberia and is held annually in Shushenskoe, about three hours from Kyzyl, Tuva. Once he mentioned that there would be throat singing, Nate and I looked at each other and immediately knew we had to be there.
We took off the next day back to Irkutsk, then a 15 hour train to Krasnoyarsk, then a 9 hour bus to Shushenskoe. The festival had around 30,000 people and we never saw a single native english speaker. Finally on the third day we were greeted with our first Tuvan group. It was absolutely stunning to hear throat singing in person.
The next day we took a bus, then a private car to Kyzyl, Tuva. Traveling to Kyzyl was the focal point of this trip, something I will elaborate on in future posts after I get home. For now, read up on this amazing area here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyzyl
Today is our second day in Kyzyl. We met with Dina, the assistant to the President of the Republic of Tuva for an interview that we organized prior to the trip. Nate and I lived on his sailboat named “Tannu-Tuva”, and the news site Tuva Online was interested in doing a story on us. Afterwards, we were interviewed by the Tuvan news channel THT about our experience.
It just so happens that Kyzyl is a very small place, and Dina helped get me in touch with Kongar-Ol Ondar, Tuva’s most famous throat singer. I will be photographing him at his school tomorrow morning.
At the very least, if everything else goes wrong for the rest of the trip, we have made it to Kyzyl. I still cannot believe it.
I have been traveling for a little over a week now and I am thanking myself for packing light.
I started in Shanghai to visit my brother, then met Nate in Beijing three days later. The following morning we took the 30 hour journey to Ulan Bator in Mongolia by train.
This is a strange and incredible place. The city of Ulan Bator has skyscrapers and a very modern lifestyle, while two hours away there are families living in yurts subsisting off the land. We just stayed with a family last night, playing basketball with the kids while fending off goats at night while sleeping outside (only for 3 hours, it started raining around midnight so we retreated to the yurt).
Since I didn’t bring a laptop and all of my photos are in RAW, photo postings will be few and far between. When I have the time I will try to take a shot of my Nikon’s LCD screen with my iPhone to give a sample of what i’m seeing.
However, you will have to wait till I get back to see the real stuff.
Tomorrow, I leave on a month-long trip that my friend Nate and I have been planning since last year. I am flying in Shanghai to visit my brother, then going to Beijing to meet Nate. From there, we will take the Trans-Siberian railroad up through Mongolia, moving west across Russia until Novosibirsk. At this point, we will travel south to visit the former country of Tuva (now a part of Russia). Finally, we will move back up north and west, finally ending our trip in St. Petersburg.
I hope to post updates here in every city we stop in. I will be back in New York on July 24th.
Last week I photographed NYIT’s Commencement at their Old Westbury campus in Long Island. Here’s a selection of the photos.
US Senator Charles Schumer addresses the 2010 graduates of NYIT.
US Senator Charles Schumer addresses the 2010 graduates of NYIT.
In 2006, I went to Southeast Asia for 2 1/2 months, spending time in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, and Burma. Before my trip, I carefully researched equipment, only choosing to bring what I thought was truly necessary. I kept looking at the photographer Karl Grobl’s web site and his pack list to compare it with mine (see what he brings around the world here: http://www.karlgrobl.com/EquipmentReviews/index.htm. He is a really great resource so check it out.
On that trip I brought 2 DSLR’s, a long lens, a regular lens, a wide lens, carbon fiber tripod with ballhead (5 pounds), 12″ Powerbook (5 pounds), 2 portable hard drives (around a pound), 300mm F4 lens with 1.7x tele (3 pounds), and a flash.
While I would say the laptop and hard drives were necessary because flash cards in 2006 were too expensive to hoard, only about 5% of my photos were from the tripod, none of them spectacular. As for the 300mm lens, this is the only photo I got with it: 
Yes it is a Cheetah. And yes anyone with a long lens and the Singapore zoo can get this photo. Every time I moved to another town or country, I swore at myself for packing so much gear.
Fast forward to 2010: flash cards are cheap, I have the Nikon D3 that allows me to shoot in REALLY low light hand held, and I have learned how to get by with a lot less on trips.
Click photo for a high res version
Here is everything tech and camera related that is coming with me. In 2006 I brought two 80 GB hard drives, this time I’m bringing 80 GB of CF cards. Every night, I am going to download the very best photos onto a 4 GB flash card and keep it hidden in my leg stash (this is where that second flash card slot on the D3 comes in handy). This way, if I am robbed of my cameras and backpack, at least I will have the best photos and my passport.
If you look closely, you can see that my iPhone (on the left) has a cracked screen. I dropped it two weeks ago and I’m hoping the new one comes out before I leave.
Here is everything from above packed.
This is what I will be carrying when I travel from city to city. All of my clothes and other camera gear fit inside the Granite Gear Vapor Day 32 Liter backpack.
If you would like to see my comprehensive pack list, you can download the spreadsheet here: http://joshgerritsen.com/blog/photos/Josh’s Pack List
Last week, I was in Honolulu, Hawaii with my girlfriend taking a tropical vacation. I was born in Hawaii and lived there until I was six years old. I returned in 2001 with my family for a week, but this was my first time experiencing it as an adult. I have vowed to never take my big camera on vacation again, and for this trip I used my Canon S90 and my girlfriend’s Lumix TS1 underwater camera.
Here are my favorite photos from the trip, one of which was shot by my girlfriend.
The view from our hotel room
Coconut trees at the Polynesian Cultural Center
Mountain on the way back from the North Shore, photo by Marya
On the path towards Manoa Falls
Trees on the path to Manoa Falls
Path to Manoa Falls
View from Diamond Head of Waikiki
Air bubbles from divers
Air bubbles from divers
Marya swimming in Hanauma Bay with Fivefinger shoes
Tropical fish in Hawaii