Making Better Travel Photos

French | Spanish | Portuguese | Italian | German | Japanese | Chinese | Korean | Russian | Arabic

Taking better travel photos can be challenging. For every wonderful photo opportunity, you have to contend with throngs of tourists, distance from your intended subject, or even your own perfectionist tendencies! Here are some pointers to help you make the most of every photographic opportunity:

Define your subject: One common pitfall among amateur photographers is to try to show too much. In doing so, they lose sight of the subject and end up with a memory card full of nondescript images.

Get close to your subject: One of the simplest ways to take great travel photos is to get close to your subject whenever possible. Getting close captures nuances of your subject that you’d lose when shooting from far away.

Take plenty of shots: If you find an interesting subject, don’t be content to shoot just one or two images. Use different camera angles and take photos from a variety of locations. Sometimes the best shot you take is the last one!

Be patient: At heavily trafficked tourist locations, you usually have to deal with people walking in and out of your shots. If you’re patient enough to wait for a lull, great shots present themselves. It also doesn’t hurt to ask politely for people to move out of your shot; they tend to be respectful when they know you’re trying to take a picture.

Edit distractions out later: If your subject is big or if you’re not in a position to ask people to move out of your shot, you can edit out distractions in your digital darkroom.

There are many ways to make the most of travel photography options. When visiting a new place, certainly one of the keys is knowing as much as possible beforehand about what to expect so that you can be positioned to make the kind of photographs you want. Also keep in mind that you’ll make far more photographs while traveling than you normally do at home. So having either extra memory or a storage system such as a laptop computer or portable hard drive is important. I always try to have a camera with me when traveling, but that doesn’t always mean I’m trying to be a professional photographer. Sometimes, you simply need to have a fun day in a new place. That’s when an easy-to-use, lightweight second camera makes a nice option. If you don’t have such a camera, or you just need a day off from photography, that’s okay, too. After all, you’re on vacation. Have fun!

Ever see one of those big, multi-picture frames that holds a whole assortment of different 4 x 6 pictures? People like such frames because it gives them a chance to use a lot of photos and show a lot of different ideas. It’s possible to take the idea a giant step further. Instead of randomly sticking pictures inside a frame to fit the shapes, orientations, and sizes that somebody else has determined, why not take charge of such a production yourself? Not only can you be the boss of such a production, you can use it to tell a particular story of an important event in your life. In this article, I guide you through the process of creating a story through your photographs. After you decide that you have a particular event, project, or time period that you want to document with a picture story, it’s important to do some planning. You’re working on a series of images, so taking a haphazard approach can come back to haunt you if you miss a key shot simply because you didn’t think of it at the time. Fortunately, planning such a shoot isn’t very hard. It just takes a few moments thought about the story you want to tell with your photographs.

Telling a story photographically isn’t all that hard. As with any story, you need a beginning, a middle, an end, plus some photos to amplify the detail. In theory, you can create an effective picture story with as little as three pictures. Most of us, myself included, are much more talkative image-wise. Extra pictures can show detail that enriches and complements your key artwork. It’s important to create images that put forth a logical flow of information. So it’s important to start out with an opening or establishing shot. This opening shot can be a photograph showing your subject entering the site of the event or meeting with someone who plays a key role in the action. Or, it could be an image of your subject at the start of a project, say a gardener standing in front of a plot of untilled soil or a woodworker before a pile of lumber. I do a shot list for virtually every assignment I do. It’s simply a logical and ordered way of approaching a photographic shoot that helps you get the most out of the shoot. Creating a shot list is simple. Sit down and write out a list of ideas for pictures based on your expectations of the day. Remember to plan a variety of shots for each photo idea. In other words, remember to plan on high and low angle shots plus images from both the left and right side, plus some pictures shot straight on. Plan on doing this for each important idea you want to cover. (Now you may be starting to understand why professional photographers shoot so many pictures.) Check out the picture story project at the end of this article for a sample shot list. Storyboards are a valuable device used throughout the creative industry whether it be for television, movies, ad campaigns, or photographic shoots. In basic terms a storyboard is simply a series of sketches that show the message’s progression. The storyboarding process is frequently documented on TV or in the movies as a series of cartoon-like strips. If you sketch well, you can do this too if it helps you in planning the story. The storyboard is a valuable way of visualizing a potential image and, if need be, sharing that image with an assistant, friend, or model. It’s not a make or break document that determines the success of your shoot. The idea behind all this planning is to put you in the best possible position to make the most of your photographic opportunity. It’s not designed to provide a rigid framework that you have to stick with. Often, while on the shoot, you’ll see photographic possibilities that never occurred to you while you were shot listing or storyboarding. That’s okay. Shoot away! You aren’t limited only to those shots you planned beforehand. The storyboarding method is simply designed to minimize your risk of missing shots you could foresee, not lock you into a shooting script.

After you have created a shot list and a storyboard, it’s time to go make the pictures that tell your story. The following list describes the type of shots you’re looking for, although not always in this order:

Establishing shot: Just like any other story, a picture story needs a beginning. Ideally, this is a visual that can also serve as a title photo. Frequently, the title shot shows a sign or structure that clues the viewer in to what the picture story is about. Your main subject may be in the establishing image, but it doesn’t always have to be. Signs, documents, magazines, and other written literature can be excellent establishing shots provided you remember that copyright laws still apply. It’s not a big deal if the photo story is something you’re making to hang on your wall. But if you publish it in a newsletter or on a web site, you may get contacted by the document’s originator. During a recent Caribbean cruise, I followed a sign-wielding tour guide who was leading us through town. Grabbing my point-and-shoot digital, I quickly snapped off the shot. This will make a great title or introduction photo for a picture story on this particular tour. I was shooting my Sony DSC-U60 in program mode, 1/500 sec at f5.6.

Beginning photo: Although the beginning photo and the establishing shot sound like the same thing, they don’t have to be. Think of the establishing shot as a sort of title slide with panache and the beginning shot as the first photo of the sequence that actually shows what the story is about. The establishing shot can be a title, such as a road sign naming the place where the story takes place,whereas the beginning photo shows your subject starting whatever project or event you’re documenting. My friend Sylvia fills out an entry form for a bike race she’s entering. This kind of paperwork shot provides a logical beginning point for a picture story.

Continuation image(s): After you’ve introduced viewers to your topic, you need at least one, and as many as three or four images, to show the development of the idea. These pictures show the effort in progress and help viewers understand how something is happening. The goal is to accomplish this in as few images as possible if you’re aiming for professional results, or in a reasonable amount of pictures if you’re just trying for a personal effort that shows something important to you. (Using fewer pictures lets you run each photo bigger, maximizing impact.) Look for photos that convey a sense of the event. They can be action shots of the competition or vignettes that show a side of the event most people don’t think about.

Detail photos: It’s important to show viewers some close-ups of particular elements of the story. If you’re doing a picture story on a gardening project, some close-ups of the tools, seeds, or young plants provide a visual break to a series of images. Close-ups also cause viewers to refocus, which helps to rekindle interest. For my bike competition picture story, I chose a detail shot of the bike’s brake and the pile of bananas.

Finishing shot: Every story needs an ending, and picture stories are no different. You need a photo that tells the viewer you’re done. If your story focuses on the act of creation, your finishing shot is the completed work (whether successful or unsuccessful). An image of the tired but happy rider provides a nice finishing shot to the day’s race.

The other key thing to consider when you’re shooting a picture story is a basic piece of advice I tend to give over and over. Mix up your images to include lots of vertical shots. There are several reasons for this:

Verticals are a natural part of life. If you’re trying to document reality, your images should reflect this.

Variety is important for keeping interest. Once again, if all your images have the same orientation, your picture story will not be as visually interesting.

Whether your plan is to lay out your photo story images in a frame or compile them to send off to a commercial printer or an online printing service, including verticals can help you make better use of space and design and possibly save you some money in the bargain.

Photographs have a direction, a sense of movement. They can lead the eye in a specific direction. It’s very important to keep this in mind when you’re shooting for the printed page, and it’s also important for a multi-image collection for a web page. It’s not quite as vital for a presentation where you’re showing one image at a time; but keep in mind that if you’re constantly shifting direction, your presentation will look herky-jerky. In the photograph of an X-Games BMX competitor the eye moves in the same direction in which the bike and athlete are traveling. If, in my picture story, I followed this photo with a similar shot that moves the opposite way, viewers would need a moment to reset and re-orient. Page layout revolves around the Reverse S approach. This is a classic design approach to newspaper layout designed to wind the reader’s eye through the page, while never directing it off the paper. If done properly, the reader’s eye begins at the upper-left corner of the page (the normal starting point for cultures that read from left to right) and slides down the page to the right side, until a photo directs her back left and up returning her to the starting point. At no time during her viewing, should any layout element move her eye off the page. In order to make this kind of approach work, it’s necessary to shoot from a variety of angles so that you can be sure to have pictures that move the eye in any direction (don’t forget up and down, too). This is another reason for storyboarding and shot listing. It helps provide you with a checklist to make sure you get all the images you need, in a variety of angles. Closure. It’s something that you hear about all the time. Well, it works for photography too, especially the picture story. You need a good ending. In fact, the ending photo is one of the most important pictures in the picture story. If done well, this photo should even stand on its own, as does the lead photo. A good closing photo doesn’t have to be anything complicated. It’s just a summation shot. Think of the gardener proudly standing in front of his newly planted garden or the woodworker holding her new creation. The picture tells us the effort is finished and the story told by your images is complete. A particularly effective closing shot has a tight composition of the subject looking directly into the camera. This kind of eye contact is particularly riveting. If possible, show something that makes it obvious the mission has been accomplished. It might be your daughter holding up a plate of freshly dyed Easter eggs or a proud fisherman showing off the cooked fish in a frying pan, but it should be something that says the task has been completed.