Love to travel.
Traveling is the greatest way of discovering new countries, cultures, people, food, landscapes, religions and a lot of other things. To me, the world and it´s countries is like a big book - you have to read through it to know the story. People who don´t travel only read the first page and don´t know anything more than that.
I´ve been traveling around Europe a lot, but coming to Asia gave me a whole new view on this side of the world. I am lucky enough to combine my passion - photography - and travel at the same time.
Over time I have had good and bad experiences - at the age of 19, a friend of mine and me hitchhiked from Germany to Estonia in Eastern Europe and we were attacked by two polish guys. Luckily we were able to defend ourselves and nothing serious happened.
So traveling is like eating spicy food - if your not used to it, you should start of with small portions. The more experience you get the more you can travel and discover.
Don´t take too much gear.
Taking photos is not always easy, as a lot of people don´t like to get their picture taken. Learn to talk to people, start a positive connection. Quite often the first few seconds can decide over people liking you or not. And you will only be able to take their photo when they like you.
My camera equipment for traveling Indonesia is quite simple:
Nikon D800
Nikon AF-S Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED
Nikon AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 14-24mm 1:2,8G ED
Sirui Carbon Tripod
180 GB of CF and SD Memory Cards
Make your gear look like a pile of trash.
Taking Zoom Lenses gives you a wider range of possibilities. Although I would recommend taking fixed focus lenses, if you plan to take a lot of photos in bad lighting situations.
My Camera looks like this, when I am traveling - I tape everything off to make it look like a pile of trash. Nobody would want to steal a broken camera. It works perfectly and the tape is just a disguise. Pickpockets easily notice high value camera gear, so I tend to mask all logos.