Travel Photography and Kids: How to Juggle Yourself in Between

A Guest Post by Prita Sujudi

For an amateur who had just been introduced to photography after having had two kids of seven and six year olds, I often find travel photography can be very challenging as I never had the choice but to carry both camera and kids! But for the love of travel and photography, I forced myself and juggled my way between thinking about aperture and bathing the kids at the same time.

Miles of trip finally comes down to two tricks that actually worked for me.

First, be simple and prepared. Traveling with kids means travel light. It is worthy to know more about your travel destination. Before the trip, I would search images to really get the feel of what kind of scenery I might want to take and hence which camera to use and capture settings to practice. I would leave my zoom lenses at home when I want to capture landscape and take kit lenses instead or bring my point and shoot camera for those days when I have lesser mood.

For Tiger Island trip, I took my kit lenses because I knew I would need wide view. (kids were busy snorkeling).

I knew I would be taking kites flying at the Jakarta International Kite Festival; I mounted telephoto lenses on my DSLR. (kids were kite gazing).

Second, just do it. Moments pass to soon at most times. I personally wouldn’t want to be worried about using advanced settings. Most of the time to be safe and quick I would just use [P] program and only adjust the ISO and White Balance. But even if you haven’t change the setting to adjust the scenery, or at times when you wish you had your tripod or lenses hood in hand, don’t think just shoot. You will be surprised of how your picture can turn out.

I was on a horse ride going down after catching the sunrise in Mount Bromo, East Java. (kids were on their horses following me from behind).

I had forgotten to bring lenses hood and had to accept this beautiful flare ‘incident’. (kids were asleep in the jeep exhausted from the early rise to catch the sunrise).

Close-up photo of a blue starfish. (one kid was in the water, another one sleeping on my lap, we were in a traditional fisherman boat).

I had forgotten to increase the speed of my point and shoot camera. (kids were busy asking about who was Sultan and who was Harem and why was his palace so big).

Have fun, teach your kids the beauty of traveling and nature and never leave your camera behind!

Prita Sujudi is a mom of two kids, who falls in love with photography very recently. She is still in the amateur syndrome – camera swinging on her shoulder everywhere she goes – and is still building her confidence to share her photography with others.