7 Ways to Take Great Photos While Traveling ...

By Neecey

7 Ways to Take Great Photos While Traveling ...

How to take great photos is question posed by pretty much anyone who has a camera for occasional use. For travelers, it is probably even more an important issue. If you’re only ever going to get to see a place once in a lifetime you want to know how to take great photos that will provide special memories. You don’t have to have the best camera on the market or be an award winning photographer. All you need is to follow some basic and simple instructions and guidelines for how to take great photos. Invest in a reasonably priced camera that has good functionality but don’t pay for loads of bells and whistles that you have no real intention of using. Then, follow these 7 Ways to Take Great Photos While Traveling:

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1

Get High!

Knowing how to take great photos means being able to see things from an interesting or unusual perspective. So often we look at events or attractions from ground level but taking to a high spot where you can get a bird’s eye view can provide you with a different perspective entirely. It can allow you to take pictures of things you didn’t see on the ground and it takes out a clustered skyline which can potentially ruin any good picture.

2

Place Yourself on the Edge

The best photographs are the ones which look completely natural as they capture the essence of the scene. Framing the scene is the essential tip to achieve this. Many people assume that the subject should be the center of the picture. Not necessarily so. Centering is good if you are taking pictures of people close up but for travel photos you want to capture as much of the location as possible in the best way. Look at the space around your subject. Move your camera around to bring in a more interesting foreground or background. Don’t be afraid to push your subject to the edge of your picture if the rest of the composition makes it more interesting or creates an impression.

3

Shoot Whenever

One surefire way as to how to take great photos is to not restrict yourself to good weather. Yes, the sunshine is beautiful but you can often capture some glorious natural images in the bad weather too. For example, have you ever seen a rainy and cloudy sky with just a chink of sunlight shining down on to a famous landmark? During storms, rain or even just grey days the light can change to make stunning effects. Those shots are what you are looking for.

4

Combinations

Another way as to how to take great photos is the art of combination. If you have two or three famous landmarks in front of you then you can take one photo of each, but that’s boring and has been done so many times before. Consider moving into a diagonal position to capture all the landmarks in one shot or even getting down low to give the impression of vastly different sizes. Capturing objects where one explains the other is also very effective. For example, don’t just take a picture of a harbor, capture a fisherman in the bottom corner.

5

Environment Not the Person

If you intend on taking pictures of some of the people on your trip then try something new and let their surroundings tell you who they are. Place your subject on the side of your photo and get a good chunk of the environment on the other side. This will not only make a better photo, but it will also remind you where you took the photo and who that person was. (Dont forget to be respectful and ask the person if they mind their picture being taken).

Famous Quotes

To give oneself earnestly to the duties due to men, and, while respecting spiritual beings, to keep aloof from them, may be called wisdom.

Confucius
6

Perfection in Persistence

If you are looking at truly how to take great photos then you should stop standing there with a camera waiting for the perfect shot. Professional photographers take multiple photographs of the same thing before picking out the good ones later on. You should do this too. The digital camera has made this so easy (just make sure you have a large capacity memory card). Take multiple different angles, multiple different shots (even if it’s only a few inches to your left), and then look through all the photographs later on for the best ones.

7

Think of Editing

The last of my tips on how to take great photos concerns post production. With the wealth of software available to edit pictures, it’s almost a disservice to avoid it as it can change a poor quality photograph into something very acceptable. It also allows you to experiment with your photographs allowing you to change a whole range of features producing some interesting effects.

I’d like to give credit to Steve Davey for this advice on how to take great photos. He’s a London based photographer and writer (Footprint Travel Photography). These 7 Ways to Take Great Photographs While Traveling are incredibly useful, but they are only the tip of the photography iceberg. If you want to become a stellar travel picture taker why not take a short course in photography?

Top Photo Credit: weheartit.com

Feedback Junction

Where Thoughts and Opinions Converge

One of my favorite photos is an unusual one I took from the top of a cathedral looking out over a city. I took it at 45-degree angle and captured the outside of the cathedral, the sky, and the city below. The color was nice in the original, and I edited it in Picasa to make a few alternate versions, including a high-contrast black-and-white one. I should get that framed. Thanks for some new ideas!

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