Editor’s note:  Self-taught and incessantly driven pro photographer Adam Swords doesn’t stand still very often. When he’s not shooting for clients like Honda, Sony, Canon, Dirt Magazine and Mountain Biking UK, you might find him training in Tang Soo Do (he’s attained a fourth-degree black belt in this form of Korean Karate) or documenting the creative, small business owners in his home county of Warwickshire in the West Midlands region of England. And he writes a very entertaining blog as well.

Adam used the Lowepro Street & Field System for a mountain bike shoot in the Forest of Dean – or as he would say, in his kind of environment ”out in the woods shooting sports”. Advanced Photographer covered the shoot and profiled Adam in a recent article.

We asked him how this modular system worked in a non-urban environment and a bunch of other questions about the day-to-day life and aspirations of a successful, active lifestyle photographer/videographer.

Tell us how your Street & Field System set-up helps with your workflow and shooting style.
I’ve always liked to keep things simple with my photography equipment and when I find a solution that works for me, I stick with it. I’m not one for keeping bang up to date with the latest gizmo and gadget and nerding out over the minutia. In my line of work, I need to be sure that my gear will allow me to focus on one thing, getting “that” shot.

The Street & Field System is perfect for me; it’s a no nonsense set up that allows me to carry the essential bits of kit with me when a backpack or roller case won’t cut it. I use mine in environments and situations that don’t lend themselves to laying a bag on the ground in order get in to them – muddy trails and busy pits at motorsport events for example.

By having the essentials on me and within easy reach it means that I can spend more time shooting and less time worrying about changing lenses or rummaging around for a fresh memory card. It’s not often I’m without James my assistant, but when it’s not possible for him to be prepping the next lens change, or handing me fresh batteries, the Street & Field System almost acts like a second pair of hands.

You often combine video with a still shoot. How do you capture content in both mediums and convey the same theme for commercial clients?
This is a request I’m getting more and more from my commercial clients and I’d say it’s heavily attributed to the state of the economy right now and everyone is trying to penny pinch where they can. Luckily for me, I shoot my stills on a Canon 5D MKII, a camera which just so happens to shoot beautiful high definition video. This means that when I switch from shooting stills to video, I’m often still using the same lenses and camera, so the moving images inherently have the same look as the stills. Plus with me directing, I can ensure that my ideas and direction remains consistent across both media, ensuring the aesthetic qualities of both remain congruent. That said, I don’t always shoot video on DSLRs and when we’re using higher end camera equipment on a shoot, I ensure that our lens choice, colour profiles and final grading keep our shots looking similar. Ultimately though, I’d say that my direction is the greatest contributing factor in ensuring the same theme is conveyed in both the stills and video.

What’s the best advice you ever received from a fellow photographer?
I was lucky enough to intern for Chase Jarvis at very beginning of my career and I learned so much from him and the team it’s hard to choose just one thing.

I heard Chase say “A rising tide floats all the boats” a number of times and it’s an ideology that resonated the most with me. I think sharing what we know and helping each other out is a powerful thing and can only serve to boost the quality of not only our own work and the work of others, but tighten relationships within the industry.

It’s an idea not embraced by all and people are often scared of revealing their secrets to other photographers in case they become competition. But the way I look at it is that if I find myself competing with a new photographer because of what I’ve taught them, I’d better be improving and pushing my skills to the next level – It’s healthy.

What inspired you to create your “We are Warwickshire” project?
I shot a lot of automotive work in 2012 and wanted to work on something completely different. I’m an advocate of supporting local independent businesses and thought that a film series showcasing the amazing businesses and interesting people we have right on our doorstep would be a great way to give back to the community. It also allowed me to give the films a slightly more artistic feel and dial down that “sell, sell, sell” knob that is often ramped up to eleven in the commercial sector. I’ve had a great response to the films so far and will be wrapping up the project in a few months’ time with a screening and networking event to connect more people locally. (Editor’s note: You can see the series here.)

Name a geographical place that you’d love to return to or go to for an assignment.
Easy. California. I was lucky enough to travel out there for a week in 2011 for a shoot and I fell in love with the place. Without sounding too hippy, I think it’s my spiritual home.

Favorite new accessory that thrills you each time you use it?
Do I have to choose something photographic? Because in all honesty my favourite new ‘accessory’ is my mini remote control helicopter that I’m learning to fly like a boss around my living room and land on coasters. If I have to make this answer more photo-nerdy, then as a result of flying that I’m actually really interested in trying out some filming using a quad copter for aerial shots.

Most unusual item you keep in your camera bag?
A moustache drawn in sharpie on a piece of clear plastic! We use it on shoots to lighten the mood by asking all of the people on set to hold it up and have their photo taken.

Watch Adam’s Street & Field System shoot.

Our Rover Pro AW technical pack was built for carrying a large load of camera and camping gear to the backcountry. So you can imagine the pleasant surprise we got when Rebecca Litchfield – a UK fashion, celebrity and editorial photographer who typically uses camera rollers on her studio shoots – used it as her mainstay bag as she traveled to Poland.

A few weeks back, we chatted with Rebecca about her abandoned places and cultural memory photography and book project. She started her travels in Chernobyl in Central Ukraine (you can read more about that portion of her trip here).

The latest leg of her photographic journey took her to remote and historically significant sites in Lower Silesia, including the Liban Quarry and an abandoned chapel.

She carried a LOT of camera and personal gear – a full range of bodies, lenses, accessories, a tripod, camping supplies and plenty of creature comforts. It all fit in the Rover Pro 45L AW.

Rebecca gives a complete account of what she carried, how she packed, the way she traveled and the Rover Pro AW features she most appreciated (including the comfortable, trampoline-style suspension system) in her blog. We love her impressions in words and images…and hope you do, too.

Editor’s note: For the next few days you’ll find Brett Wilhelm at Aspen/Snowmass covering the over-the-top skiing and snowboarding action at the 2013 Winter X Games. A photographer, videographer and technology director for Rich Clarkson and Associates, LLC, Brett is a man who wears many hats (and he’s also a Black Collar Worker – for more on that, please read his entertaining and informative blog). He also serves as Workshop Director for the Summit Series of Workshops, and shoots the occasional side project out of his home-base of Boulder, Colorado.

Brett was kind enough to give us a bit of time as he and colleagues prepped for the current Aspen games. It’s awesome to get a firsthand account of this premier extreme sports event from this seasoned pro shooter. Read on and enjoy!

© Joshua Duplechian. Brett Wilhelm on the pipe at the Winter X Games Aspen

Can you give us some background on how you got started photographing the X Games?
The original call came, as many do in this industry, through friends of friends. Back in 2004, my roommate at the time was a filmmaker, and his former college roommate was then senior editor at EXPN.com (the forerunner to ESPN.com/Action and now XGames.com). They were looking for a local photo editor for Aspen, and he’d originally called my roommate, but my roommate ended up just recommending me.  I wasn’t technically a local and there wasn’t a budget for transportation and lodging, so I drove up and couched surfed to make it happen. A lot has changed since then! We’ve taken over more of the photography duties, developed an searchable archive for them and deployed Clarkson technology into their workflow. I always look forward to a great group of people on the XGames.com team, including working with my fellow staff photographers and extremely talented co-conspirators, Mark Kohlman and Joshua Duplechian.

Seeing a lot of “wild stuff” is kind of the norm at the X Games Aspen. What are you most looking forward to at this year’s event?
This event continues to amaze me with the innovation going on from year to year. Compared to the nearest neighbors in sport, perhaps gymnastics or ski aerials, the disciplines of slopestyle and superpipe skiing/snowboarding are still in their relative infancy. Thus, the complexity and creativity are still evolving at an incredibly rapid pace. Each event, tricks are executed that we just didn’t think were possible a year before. The talk of the town this week is the “Triple Cork”, an off-axis 1440. That’s four complete rotations with three flips added in for good measure. The cat-like ability to flip that many times in just a second or two of airtime and still land cleanly on your feet to ride away still boggles my mind. We’re hoping to see it landed for the first time at the X Games in snowboard slopestyle or perhaps ski big air. In ski pipe alone we have a couple veterans (at the ripe old age of their mid-twenties) coming back from injury after a season or two off, and it will be very interesting to see if they can catch up to the progression of the sport, and their 18 year old compatriots, even over just the last season or two that they’ve been out. Same for two-time Olympic Gold medalist Shaun White, returning to Snowboard Slopestyle competition after a few years focusing solely on Pipe, and he’s facing a similar challenge.

The other big news is moving to six events this year, taking us back to Aspen and Los Angeles, as well as Tignes, Barcelona, Munich and Foz do Iguacu! In short, anytime I’m out of the office and working in the mountains or across the globe, it’s something I’m looking forward to!

Do you have any personal tricks for setting up your gear to get the most of the action?
The modern Nikons we use are a marvel; the jump in high ISO performance in recent years has been a true game changer since so many of the prestige events here take place at night under essentially portable event lighting. I can’t think of any specific tips special to this event, other than to truly know and understand your equipment. When I get a new piece of gear, I take the time to sit down and read the manual cover to cover. Understand what the equipment can and can’t do for you and, more importantly, make sure that stuff is second nature to you, so can focus on creative imagery and you aren’t fumbling with controls when the temperature plummets and you’re ham fisted with frozen fingers.

I also keep a regular car cleaning chamois in my kit for taking water/melted snow off the cameras when it’s dumping out; they’re great for absorbing a ton of water for their weight, much better than lens cloths/towels. I also keep a nylon artists brush (maybe 1-1.5 inch width – get the nylon, not the natural hair brush, break off the handle) as it’s excellent for getting snow off the glass and out of the barrel of the lenses WITHOUT melting back to water and causing droplets. Lens cloths start heating up and absorbing water and that gets problematic quickly.  A couple of quick swipes every few minutes and you stay clear.

Finally, a big development in recent years is adapting our Clarkson wireless transmission system, using off the shelf technologies from Nikon and Photoshelter, combined with experience from a few years practice, we’re now transmitting live from the mountain to XGames.com and ESPN.com  editors in near-real time so that photos and web updates can keep pace with the broadcast. That’s been huge for us and I’m not sure where else photographers have been pushing wireless transmission to these kinds of limits in outdoor environments.

How do you deal with extremes in temperature?
Dressing warmly/comfortably is obviously a huge component – your creativity and reaction time drops off dramatically if you’re miserable. The charcoal/chemical pocket warmers are a lifesaver here, toe warmers in your boots, hand warmers in your gloves and sometimes the large “body warmers” stuck to the bottom of your camera battery can do wonders to keep you and your equipment functioning properly. The fingerless gloves with built-in “mitten flap” (available from many outdoors or fly fishing shops) are great because you can stick the heat pack in the mitten flap and only uncover the fingers you need for whatever task you’re doing.

At the same time, never bring your gear in to a warm room/event trailer from the freezing cold if you plan on going back out with it; everything will fog up immediately, so we do our best to keep it right outside the door within eyesight when we’re downloading.

What do you use to carry your gear as you cover events?
The workhorse of my kit is my trustworthy old Photo Trekker. I can’t tell you the number of trips it’s made with me all over the place, and I somehow have managed to take it on planes no matter what the size limit. It’s critical my entire kit stays with me as carryon and it’s just the right size to fit. On location, or on shorter gigs from home, I’ve been loving my Photo Sport 200 AW and Inverse 200 AW to maintain a low profile, and the built-in covers work not only to protect my gear when the heavens open, but also as a clean work space for setting gear down in the snow or dirt!

What’s a surprising “X Games survival item” that one might find in your camera bag?
A can of Red Bull!

Congrats to our Grand Prize Winner, Brandon Carey, who scores a GoPro Hero inside a Photo Hatchback 16L.

The Dashpoint 30 winners are as follows:

mike gionta
Matthew Hofbauer
Mike Thiesen
Grace (gracemok)
Jack Caughey
Patrick Letourneau
Glenn Fajota
Jeremy Nesemeier
Curtis Lu
Louis Amore
Mike (penguin)
Mike (mvargash)
Dustin (moonbuck)
Matt Everett
heather (hgtempaddy)
Ronald van Kooten
Rupert Lambert
Josh Evans
Randall Cipriano
Neil Leventhal
Josiah Brubaker
Brent Johnston
Jeff Treft
Paul Carter

We’ll contact all of you soon to get your shipping information. And thanks to everyone who participated.

Surf’s up in Northern California for the Mavericks Invitational surf competition on Sunday, Jan. 20, 2013. Twenty-four top surfers will compete for prizes and bragging rights.

We know many of our photographers love adventure too. So we’ve arranged for Sports Illustrated shooter Robert Beck to post images from the event on the Lowepro Instagram page. You can keep track of Robert and all the action by following “Loweprobags” on Instagram.

But wait… There’s more!

We want to help you capture your own “Maverick” action too. So we’re giving away 24 Dashpoint 30 adventure pouches (perfect for a GoPro) – that’s one for each of the 24 surfers competing in the event. Plus, one lucky adventurer will receive the grand prize of a Lowepro Photo Hatchback 16L with a GoPro Hero White camera inside.

To participate, answer this question in the comments below: “Maverick surfers are extreme athletes for sure! What activity would you use the Dashpoint, Photo Hatchback, or GoPro camera for?” Increase your chance to win by helping us spread the word. Send this tweet from your own Twitter account: “@Lowepro is giving away @GoPro camera and #PhotoHatchback http://blog.lowepro.com/?p=6941″

Giveaway void where prohibited. Comments must be submitted to this post by 11:59 PM PST, Monday, Jan. 21, 2013. Those selected for prizes will need to provide a shipping address and phone number. All results are final. Lowepro is not affiliated with the Mavericks Invitational or with GoPro.

Derrick Story is the Photography Evangelist for Lowepro.

The Lowepro Photo Hatchback 16L AW is my travel companion while covering CES in Las Vegas, NV. Even though I often use this versatile backpack for outdoor trips, it has a number of features that I love for city life too. One in particular is the removable camera box.

I store my Olympus OM-D and PEN mini camera bodies, plus 5 lenses, in the padded compartment with storm-flap closure and grab handles. During work hours at the trade show, I can easily access all of my gear. But once the day is over, I like to work with just the PEN mini and a prime lens for street shooting, leaving the rest of my equipment back in the hotel room. This is where I put that removable camera box to use.

I take the camera box out of the Photo Hatchback, with the balance of my equipment stored inside, and then secure the entire unit in the hotel safe. I don’t have to unpack the bag and fool around with individual components, because everything is already organized within the removable compartment. I’m just temporarily relocating it.

I can literally do this on my way out the door. It only takes seconds. Once I return, I unlock the safe and put the camera box back in the Photo Hatchback, and I’m ready to go back to work.

Here’s a short movie that details this entire process.

This feature has saved me a great deal of time. In the past, I had to take out individual components from my camera bag, figure out how to arrange them in the safe, then move them back. It was a real hassle. The Photo Hatchback has changed all of that.

Plus, once the camera box is removed from the Photo Hatchback, it’s a fully functional backpack that can be used for recreational activity. Bottom line, this camera bag is just as wonderful in the city as it is on the trail.

Derrick Story is the Photography Evangelist for Lowepro.

I take a lot of photos of my kids. I’m a mom to two boys. It’s what I do. My two-year-old has started to get a bit frustrated with being one of the two things I focus my camera on most. A few weeks before the holidays he said, “No pictures, Mommy!” I nearly fell down laughing. Clearly, I’ve become the paparazzi mom, but since documenting my little guys is so important, I need to figure something out.

At that point, Christmas was coming and if he wasn’t going to let me take pictures or video of him and his brother, what was I going to do? I had to think of something and fast. I’ve got it! GoPro! I could wear a camera and the little ones wouldn’t notice!

On Christmas Eve, I get the GoPro camera ready. I had done a few test shots and video of the dog, who equally has an aversion to getting his picture taken prior to Christmas Eve, but I didn’t realize the sound quality isn’t that great inside the waterproof housing, so my first thought of capturing my son’s reaction to Santa visiting our house overnight is quickly squashed. It’s too late to buy yet another accessory (The Frame) to solve my problem.

Santa is on his way. We saw his sleigh tracker and boy, that guy moves fast! There was no way we were going to clearly hear his commentary of the morning, which would clearly be cute as can be. He’s two; it’s bound to be adorable.

So, how to figure this out? Well, I roped my husband into helping. He took video with the iPhone to document the morning and I strapped the GoPro onto my chest harness for a different perspective. I also used the GoPro to do a time lapse of the gift opening, which was epic. Of course the two-year-old opened his younger brother’s presents because at 10-months old, he’s far too young to understand Santa. With the excitement of Santa, my little guys didn’t even notice the cameras.

The boys were lucky enough to receive a Zoo membership for Christmas and we used the GoPro to document the visit. I love being able to mount the GoPro to various things, including my own body to free myself up to either grab a toddler or shoot with my Canon 60D.

The Set Up

• Canon 60D with 18-200
• GoPro Hero 3 with an obscene amount of accessories
• iPhone
• Photo Hatchback 22L AW
• JOBY Ultrafit Sling Strap for women
• JOBY Tripods (2)