When you go on trips, everyone wants pretty or nice photos of their travels that you can look at later on. So here are some tips to help you take better travel photos that is simple but works!
Bring A Tripod Or A Companion
From my experience of traveling around Cornwall, London, Paris, Koh Samui, and more I can guarantee that this is so essential. If you don’t have a companion with you then bring a tripod. A friend or a tripod can get you the composition of a photo you want or that looks good. You just need to either position or tell a friend or adjust it using a tripod.
Trust me, asking a stranger to take pictures for you is the worst way. The chance of getting good (not even good let’s say average) is even slimmer than finding a parking spot in London that charges you nothing. It’s literally that bad so you’re better of relying on someone you know or yourself.
Get Up Earlier Or Stay Out Later
People usually leave the accommodation quite late or some would go back before dark. However either getting up earlier or staying out later will actually help with the lighting of your photos quite tremendously. The lighting in early morning around 1 hour to an hour after sunrise is the best as the sun light is usually harsh and it’s more difficult to control the lighting. The same with sunset, about 30 minutes before or during the sunset is when the light becomes softer and easier to take photos with. Not to mention the color of the sky during sunrises and sunsets, it’s beautiful and colorful. This will really give your photos more colors and therefore provide better results.
When it gets pitched black, that’s when it’s becomes harder to take photos unless you have some lights in the surrounding or take long exposure shots. Without any of these your photos will be too dark and really difficult to edit.
PS. If you go earlier enough you can avoid the struggle of people getting in your shots.
Darker Than Lighter
One thing I noticed from trying out different styles of photography is how important the setting is. One thing for sure (unless it’s a long exposure shot) you should aim to take photos with less exposure. This involves increasing the ISO and aperture (F). Increasing these too much is also not recommended for it becomes too dark as well as making it just as hard to edit. It is an important factor in editing because with an over exposed photo, you will struggle to tone it down as there is not much contrast to it. On the other hand, a darker photo has more contrasts therefore offers more freedom to editing. If you like lighter pictures that is still possible, just shoot it slightly darker then brighten it up when you edit!
Besides, why would you want to blind people’s eyes?
Don’t Just Take From One Spot Or Position
Put your creative eyes to work and experiment. Look through your camera and shift around to see which angle or spot looks better. You can easily end up with more than the spot you were thinking of.
The thing I do the most is positioning my camera to different spots and from different angle to see if it looks great within the frame. I notice that what I see from my eyes might not look as good on camera.
Take Your Time
Good thing doesn’t come easy. Each of my posts on Instagram takes approximately 30 minutes to an hour and a half. This of course excludes the time it takes to travel there. Also, you won’t get it right in the first 5 shots and that’s completely normal. You can ask any photographers how long does it require for them to get the amazing result they would say something like half an hour or more.
Always Go Manual
In order to get the quality you want you need to give yourself a creative control. And this can’t be done with an automatic setting, whether it be aperture, ISO or the focus. A lot of times the camera will give you what it thinks is good but we all have our own preferences that an automatic set camera won’t be able to give us. You know what you want from a photo so you should be the one in control not your camera.
Editing
I’ve mentioned editing this whole post so you can expect what I’m going to say! Post production is literally the key to good photos, videos, film, advertisement, you name it. Do I consider that as cheating? That depends on how you look at it. If you’re a photographer that sells photos then no that is not cheating. But if you’re against it and think it’s too fake then yes it’s cheating.
For me I think it enhances the photo and gives you the fun to create art. The important thing to remember is camera can’t capture what we see entirely. Try looking at the photos you take on a phone or camera and compare it to what you see. It is mostly different and they look less saturated or less rich in color. Sometimes the shadow makes the picture look too dark, etc. This is when editing comes in and fix them.
Travel. Live. Eat. 