My main camera body is a  Canon 1D mark iii which is almost permanently attached to my Canon 400mm f5.6 lens.

This gives me 10fps, amazing autofocus and 400mm focal length in an affordable, relatively light weight and seriously robust set up.

Apart from this I always carry a Canon shutter release and an old Manfrotto tripod just in case I see a great long exposure opportunity and of course the essential UK rain-cover and cleaning kit for in the field.

For the landscape opportunity I sometimes carry a old Sigma 10-20mm, just in case.

My editing station consists of a 2016 27" 5k Mac as well as a 2013 13" Macbook Pro retina for editing whilst traveling. Both are fully upgraded with the Macbook also having a 1tb internal hard-drive fitted. Because I travel so much I save all of my images to Western digital 1tb drives that are portable but very robust and reliable.

All of this neatly fits into my Lowepro pro-tactic 450 aw that just about fits within the cabin bag size restrictions on most airlines.

It's not just my kit that needs protecting as any Wildlife Photographer in England will tell you a water proof coat and a decent pair of wellys are important part of many trips too.

On my recent trip to Iceland even in extreme weather conditions my gear, often covered in snow, seems to have survived to tell the tale. However I would be careful moving from outside to in, no matter how keen I was to get warm quickly condensation is a major issue for your gear!

You don't by any means need all this gear, 6 months ago I was shooting on a Canon 1200d with a Tamron 18-200mm.

This set up travelled from Gambia to Florida without fail,  however I will say from a quality viewpoint the images produced were often soft with a lot of colour fringing, though this was mainly down to the lens.

The technical downside to a gear at this level both camera and lens is that 200mm is not close enough for most wildlife and 3fps certainly means you have to try harder to get that perfect wing position.

The build quality is not up there with the 1D but it quite happy survived -10 in Iceland and upwards of 30 degrees in Gambia.

In December 2016 I travelled to Iceland to photograph the Northern Lights and whatever wildlife I could find in the snow.

I landed as the first snow arrived in Reykjavik and straight into the first snowstorm of the the year as I made my way to the hotel on the edge of a lake or so I was told!

The almost constant blizzard conditions made photography almost impossible but when it calmed down and the sun came out the light was beautiful on the snow. As it was the first outing of the 1D in less than zero conditions I was very happy that it worked perfectly even in the less than ideal snowstorms.

On my trip I was lucky enough to see the Northern Lights over the lake as they lit up the snow with a unearthly green cast. Using an old Sigma ultra-wide on the camera mounted on the tripod  I managed to capture the light as it curved through the sky with the capital r on the horizon.

I also travelled deep into the mountains in search of amazing landscapes and found many snow covered peaks but alas the light through the snow storm made everything rather flat. Luckily by waiting it out the sun peaked through the clouds lighting up the snow in one of my favourite photos of the trip and the day was not waisted.

The major disappointment of the trip was that because this was the dead of winter there was not a lot of wildlife around, I only saw a few birds and of course those iconic Icelandic horses.

A trip into Reykjavik city park and I stumbled on the only Reindeer for miles and the snowy conditions helped make a few of my favourite shots possible.

I think Iceland will be somewhere well worth a revisit, definitely in summer to capture some of the amazing landscapes in there full glory and possibly again slightly later in winter next time when the early snow has stopped falling.

One for every photographers bucket list...