When you are on vacation, you may feel like you want to document every moment of it. Taking photos is a compact, inexpensive way to bring your trip home with you. However, the photos that you take can be lacklustre. Sometimes, the photos that you captured does not exude the same feeling as you would have to be in a place.
If you are planning for a vacation soon and want to come home with the best travel photos as much as possible, consider the three tips below to elevate your travel photography:
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1. Demonstrate scale
As a beginning photographer, you might have taken pictures where you tried to eliminate fellow tourists from the frame. However, include people in the frame can help you better capture the sense of place where the picture was taken.
If you’re trying to capture a famous street, go around during midday and snap pictures of the crowd. Setting up shots takes patience and time, but it will be worth it when your photos capture the immensity or bustle of a place. These images will be truer to the feelings you made during the trip.
2. Think small, not big
Of course, you will want to capture the majesty of a big landmark, but sometimes the complexity of a place is lost when translated into an image. In churches, for example, there are many competing elements that fight for focus in a frame. Taking an encompassing shot will prevent you from zooming into things that deserve a closer look.
When you go smaller, you are able to put context into your image set by focusing on important details. When travelling around a local market, take pictures of the produce and experiment with various angles. One way to do this is to position your camera down low and use the live view option to compose the shot. That way, you get your photo without having to lie on the ground.
3. Capture in transitional weather
In majestic cities like London, the weather changes by the hour, giving you ample opportunities to take incredible photos. The time before a rainstorm gives dramatic contrasts to the sky, as some parts will be dark, and others will have patches of light. You can also take photos of people’s activities as they prepare for a change in the weather.
Capturing photos in transitional weather gives you a chance to document local habits. To prepare for possible weather events, look up the general weather pattern of the city during the months of your visit. You can also monitor the day’s predictions using apps and local channels.
Wrapping up
When you’re travelling around as a tourist, you might miss out on spots that offer interesting contrasts or beautiful details, no matter how well you organize your itinerary. Even a traditional walking tour might steer you to the greatest sights of an area and leave out hidden beauties that deserve more exposure. Being part of a local photography tour or workshop will instead give you the chance to work on your photography skills while seeing some of the oldest cities in the world. Even locals can be surprised by what they can learn about their home town.
Although there are now many online courses that will teach you about the basics of photography, they cannot beat the experiences you can get from a hand-on class. If you are looking for a photography workshop in London to elevate your travel photography skills, then get in touch with us today to plan out your appointments.