Taking photos of travel and various adventures can be fun, but it can also be challenging at times. Here are a few tips I have for taking better travel photos.
Be prepared by ensuring you have all the necessary gear
Camera gear can be heavy and sometimes annoying to carry around, but it’s smart to be prepared. These days, there are so many foldable tripods and excellent backpacks, it’s not too difficult to haul gear around.
Write yourself a reminder list of the gear you need for the shoot and check it twice before heading out.
Take advantage of Golden Hour (the gorgeous lighting around sunrise and sunset)
For urban destinations, find out which hotels, museums, and restaurants have balconies or rooftop lounges
If you don’t want to fork over the money to stay in a room with a balcony (I don’t blame you), hit up a bar at sunset to get some shots of a beautiful skyline. Take advantage of being in a city!
Experiment with landscape shots
By adding a person or people to the photo, you will add scale and can even make your photo more interesting. Another idea is to include a dog. Everyone loves dogs.
Monitor the brightness and darkness of your photos
Personally, I think it’s everyone’s creative right to underexpose or overexpose photos to obtain the look they are going for. However, keep in mind with landscape shots that overexposing images can mean blowing out parts of your photos. For instance, you might end up with bright white light in the background instead of the beautiful mountains you were trying to capture. To fix this, check to see what your current f-stop, shutter speed, and ISO are set to and adjust accordingly. Consider increasing the shutter speed, stopping down the f-stop (you’ll be increasing the number), and/or decreasing the ISO. If you aren’t able to get the exact shot you are looking for while adjusting your camera’s settings, you can experiment with using a filter.
Try not to heavily edit your photos
Adjusting the basics to better reflect what you saw in real life is no problem, but cranking up the contrast or saturation too high can actually take away a lot from the photo.
Have fun!
I hope that you find these tips to be helpful! If you have any questions, email me at emilykeenphotography@gmail.com or comment below.
Emily Keen Photography 