Are you looking to improve your travel photography, because you’re not happy with the comments or lack of, whenever you post a picture? I completely understand how you feel and to be honest, I don’t have a ton of experience. What I do have is access to one of the fastest-growing travel communities in the world here at Travel Wanderlust.
Rather than rely on our own experience, we decided to crowdsource from some of our best photographer buddies on how to take the best travel pictures possible. There are some people who take travel photography
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Here are some of our favourite travel photography tips for beginners:
- Get a travel tripod
- The rule of thirds
- Don’t forget the people
- Learn how to frame
- Use colour well
- Don’t rely on presets
- Understand leading lines
- Expensive equipment is overrated
- Post production is underrated
- Tell a story
Get a travel tripod
The benefits of having a lightweight travel tripod cannot be overstated. A tripod allows you to set your camera position and keep it consistent throughout the entire photo session. This allows you to capture steady travel pictures and take amazing scenery or even time lapse videos.
Another benefit is that a tripod allows to shoot much slower shutter speeds so you can capture great low-light pictures or even movement. Just be sure to know what type of travel photography you’re doing, so you don’t have to carry a tripod all the time.
Some of the best instances to use one includes sweeping landscapes, low-light photography, flowing water shots like rivers or waterfalls, and capturing sunsets and sunrises.
The rule of thirds
Probably the most basic and common travel photography tip is the rule of thirds. This allows you to create more balanced compositions that are easier on the eye. This involves using a 3X3 grid and placing key aspects of the photo along the grid lines.
To make this even easier, just turn on your camera’s “grid” feature, which will help you easily identify how to follow the rule of thirds. See this picture below to get a sense of what we’re explaining.
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Don’t forget the people
Adding a human element to photos helps tell a story through your travel photos. I feel this is often lost in a lot of professional travel photography, so it is best not to be completely devoid of the human touch.
Some advice we from our community is that you can completely change the angle or the narrative of a particular photo by playing around with the human element in the photo.
It also gives a better sense of scale, which means by simply placing your subject in the distance, you can get a better sense of just how big that waterfall really is.
Learn how to frame
Learning to properly frame a photo takes practice to get it perfect each time. To help you along, we’ve compiled some easy-to-follow tips that anyone can follow:
- Don’t cut people’s feet off the bottom of the photo
- Leave a little buffer space in the sky above that mountain
- Make sure the horizon is straight for those landscape photos
- Pay attention to the background to make sure nothing is going to ruin it
These simple tips will easily help you up for your travel photography without any equipment and in a very short time.
Use colour well
Colour is essential in travel photography (actually all kinds to be honest), as it helps bring the photo together. Think about how colour composition works with something bright flowers on a snow covered field or something like Christmassy red and greens.
A simple tip to follow (though, please use some of your own judgment) would be to have a dominant and secondary colour. So it doesn’t need to be evenly balanced in a shot, one colour can be more prominent than the other.
Don’t rely on presets
Whether using a camera or a camera phone, we tend to rely heavily on the presents or auto mode. Don’t get us wrong, they do a great job, but there’s always something missing if you’re looking for the perfect travel pictures.
Depending on what device you’re using, you may not realize all the camera settings that need to be adjusted. Probably the 3 most important ones are ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. To break this down simply:
- ISO deals with image noise and tricky lighting
- Aperture allows you control depth of field
- Shutter speed is used when their motion in the picture
Our recommendation is to get comfortable with these settings to better understand how it works and the style you prefer. Once you get comfortable enough, start playing around with it and soon you’ll be a travel photography pro.
Understand leading lines
A great photograph often has a single focal point that is the main part of the image. The goal of good travel photography is to make it easy for the viewer to figure that out.
This is where leading lines comes into play. This is the use of natural geography or other features within your subject scene that the viewer will naturally look at first and position it in a way that will lead their eyes to the main subject.
A great example of this is the use of roads leading up to mountains or great structures. The highlight of the picture is obviously the mountain, but the road is a great way to get the viewer’s eye follow the road until it reaches the mountain.
Expensive equipment is overrated
So, while we talk about all of these, the honest truth is that 99% of my travel photos have been taken with a camera phone. The 1% was a basic DSLR that cost me around USD 200 second-hand.
Buying the most expensive camera does not a professional photographer make.
Camera phones have amazingly powerful cameras and as long as you’re not a professional photographer, should be good enough for Instagram. If you do have a good camera, that’s amazing, but remember it does not automatically make you a better photographer. Focus on learning how to make your pictures better rather than spending money on equipment you may not need.
Post production is underrated
In an era of photo retouching not being ‘cool’, it is still an essential part of travel photography.
Post-processing is essential to any travel photographer and learning how to process your images after they’re taken is actually more important than what camera you use (see above for context).
Some simple things to learn include:
- How to improve contrast
- Adjust exposure levels
- Reduce highlights
- Sharpen image elements to help with depth
- Soften or strengthen colour tones
- Boost shadows
Tell a story
This one is near and dear to my heart. Take photos that tell a story or narrative. What this means is use your camera like you would a pen and make sure that your travel photos are telling a story.
It could be a pictorial story about your journeys or an insider’s look into nature or the local culture of your holiday destinations. The goal here is to make use of the beauty of the photo – bring in that emotion that you’re feeling experience it firsthand.
This isn’t easy nor is it something that can be explained, but take your time to capture photos that are not soulless wallpapers, but rather a real look at the people, wildlife, beauty and culture of the place you’re photographing.
I’ll leave you with some parting words. Don’t forget that practice makes perfect – and travel photography is requires more practice than most other disciplines. Just go out there, take your camera and take more pictures.
Experiment, get comfortable and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. The longer you stick with it, the better you’ll get.
If we missed any tips or tricks you think would be great for our readers, send us a message or comment and we’ll be sure to reply.
