Lincoln’s Tem­ple — © Copy­right 2012 by William Beem

Travel Photo Tips

The world can be an over­whelm­ing sen­sory expe­ri­ence, filled with sights, sounds and aro­mas designed to delight all of your senses. How do you cap­ture that expe­ri­ence in a pho­to­graph? Most peo­ple don’t. Instead, they show their pho­tos with an apol­ogy — “You had to be there.” Your job as a travel pho­tog­ra­pher is to take them there through your photos. So how do you make sure you come home with a killer shot?

Keep read­ing to dis­cover five tips to unlock the secrets of how to take good pictures.

1: Know Your Gear

If you’re strug­gling to oper­ate your cam­era, then you aren’t giv­ing all of your atten­tion to your com­po­si­tion. Make sure you know how to oper­ate your cam­era. For­get about using those dif­fer­ent modes that may have come with your cam­era. The prob­lem with these idiot modes is that the cam­era is the idiot. It doesn’t know how to make a cre­ative shot, so it just aver­ages every­thing out. You can’t rely upon these modes, so learn how to use the ISO, Aper­ture and Shut­ter Speed to make your own expo­sure decisions.

Dif­fer­ent focal lengths can change the way your sub­ject appears, so prac­tice before you go on the trip. Use a fore­ground sub­ject and take pho­tos at dif­fer­ent focal lengths to see how it changes as you change focal length. Pay atten­tion to the back­ground, too.

2: Make a Shot List

There are surely images you want to cap­ture at your des­ti­na­tion, so plan ahead. Write down the scenes you want to cap­ture. Imag­ine you’re tak­ing a dream trip to Paris. Most peo­ple will expect you to come home with a shot of the Eif­fel Tower, but there’s so much more to the city. Include shops on the street, a bak­ery, your meals, a bot­tle of cham­pagne or cup of cof­fee. Every des­ti­na­tion has its mar­quee land­marks, but the soul is often found in lit­tle details.

Pri­or­i­tize your list. You may not have time to get to every­thing on your list, so which ones are “must have” shots?

3: Work the Scene

If there’s one con­cept you need to accept, it’s this one: You’re going to take some lousy shots.

Don’t worry. Every­one does. There isn’t a pho­tog­ra­pher in the world who hasn’t made a bad com­po­si­tion. You have to work the scene until you find com­po­si­tion that works.

• Walk around
• Try dif­fer­ent angles
• Get low on the ground
• Get above
• Shoot from far away
• Shoot up close
• Use a fore­ground element
• Change your depth of field

4: Elim­i­nate Distractions

Have you ever come across a won­der­ful scene, taken a photo, and real­ized that your shot didn’t cap­ture the essence of being there? Trust your instincts.

It doesn’t mean that you’ve picked a bad loca­tion. Some­thing made you stop to look. Your job is to work until you find a photo that cap­tures the essence of that scene.

You may have too much in the photo caus­ing dis­trac­tion. It’s too busy, there’s some­thing ugly in the scene, or peo­ple are walk­ing around. Start look­ing for things to eliminate.

There are a num­ber of ways to remove dis­tract­ing ele­ments and get to the core of your sub­ject. Change your angle. Get tighter on your sub­ject to fill the frame. Change your depth of field to blur dis­tract­ing backgrounds.

Pho­tog­ra­phers don’t just snap one image and walk away with a golden mas­ter­piece. Think about what made that scene inter­est­ing to you. Was it a shape, color con­trast, the way the light falls on your sub­ject? Con­cen­trate on the core ele­ment that makes you appre­ci­ate your sub­ject and then get rid of the stuff you don’t need.

5: Stop! Don’t Leave Yet

OK, you found an inter­est­ing scene or sub­ject. You’ve walked around and think you cap­tured an inter­est­ing photo. That’s great! It’s time to go on to the next one, right?

Not so fast. Take some time to look at your pho­tos. Eval­u­ate what you’ve cap­tured and con­sider what you’ve missed. Chances are you may not be back any­time soon, so be sure you cap­tured every­thing you wanted before you leave.

Is the expo­sure right? Think about the shots you didn’t take. If you shot in por­trait mode, look for some oppor­tu­ni­ties in land­scape mode. If you shot the whole scene, ask your­self if there are some detail shots that would com­ple­ment it. Explore your sub­ject from Grand to Gran­u­lar. Lit­tle details can have as much impact as the big scene.