Today I want to continue with the themes of Travel Photography and adding Variety to your Shots in a post with one on mixing up your shots when you travel.
I recently had a friend take me through the shots that they took on their latest trip away (all 600 of them) and was amazed to see how many of his shots were of largely the same thing - buildings. Not only that all the buildings were photographed in much the same way in terms of framing and composition.
Now to give him credit - he had been traveling in Europe where there are some marvelous examples of architecture, but I came away from the experience of viewing his shots wondering a few questions that I would have thought his photos might have answered like:
• Who did you travel with?
• Where did you stay?
• What did you eat?
• Who did you meet? etc
There’s nothing wrong with photographing buildings, but unfortunately exclusively photographing any one type of thing on a trip can leave the end results of your travel album looking a little one dimensional.
I made this mistake on my first overseas trip to Malaysia as a 16 year old on a trip with a school band. On my return I showed my shots to my parents who nicely pointed out to me that I didn’t have a single shot of myself or any of the people I travelled (not a single shot of the band playing. I’d been so amazed by the different landscapes and buildings that I didn’t take any shots that would personally mean anything to me years later.
These days as I travel I spend time each day reviewing the shots that I’ve taken. I often do in the hotel room at night (or on a bus between places) and as I do I purposely analyze what types of shots I’ve taken that day and more importantly ‘what’s missing’ from the day I’ve had.
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One last tip on the whole taking more shots strategy:
If you have the space on your memory card I would recommend that you don’t delete too many shots while you’re out and about and wait until you get back to your computer to do so.
The reason I suggest waiting is that quite often some of the ‘mistake’ shots can actually end up being some of your best shots (in an abstract sort of way).
When you look at images on your camera’s LCD the photo is obviously quite compressed and you can sometimes not see details that you would when you view it on your computer. There may actually be something quite useful tucked away in the details that you’ll never know about if you delete too quickly.
For example - the picture on this post was taken on the streets in Morocco a few years back on my first little point and shoot digital camera. It was actually a complete accident that I took the shot (I thought I was turning the camera off when I was actually pressing the shutter). At first glance it is an out of focus and poorly framed shot (actually it’s that on a second look too) but there’s something about this shot that keeps drawing me back to it.
It might not win any awards but it actually means something quite deep to me (I won’t go into it here) and I’m very grateful that I didn’t immediately delete it as a mistake.
Travel Photography is a topic close to my heart and is something that I know many others get excited about also. Here are a few tips that might help get the best out of your digital camera while on the road.
While I’m a big fan of digital camera users learning techniques to improve their photography another technique that can help with improving the chances of that ‘perfect shot’ (is there such a thing?) is simply to take more shots.
I learned this the first time I was asked to photograph a wedding for one of my friends. To say that I was nervous would be an understatement (I’m sure I didn’t sleep for days before the wedding). I’d never done anything like that before and to be the ‘official’ photographer was scary.
In the lead up to the day I decided to buy five extra rolls of film (yes this is back in the 90s before I discovered digital) to have in my case just in case something went wrong.
On the day of the wedding, in my anxious state, I ended up using all of the film that I’d wanted to use PLUS the five extra rolls. Over the day I’d shot close to 600 images!
I was kicking myself for going so snap happy in the days after the wedding because I had to cover the extra cost of the film and processing due to my own mistake but ended up being really happy with the results because when you shoot 600 shots in a few hours you’re bound to get some good ones (and I did - quite a few in fact). The couple was really impressed with the variety of shots that I’d taken.
In the many weddings that I shot after this time I never shot that many images again - but I did learn the lesson of taking a few more shots than was necessary.
The beauty of Digital Cameras is that if you take this approach you don’t end up with a bill at the end of the day! Digital cameras allow you to take as many shots as your memory card will hold and to delete any shots that are obviously of a poor quality as you go.
Of course taking this approach doesn’t mean you don’t need to frame your shots well or use the other techniques that I talk about on this site. It also doesn’t mean you need to end up with loads of shots that all look exactly the same as each other.
In the next post I’ll run through 10 ways to shoot more without just taking the same shot over and over again.
Digital Photography School reader (Trish) asks:
“I love your new site and wondered if you could write something about travel photography. I’m heading to Europe for a four week trip in June and I was wondering if you had any advice for how I should prepare in order to get the best digital photos. I’ve got a Canon Digital Rebel XT and was thinking I might buy an extra lens to go with my 18-55mm kit one. Do you have any advice on what sort of lens to buy? Any other travel photography tips you could give me would be great.”
Thanks for the feedback and question Trish. I’ll attempt to answer your lens question first and then will write a few more posts on Travel Photography over the coming weeks.
Which Lens is best for Travel Photography?
This is actually a question I’ve thought long and hard about having gone on several overseas and interstate trips over the past few years. The answers that I’ve come up with have varied from trip to trip considerably and have depended upon a number of factors including the length of the trip, the nature of the trip, my current ‘favorite’ lens and my current phase of photography (I tend to go through phases where my style in photography changes a bit).
A lens can make or break you in terms of image quality. I constantly advise people to get the best one that they can afford as an upgrade in lens will usually lead to much greater improvements in image quality than an upgrade in camera body.
The main considerations that you’ll probably want to consider when buying a lens for travel include:
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In my last last post I wrote about the rule of thirds and placing your subject to one side of the image in an attempt to create balance.
The question that one reader sent me in response to this tip was:
‘When taking pictures of people which side is it best to put them on, the right or the left?’
I’ve got a long answer and a short answer.
The Short Answer: It doesn’t matter.
The Long Answer: Having said that it doesn’t matter let me make one qualification.
As a rule (and we all know that they are made to be broken) if the person (and it works with animals too) you are photographing is looking in one direction or even if their head is pointing in that direction it is best to place them on the opposite side of the frame.
You’ll see it best illustrated in the images on this page - in each case the person is not being photographed head on but have their head pointing either to the left or the right. As a result the photographer has given them some space on the side that they are pointing/looking.
The reason for this is that when a person views an image with a person looking in one direction or the other their eyes also are drawn in that direction. In a sense you’re giving the subject of your image some space to look into and in doing so create a natural way for the photos viewer to flow into the photo also.
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Today I want to continue with the themes of Travel Photography and adding Variety to your Shots in a post with one on mixing up your shots when you travel.
