Generally speaking, I travel in the same way as I always have, whether I'm going somewhere to take pictures or just taking a vacation. I try to do a little research on the area I'm going to, find out what the weather is like in the season I'm travelling in, and I get weather reports a little closer to my departure so I have an idea if there might be unusual weather coming on an intercept course. Obviously, you pack your luggage with all the things you think you'll need, but I think many people would be surprised at how little you truly need to bring along.
Take clothes, for instance. If you've got a lot of different activities requiring their own special clothes, you may be stuck bringing more along (if you're doing the tourist thing, but have a formal dinner or two to attend as well, or maybe one of your activities requires hip waders other other specialized gear), but if your days are going to be full of the same kinds of things, you can probably get away with wearing an outfit another day or three, depending on the circumstances. If your destination has weather like the sunny side of Venus, or you're travelling to Pigsty, Oklahoma for their annual weeklong "Mud Crawl and Oyster Bake," okay, your clothes might get a little funky after only one day, but as a general traveller staying in an actual hotel, I'm willing to bet you could wear your clothes again after airing them out a little.
I was once on a trip during high school where some of the other members of our tour group were runners-up in some midwest beauty pageant (we called them the Cow Patty Queens). These ladies were on a two-week tour of England, France and Italy, and had no less than seven pieces of luggage apiece, including separate makeup cases, suitcases for their casual wear, full-length garment hardcases (I didn't know they made these, but apparently they do), and even an honest-to-goodness steamer trunk in one case, and they were always surprised when we had to pick up and move somewhere so soon after they had finally unpacked all their junk (apparently, the pageant hadn't asked them to perform much math, because if you subtract all the travel time, we averaged two days in each major city and a lot of bus tours in between, which doesn't leave much time to settle in any one place). Did they really need to bring all of that stuff? Of course they did, because someone, somewhere, had told them they needed three outfits a day. Really. We'd get back from a morning bus tour, and by lunch, they'd all be in fresh, new outfits and makeup appropriate for the afternoon lighting, and then they'd have to hurry off and change so they'd be properly presentable for our dinner at... The Hard Rock Cafe. Or sometimes McDonalds, but I'm sure they had the RIGHT outfit for McDonalds.
If my trip is onlygoing to be a few days, I bring enough socks and underwear so I can change those out every day, but I only bring two outfits beyond what I wear onto the plane. I'll bring three or four if my trip is going to be up to two weeks, and if my trip is any longer than that, unless I know I'm going to be stuck in the middle of nowhere, I make plans to actually do laundry. If absolutely necessary, I'm willing to just rinse my clothes out in the sink or bathtub and hang them to dry; I'm a wash-and-wear kind of guy, anyway.
If you were to create a sliding scale of weather protection for your clothes, with 1 being barely decent and 5 being like Shackleton trying to reach the South Pole, plan most of your clothes to be just right for the location and season you're visiting, but be sure to bring at least one item one notch higher on the scale, just in case. Even if you don't wear it, it's good insurance to have it along -- if it suddenly gets unexpectedly cold, you can't put on a layer you didn't bring with you.
The Boy Scout motto is "Be Prepared," and it's a pretty good rule to live by. I like to bring some sort of rain gear, even just a simple folding umbrella, no matter where I go. Sub-Saharan Africa may only get a few inches of rain a year, but if a significant percentage of that rainfall happens on the days you're wandering around without any protection, it'll be small consolation to think that it's usually pretty dry the rest of the time. The same goes for your camera gear -- have something along that can protect your gear in case of inclement weather, even if it's a grocery store plastic bag you keep wadded-up in your pocket. Good walking shoes are always a must, and if you're going to wander around in an area with poisonous snakes, thick leather shoes at least ankle-high are probably a good idea. In hot, sunny climates, a hat is also prudent, one that not only keeps the glare of the sun out of your eyes but also helps protect you from sunburn or other heat-related illnesses.
Should you have a first aid kit? Depends; if you're shooting the architecture of a major city, or perhaps masked revelers at Carnivale, then probably not -- basic first aid is most likely close at hand -- but if you're heading somewhere a little more remote, then having at least the bare essentials is a good idea. A good, solid polycarbonate bottle is indispensible -- you need to keep hydrated, and it prevents you from wasting good money on disposable bottles of water that probably came out of somebody's tap anyway -- just do your research and make sure you know the water is drinkable where you're going, and bring purification tablets or filters if it isn't.
There are a zillion things you could bring with you on a trip, and I can guarantee you won't need them all. This blog post is already getting too long as it is, so I'll just take anybody's questions if you have them, but here is a list of the basic things I take with me when I travel for photography.
Clothing:Long pants X2-3
Long-sleeve shirts X2-3
Short-sleeve shirts or tee-shirts X2
Socks X #of days
Underwear X #of days
Hat, floppy and collapsible
Walking shoes
Hiking boots
Jacket, light windbreaker, weather resistant
Rain gear or umbrella
Incidentals:Small roll of toilet paper (100 uses, some not so obvious)
Small hotel courtesy size bar of soap (not available everywhere)
Toothbrush, toothpaste
Shaving supplies, if I'm expected to be presentable -- may only use on trip home so I don't look like Charles Manson when I walk into SeaTac.
Small comb
Portable first aid kit
Camera Gear:
Main and spare camera bodies, lenses expected to be used on the trip (don't bring what you're not going to use!)
Spare batteries and chargers
Spare memory cards
Transfer cable
Laptop (I have a cheap and cheesy netbook I bring along that cost me $200, mostly just so I have a hard drive to dump my shots onto. Other photographers have told me I need to get a bigger one so I can work on editing my photos in the field -- my netbook is incapable of running Photoshop or Lightroom due to its miniscule, fairly low-resolution screen -- but I actually prefer to work on editing in the comfort of my own home, with a nice big screen and a cup of something warm and slightly alcoholic at hand... but that's just me. Plus, it gives me time when I'm not tired from a long day of wandering in the bush shooting pictures when I can go back over and relive the experience -- even if you're just shooting vacation photos, half the fun of taking them is looking at them again when you're home)
Tripod and head
Shutter release cable (a must if you think there's even a chance you'll shoot something slower than 1/30 of a second)
Lens cloth
Camera bag (I have a Lowepro camera backpack that serves as my carry-on, and pretty much never leaves my side)
Plastic grocery bags (I really do bring these, because you never know when you might need one. Used to bring full-sized garbage bags, but they turned out to be overkill for my purposes)
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