PDNEWS
WHAT’S IN YOUR BAG?
PAUL NICKLEN PACKS A TON TO SHOOT
FROM LAND, SEA AND AIR
Paul Nicklen recently got a call from a fellow
photographer who goes on assignment with
two cameras in a shoulder bag. The photographer was stressing over whether to add a laptop to his kit, which would double his load.
“I told him to call someone else with that
problem,” says Nicklen, explaining that he typically packs about 2,000 pounds of equipment,
“plus an airplane, plus a kayak” for his frequent
National Geographic assignments.
“This is what I love about my job: I don’t just
say I’ve been to [some] remote area. I can say
I flew, I dove, I saw it from the surface of the
water,” Nicklen says. “It means a ton of gear.”
Nicklen grew up on Baffin Island, majored in
marine biology, and decided early into his career
as a biologist that he could better serve wildlife
as a nature photographer. “I realized that if I was
going to tell the stories I wanted to tell, then I
had to be able to shoot both” aerial and under-
water photography, he says. “I was lucky to have
support from National Geographic. I still am. I
could never travel with this gear if I didn’t.”
The gear list for the underwater work is es-
pecially long. Nicklen shoots with Canon cam-
eras—“everything from a 1D Mark IV to the 1Ds
Mark III.” His favorite lens for underwater work
is a 16-35 mm L2 f/2.8. He uses Seacam under-
water housings with polished mineral glass
domes “and special viewfinders that allow me
to see very well with a mask underwater.” Each
camera is equipped with at least two strobes
(Ikelite and Seacam are his preferred brands).
He also uses HID underwater dive lights “to
find stuff, and also to photograph things.”
In his pre-digital days, Nicklen traveled with
ten underwater cameras and housings and 20
strobes. Now that he can shoot 800 or more
digital frames to each card, he’s down to three
cameras with housings, and four to six under-
water strobes. And he’s capturing images that
weren’t possible before, such as those from his
famous four-hour, close-up encounter two years
ago with a leopard seal. “I was able to get 1,200
COURTESY OF PAUL NICKLEN
Above: Paul Nicklen. The photographer typically packs about 2,000 pounds of
equipment for his underwater and aerial National Geographic assignments.
