Travel Photography

Travel photography in a foreign land can be a real task. Whether overseas on holiday, exploring a part of the region you’ve never been to or simply visiting friends in a different city, the urge to photograph and represent not just how that context looks but it’s atmosphere, peoples and how it affects you can be completely overwhelming.

It’s in these situations that it’s incredibly easy to shoot quite randomly and without consideration or forgetting all you know about composition. In this months write-up we’re going to be taking a look at how best to represent a new destination in a simple, step by step guide so that the next time you feel inspiration strike, you can get the shots that take you back to that place again and again.

Take It In

Travel Photography

The first thing you should do when you feel that urge to start shooting Travel Photography in a new and exciting place, is hold off.
It might seem a little counterproductive, but you need to realise that you’re seeing and experiencing this place for the very first time yourself, so give that time to digest. Take some time to look around, breath in the air and think about how this place is making you feel. As much as off-the-cuff shooting can provide excellent results, it’s as much about beginning to understand where you’re physically stood and what you’re experiencing before you start to fire off shot after shot.

Make A Note

There will be aspects you instantly glaze over, and others that immediately take your attention. Make a note of the ones you think are poignant.
It may be the impact of the colourful clothes the locals wear or perhaps their enthusiasm and gestures towards each other. It could be something more challenging to try and represent like the smells of food cooking, or a pine forest.
Once you have these slight inklings, you can then go about thinking how best to represent them in a series of Travel Photography images. 

Remember To Contextualise Yourself

Travel Photography

A point I bring up time and time again, namely within landscape photography, is that the minute you distance your stance as the photographer from an image, by throwing your focus towards a sunset or a view that stands 3 miles from where you are, you strip an image of its intimacy and mood. When we look at your shots we then have no idea about context or place – we merely see a sun setting or a distant townscape.

In these situations, it’s essential that you lead our eyes in via foreground or even middle ground interest. A stroll through the park isn’t just about the lake on the other side. We need to feel at least we’re taking this journey with you, so don’t forget how important it is to throw some reference to your stance at the photographer.

The Importance of Focal Length

Your focal length will (and should) regularly change when out documenting a new space. Don’t just stick to wide angle or very close up angles. A good mix will always mean you can change your proximity to subjects and get a vast range of contextual and more detail and suggestive shots. Below are some examples of how to best utilise your focal lengths when out shooting and exploring.

14-20mm

From the very wide to the reasonably wide, these focal lengths are great for your more contextual and landscape shots. Consider your scenes and how to pull in foreground interest. Street scenes can be filled full of narrative and drama with these focal lengths. However, be careful not to simply fire away without considering various subjects and focal points as you can quickly turn an exciting narrative into an overly busy image that doesn’t say a great deal.

20-28mm

Once you get past 20mm, you stay relatively wide but can start to hone in a little more on individuals. 24-28mm is a particularly handy focal length for street photography and documenting some people in one scene as you can create more of an intimate moment but still contextualise the shot nicely. This works particularly well with a wider aperture so that your focal point(s) are pulled forward, leaving the rest of the image to drift into a nice, shallow depth of field.

35-50mm

These focal lengths are perfect for individual portrait shots. The close we get to 50mm the more detail we can start to hone in on in our frame, and this is where we can perhaps begin to look at details in the area. It may be that you’re particularly interested in textures and forms. Perhaps you want to create more ambiguity in your images and focus on tone and shape or colour differences. 40-50mm will allow you to close in on your subject and create wonderful detail and suggestive images.

85mm and Above

Here we are into the telephoto territory. Remember that the more zoomed in we get, the more we need that shutter speed to work for us, especially if we’re handheld. Zoom lenses can be great for picking out instances from afar – candid portraits and street photography. However, I would not advise using this too much. For me – and this is just an opinion – I prefer the real proximity you can obtain by something like a 50mm.

When documenting a new environment of holiday destination, using a zoom seems a little counter-intuitive as you’re essentially distancing yourself from the subject. This begs the question ‘why?’. Try to think about whether you need to be zooming in. If the answer is ‘no’, then don’t do it.

Keep Us Guessing

Travel Photography

Successful and intriguing Travel Photography can do one of two things:

It can confront us with shocking, energetic or stunning scenes, shot right at the perfect moment.
It can set up a scene and create a narrative by clever use of focal points, subjects and perhaps, more importantly, the choice of what not to include in the frame.

The beauty of what we choose to shoot is that we can leave our viewers guessing and when documenting a new destination or environment, the detail and narrative shots are just as important as the beautiful, wide-angle landscape images.

The next time you’re shooting on your holiday, think about the gravitas and narrative behind that beach towel with nobody on it or those scattered petals in the street. Perhaps there’s a wedding procession in the street, and instead of shooting the obvious bride and groom, you decide to shoot the leftover confetti scattered over the top of the piazza steps, looking out onto the sun-kissed square. 

Perhaps you make sure you have a nice, wide aperture so that your focus is the confetti itself, but we can still see the view peeking from beyond the shallow depth of field. It is these little nods to the every day and the special yet smaller details that can have a big impact in setting up the bigger picture and atmosphere for your Travel Photography.

It’s as simple as that! We all know how to use our cameras to a basic level. Just think more about how best to compose those images and don’t be afraid to shoot very little! The bigger picture is not always the most interesting.

Don’t worry if you don’t have a far-flung holiday booked for this Travel Photography project, anywhere will do. However, if possible try to make it somewhere, you might not have been before and see how you get on.

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