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Tell us about your vacation
  • Do you still work during vacation?

    How far you usually go?

  • 18 Replies sorted by
  • I had a working holiday in Berlin, does that count? ;)

    I haven't flown further than 4 hours away or so (West-Europe to North-Africa) for holidays. Travel much more for work than holidays, but all inside West/Central-Europe for now. Might have something in Moscow in a while though...

  • You'll be rolling out the red sofa next VK.

    Yes, I work on vacation. Comms only, don't get involved.

  • For my vacation, I drove 200km to a small town where I worked as DP for ten days doing 14 hours a day. Total fun! :-)

  • Officially, I work during all vacations.. ;-)

    Though really, it differs a lot (work / no work, distance), sometimes it´s impossible to say how many % is work and how many % is vacation.

    This summer I had plenty of time for vacation.. (really long summer holidays, only one production) the farthest I went was 350km´s away.

    In september I´m going to Italiy* for vacation. Maybe some minimal work (I´ll bring a cam or two).

    In reality I work almost all the time, more or less so if there is a clear break (to only hang out with family or whatever the plans are) during the summer or sometimes during the rest of the year - I´m happy.

  • We had to take one of our girls out of school a week early, so we did this on holiday:

    5D3 in ordinary mode -- didn't take a few terabytes of disk with me for 5D3 Raw

  • @subco: do you work to live or live to work?

  • @subco......sad

    I pretty much don't work on vacations but when we do go somewhere, it's out of the country and remote so we don't have cell service. Costa Rica, Prague, Budapest, think Australia next year so it kind of forces us to stay away from the madness for a bit.

  • I almost always find a way to work on vacation. This year I helped my dad drive a car up from Florida to New York. The deal was that I got to stop at various civil war battle sites and grab some footage for a very low budget documentary I'm working on that never could have afforded for me to take a week long trip down south.

    My Dad and I decided to take an extra day and go to Colonial Williamsburgh too, which didn't involve work at all but was a ton of fun.

  • I had to edit 4 music video clips that I had shoot earlier, on the laptop. That happened only after the kids went to bed in the night and I had same time free for work. Vocations are for the kids, not for work, right?

  • I take 2-3 trips a year which can often last as long as a month, and are usually tied work but have elements of vacations in them due to the amount of time spent there. I live in Panama, these working vacations over the past year have been to Maui and San Francisco.

    Just last week, I got back from an 8 day pure vacation to New York City with my girlfriend, which was a new experience for me, and fun. (And expensive, haha!)

  • Like every year when I can't stand the city heat, I go in Brittany (West of France) where 28° C appears like a very hot day. Small and fresh paradise. This year were purely holidays thanks to my new smartphone (geekness can't be cured in one day) : the poor gh2 stayed in the car almost every day. http://www.flickr.com/photos/78481677@N03/sets/72157635225667926/

  • Vacation? what's a vacation? I haven't taken one in years.

  • Vacation 4 weeks, didn't work at all. But I don't do video stuff for living, and after reading your comments I'm going to keep it that way ;)

  • I travel around the world with my work. When schedules allow, I extend a few days around a weekend and mostly walk around taking photos and chatting with locals. Or picking up free establishing shots for friend's budget productions. (GH2 and now a new BMCC EF) I'm lucky enough to travel the world, but its on work's schedule and money.

    For vacation each year I tell my work I'm on the other side of the planet so they don't call while I'm "sleeping". But really I just hang around home. I just ignore work those days except for a quick email check each morning and night.

    Next week is an exception. I'll be on the other side of the planet motorcycling with friends.

  • This year it's the Dordogne, Southern France for 2 weeks - flying next weekend. No camera, no smartphone, no i anything.

  • As far as I can afford...

    No work for me.

  • I spent 3 weeks in Paris this summer. No work, although I checked my work email once every other day or so. I brought my 5D3 and GH2 although I ended up using them surprisingly little. I guess I took most of the obligatory pictures last time I was there and it just seemed redundant.

    I did bring a smart phone this most recent time (I had a useless flip phone before that didn't even work). I bought a domestic SIM and having maps and Yelp was extremely helpful, as well as things like movie showtimes, Metro maps and museum hours at my fingertips.

    But having social media always present - Facebook, texts, Instagram, etc - just ended up making me feel like I wasn't on a vacation at all most of the time. Whereas the time before, which to be fair was my first time ever in Europe, everything felt a lot more exciting and like I'd really gone far away from home. I don't know if I can blame that entirely on the internet / smart phone / small world effect or not though.

    Anyway, I'm definitely of the 'work to live' camp. Frankly I don't see the point in living at all if all you ever do is work, at least if work is something you wouldn't gladly do for free. I know for many people it's not economically possible, and that's different. But if you're in a position where you can afford it and you opt not to out of some diseased sense of the Protestant/American work ethic - ugh. Living corpses.