Taking photos of your travels is more important than ever because there are so many plaaces to show them. After all, you want to preserve your memories and also post pictures to social media to show off where you are, what you are doing and, in a lighthearted way, make your friends and followers a bit jealous.
Here are travel photography tips from professional photographer Steve Schwartz so you can take perfect photos and preserve special moments from your travels.
1.) Leave Room for Exploration. It’s exciting to head out on a trip, which means you’re going to obsess over pre-planning and research. That’s great. It’s important to know where you’re going and what to expect. That being said, I think it’s also important to give yourself room to go off the beaten path and see what catches your eye. In my experience, those are the moments where I capture something worth remembering because there’s a little adventure baked into the unknown. If you can, build in some breathing space and let your creative brain run wild.
2.) Don’t Forget About People
Travel destinations tend to go hand-in-hand with beautiful architecture, scenery, art, and monuments, but don’t spend all of your time shooting inanimate objects. Make a point of focusing on the people, whether it’s fellow travelers or a few locals.
Ultimately, humans connect with other humans, and that holds true for photographs as well. If you see a particularly nice vista, try framing it with people in the foreground or try to capture someone’s reaction to a historic location. It’ll give a fresh new angle on well-traveled points of interest.
3.) Shoot Things that Speak to You That being said, don’t follow my advice too closely. Even more importantly, don’t let social media tell you what you should shoot. Photography is deeply personal, whether you’re a professional or a hobbyist, and you’re going to take the best photos of things that you’re interested in taking. If you’re headed to Rome, it’s okay to be more interested in street vendors than the Colosseum and, if you follow your intuition, you’ll probably be shooting original photos, not pale imitations of someone else’s work.
4.) Get the Shot You Want
If you’re traveling, chances are you’re not going to visit that location often, if ever again, so I think it’s important to go for the shot you want to shoot. If that means waking up at 4 a.m., to catch a mountain sunrise, do it. If it means awkwardly (but politely) asking a local for a portrait, do it. It’ll strengthen your photography skills and you’ll come away with something you’re proud of in the end. Now is not the time to play it safe.
5.) Print, Print, Print
To me, a photo hasn’t reached its highest form until you can see it in the real world. For too many years, I allowed my photos to sit on my hard drive or iPhone until I’d entirely forgotten about them, but now I make a point of printing as many photos as possible. Print small sizes for albums. Print your favorites for hanging on the wall. Is it expensive? Yes, and that’s the whole point. Your photographs have value and they need to be treated as if that’s true. It’s hard to describe the feeling when you see an 8×10 print of your work on the wall but, once you do, you’ll know why it’s important to bring it to life. Just do it.
Steve Schwartz is a writer and photographer based in Texas. Particularly interested in wild places, he’s published work in Field & Stream, Popular Science, MeatEater, The Fly Fish Journal, and many more. When he’s not in the field, he’s living on a hay farm with his wife, three kids, two dogs, two cats and a few chickens. You can see his work on his website, mockingbird.us.