Essential Travel Photography Tips for Your Next Adventure
Adventure trips are often filled with once-in-a-lifetime moments. So it is natural that many of you would want to create memories with a camera.
According to the Photographic Society of America, travel photos express the feeling of a time and place, portray a land, its people, or a culture in its natural state, and have no geographical limitations.
Therefore, learning to capture your travel subjects through photos helps convey the spirit of the place and gives your audience a glimpse of what it might be like to visit there.
Capturing great travel photos combines the basic understanding of photography (knowledge of composition, preparation of the gears, shooting RAW, and editing skills), some research about the place or subject, lighting and weather, and most importantly, a human element.
Read on to learn the essential travel photography tips for the best shots throughout your next adventure.
Essential Travel Photography Tips for Your Next Adventure
With the ever-improving quality of smartphone cameras, the number of pictures taken worldwide every day is skyrocketing.
Around 1.72 trillion photos are taken worldwide every year, which equates to 54,400 photos per second or 4.7 billion per day.
Let’s look at essential travel photography tips you all need to know for your next adventure.
1. Research
You probably might have chosen your travel destination because of its picturesque landscapes, cultural richness, or abundance of flora and fauna.
Before setting out on a photography adventure, you should research your destination and scout the locations where you think you will want to shoot to come up with a better idea to compose the shots.
Fortunately, the internet has a wealth of information about every destination on the planet.
· Google, Instagram, and Pinterest can help you get a general idea of the types of travel photography and see what other photographers have captured.
· Find out how people dress and behave in public places and their attitudes towards visitors and photography in general.
· Taking suggestions from other people or photographers who have been to the place you want to visit can also be helpful.
· Taking photographs is not allowed in some places like religious buildings or museums. The same thing goes for drones, so check the rules before heading to your destination.
· Find out the time specific attraction/place opens or closes so you can reach there on time.
· Know the best time to visit the destination to avoid the crowd and to get the best view.
2. Figure the Lightening and Weather
You perhaps want to capture special moments from your adventures, including landscapes and landmarks, mountains, waterfall, people and culture, and emotions helping to remember how those experiences made you feel, even years later.
When planning to photograph, you will have to check the average weather conditions at various times of the year.
Finding the right light during changing seasons is essential for taking amazing photos. It is simply the best travel photography tip that anyone will tell you.
Lighting and perfect weather are everything needed to capture the perfect shot.
Follow these tips to take pictures.
· Sunrise and sunset times are the best time to capture a photo when the sun casts a soft, warm light. This type of light creates beautiful, natural-looking images.
· Check out what seasonal changes do to the landscapes or locations you visit.
· Do not take pictures during midday as it is generally not a good time because the sun is so high in the sky, creating harsh shadows.
· Shooting during the blue hour when the dark of night turns into the first signs of daylight can produce spectacular views.
· Taking low-light pictures can be challenging, but you can master the perfect shot with continuous practice and patience.
3. Prepare Required Gears
Travel photography is estimated to be a $2.3 billion industry; therefore, travelers look for stunning photos to document their memories.
Having an advanced quality camera like DSLR and SLR to get the shots has some incredible advantages. With the camera, it is essential to have the right camera accessories for the adventure.
Similarly, it is always recommended to have a backup for your photos. Of all the potential issues to have on your adventures, losing all your photos is one of the worst fears.
Do not forget to carry these gears needed for travel photography.
· Camera
· Charger
· Tripods
· Lens
4. Know About Photo Composition
Trying different compositions makes the photos stand out from the others.
Try shooting from a different angle and at different distances.
Follow these tips for shooting and experimenting with composition.
· Experiment with composition by moving the subject matter around within the rule of thirds (the nine boxes).
· Try to include the foreground, midground, and background elements that give the viewer a 3D experience.
· Explore different angles of that breathtaking landscape or historic building that can help you bring more exciting and striking photographs.
· Zoom in closer or move further back to get a wider angle.
· Try using leading lines to draw the viewer’s eye to the subject of the photo or the main focal point.
This is one of the most fun aspects of photography, so work your way around the destination to play and practice instead of repeating what has already been done.
5. Add Human Element
Do you remember how viral Murad Osman’s Follow Me Pictures were?
Many more have since been inspired to recreate their signature pose, which picked up the trend.
This also demonstrates how important the human element is in photography.
A human element always makes a picture personal and can significantly increase the value of your work.
Placing a human element in a picture brings a lot of interest that adds to the emotion that the photo is trying to convey.
It will give viewers to think about the scene through the eyes of the person in the photo and add a sense of depth and wonder to your composition.
6. Shoot RAW Mode
Shooting RAW means editing large photos and reproducing them without losing quality. It allows for the manipulation of the image in extraordinary ways.
It is minimally processed and usually uncompressed, giving you much more flexibility to rescue a shot that is not quite right.
Some of the major benefits of shooting in RAW images.
· Get access to your camera’s highest quality image.
· Prevent losing any valuable image data.
· Massive image information is available.
· It lets you make the adjustments easier and faster with better results.
· Never have to worry about ruining an image.
As a result, shooting in RAW is always the best option. Unlike JPEG, it records all of the data that your camera’s sensor is capable of capturing.
7. Edit the Photo
Although you have the best camera equipment, retouching your RAW is essential to make it appear professional.
Whether you are editing a portrait, a landscape, graphics, or people, every photo requires editing.
Photo editing enables photographers to enhance and stylize their images in ways that are not possible in-camera.
In addition, making your pictures stand out can be challenging if you do not edit them.
Here are some editing tools to enhance your images even further.
· Canva
· Aurora
· Photopea
· Luminar
With these tools, you can handle everything from removing distracting things from the background of images to making lighting and color improvements.
Do not be afraid to play around with the editing features that can give you outstanding results.
Conclusion
Lastly, try out several techniques and strategies to make your work stand out when developing your travel photography skill.
However, with these essential travel photography tips, you should now be ready to take the perfect shots of your next adventure.
For more travel photography tips to make your next trip memorable, get in touch with Rick Perdian, Music Travel Consultant in the USA.
