The Photos
Needless to say, an Ansel Adams I'm not. Taking pictures accompanies the travel, but I don't travel for the sake of taking pictures. There's no sense recording memories of something you didn't experience! I photograph what I see when I'm there, and there are rarely second takes. If the light is wrong or if it's the wrong time of day, well, you roll with the punches. That said, having a camera focuses the mind on what it is you're looking at, so it helps a lot. I'm still shy about flashing a camera, so I carry it around in a regular shoulder bag, and only take it out when there's a shot.
The Equipment
Equipment doesn't make you a good photographer. But for the gadget-happy, I use Canon cameras and lenses. My first decent camera was a Canon AE-1, which I used manually. The black-and-white photographs of McCarren Park in Brooklyn were taken with that camera. When I went to Peru I bought an EOS Rebel (EOS 500), which is a beginner's automatic. I thought that I'd be taking pictures of a lot of moving things, and though it wasn't true, it was an easy camera to use. I've found that three lenses are ideal: a normal-range, wide-angle and a zoom. I got a Sigma 24-70mm wide-angle lens, and a professional photographer friend gave me a Canon 70-210mm zoom lens.
There came a point when the camera and I started to argue. The problem with an automatic focus camera is that it has its own ideas of what to focus on. I considered going back to the manual camera, but instead, I bought an EOS-3, which has an eye-controlled focus. It's a beautiful piece of equipment and I get a lot of compliments. However, I find that every time you improve things, you can actually make them worse.
I had thought to use the lenses I had, but of course, the better camera needed still better accessories. I spent a fortune on a 28-108mm lens, a 17-35mm wide-angle lens and a 75-300mm zoom lens with a stabilizer, not to mention a flashgun that costs as much as a good camera. The camera is bigger, the lenses are bigger, so I now have trouble keeping all this stuff incognito in my shoulder bag. Last but not least, my poor back complains about the weight, so I choose the least of what I'll use before setting out.
The other issue is that with a camera like this, you have to know what you're doing. I took up photography because I was getting technically fussy with cooking, music and programming, and wanted some hobby for fun. In hindsight, photography was the wrong choice for mindless relaxation, but I managed to get this far. I now struggle with the camera, and will probably end up studying photography, which wouldn't be such a bad thing.
The Scans
Digital photography isn't there yet, in many ways. The quality is low, and if you run out of memory you have to start erasing things. It doesn't make sense. And at this point, the cost of a digital SLR is sky high. On the other hand, you can find film anywhere, and the resolution is great.
To compliment the film I bought a negative scanner, a Minolta Dimage Scan Dual. It runs off a SCSI card, and scans negatives one picture at a time. Each picture takes between 3 and 5 minutes, and while the scanner is running it hogs the entire computer. This is maddening, but you get 8 megapixel resolution out of it, which is more than the best digital cameras. Despite the difficulty it's well worth it.
I would then open the file up in PhotoShop to crop the borders and adjust the color. With this type of scan you can see all the scratches and imperfections in the emulsion. You don't see them in regular prints, and I believe the process of printing somehow blurs the photos just enough so that they don't come through. (I've compared enlargements with printed scans and the printed scans are clearer, which would tend to support that view.) To fix the photo I would then use the Clone Stamp to edit out all the imperfections. This could take over an hour per picture.
This is serious work, and putting together a presentation takes longer than the actual trip. I would work steadily as soon as the photos came back, and I've learned to leave myself a week or so after traveling, because I do nothing else. It could drive you nuts, but it's a very good exercise. Looking this closely at the photos helps a great deal with the narrative, in the same way that taking pictures helps you see the place that you're visiting.
Lately, I bought a new Minolta Scanner. It's a Dimage Scan Elite II. It uses a USB interface, which means that you can easily swap it to another computer if it hogs up the one you're using. Also, it can scan up to 6 negatives automatically, so you don't have to keep watching it. Of course, not every picture is one you want to use, but that's the price of progress. It also has hardware to correct the scratches, though I still think you might get a clearer picture by correcting it by hand. For now I'm so happy not to have the work that I'm taking more pictures than ever.