Travel Photography Tips

Travel photography is one of the most rewarding forms of photography, letting you capture great moments and memories to keep forever.

By following the tips and advice in this article, you’ll be much better prepared to take travel photos you can be proud of.

Practice Makes Perfect

Get to know your camera before you start traveling. Go out and practice shooting in your local area to get to learn how your camera works. Try shooting in different lighting conditions, such as cloudy, sunny, low light, indoors etc, so you can see what works and what doesn’t.

Perhaps you already shoot in manual mode, but if you are still using program/auto/semi auto mode that’s ok too. It will give you much greater creative control over your images if you learn to shoot in manual mode before you leave, though.

Get Off the Beaten Track

Try and capture the shots that most tourists don’t get. As well as the usual landmarks, go exploring in less touristy areas of town if it’s safe to do so. Wander round the local markets and soak up the atmosphere.

Candid shots of local people and street scenes make great subjects. Always be mindful of local customs and culture, so you don’t cause offence with your actions.

Think about Lighting

Photography is all about capturing light, but did you know that there are different qualities of light? Light can be harsh and contrasty or soft and flattering, as well as other things depending on the modifiers you use.

The quality of light changes depending on what time of day it is. The hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset are known as ‘the golden hour’ because the light is gentle and there are no harsh shadows. It’s difficult to shoot in the hard sunlight that you find when the sun is highest in the sky, as it creates harsh shadows and burned out highlights. Dull, overcast days are great for shooting outdoors, but you’ll need to add some contrast and punch in editing to stop these images from looking flat.

Composition

Good composition is essential to make a snapshot into a visually appealing photograph. Fill the frame with your subject, unless you want to make a statement by using negative space. Negative space is the empty area around your subject, such as if you framed them in front of a blue sky, or a painted wall. The emptiness around your subject serves to emphasize them.

Most cameras and camera phones have a ‘rule of thirds’ grid, which you can overlay on your live view. This grid splits your screen into thirds – three squares across, and three down. Using the grid can help create visually pleasing composition if you place important elements of your subject at the points where the gridlines cross. Most good landscape shots use the rule of thirds, with the horizon line usually placed at the bottom or top third. Most portraits place the subject’s eyes at or above the top third gridline. This, and other compositional rules don’t have to be followed slavishly, but they’re good to keep in mind. It will help you create better compositions if you have a look at some online tutorials and experiment with some of the ideas there.

Angles

A lot of people make the mistake of taking all their photos from straight on at eye level. This only ever gives one perspective, and it’s often not the best or most interesting one.

Every time you take a shot, move slightly to one side and take another, then move again. Get down to pavement level to shoot, or go up high and shoot downwards. Take plenty of shots of your subject from different angles, and then you will have lots of photos to choose your final images from.

Learn Different Techniques and Get Creative

Experimenting costs nothing in this digital photography era, so don’t be afraid to try something new.  

For example, try long exposure shots. Long exposure shots are great for capturing low-light scenes, or for getting that silky-smooth look on images of running water. To do long exposure, you’ll need a tripod, as you cannot hand-hold at the slow shutter speeds needed. Some exposures can be over 10 minutes long, and your camera needs to be kept completely still all this time.

If you want to do long exposure for more than 30 seconds or so, you’ll need to learn how to use your camera in manual mode. This is because you need to set it to ‘bulb’ mode to do very long exposures.

You can get great light trail shots or ‘ghost’ people moving through your images when you do long exposures. Try it – it’s fun!

Another technique you can learn is HDR. This means setting your camera to bracket 3 or more images. 3 is best to start with – you bracket one shot around a stop underexposed, one shot correctly exposed, and one around a stop overexposed. This gives you three images, which you then combine in a dedicated editor. (Photoshop, Lightroom, Aurora HDR or free Google’s HDR Efex Pro plugin). If you don’t know how to set your camera up to bracket, have a look at your camera’s manual.

Try changing your depth of field by adjusting your aperture. If you want the whole scene in focus from front to back, such as a street scene or landscape, set your aperture around f/8 or above. If you want to separate your subject from the background – for example a close-up of a person, set your aperture to around f/5.6 or less. This will give you a blurry background, but a sharp, well-focused subject.

Edit Your Images

Most images will really benefit from a bit of post-processing after you get them home.Often improving your images is as simple as adjusting exposure, contrast, color and sharpness to make your images pop. You can also add filters, presets or overlays to quickly add a certain ‘look’ to your images, but don’t get carried away and overdo it.

This guest post is by Max Therry from Photo Geeky.