Favorite Travel Photo

Travel Photographs

Right, you’ve read up on the technical side of taking great photos. You know your aperture from your exif and you’’ve experimented with shutter speeds. But there is something missing from the photos you’ve been taking. They’re ok, but that’s it. Just ok. Why? You wonder. Well, here’s a little secret: it’s all about luck. Well not really. More to the point, great travel photography is about creating your own luck.

Get Prepared

There is an art to being lucky in travel photography, and it usually involves a lot of hard work. Research is the key. Find out all you can about where you are going. Read travel guides, books, newspaper and magazine articles, scour the internet, watch television programs. Knowing a little about what life is like in that part of the world can go a long way to getting the most out of your time there. For instance, how would the locals react to someone trying to take their picture? Some cultures can be quite offended by having their photo taken. This is especially true of women in Islamic countries. At other times, people will practically beg you to take their picture. Sometimes, you will be expected to pay for the privilege.

If you are intending to photograph well known landmarks, there will be plenty of images available in the various media, so that you can get an idea of what it might look like during different times of the day or different seasons. This might help you in your planning. There is nothing quite as valuable in photography as knowing how to be in the right place at the right time.

The Wider Picture

Doubtless you will arrive at your destination with an intended subject. Maybe the local people, or architecture, or you’ve planned your trip around a particular festival that is taking place. However, do not limit yourself to this one subject. Instead of fixing your viewfinder on a subject and keeping it trained, try looking around you. Look up, down, behind you. You will be amazed at how much more there is to photograph. And how much more of a sense of time and place you will be able to show in your images. Isn’t that your purpose anyway?

Flexibility

Sometimes the shot you want is just not possible. You may be in a busy city square attempting to photograph a serene monument basking in the afternoon sun, but being interrupted by a stream of passers by wandering through the frame. Unless you are able to stop traffic, you are not going to get the shot you came for. This is where you might need to adjust your approach. Try to capture the feel of the place as it is. If the square is bustling with people going about their day, show it as such. Make your focus the intensity and speed of which life moves within the space. Be creative. Maybe use a bit of motion blur to capture the essence of a city in a hurry. You might also be able to return at a quieter time to capture that monument at peace. Again this comes back to preparation and research. Yes, I’m harping on about that again, but it really is that important.

Great travel photography does require great technical skills. Let’s not kid ourselves about that. But more often than not it’s about being in the right place at the right time and having the awareness to take complete advantage of it.

Digital Camera

Digital Photography

When the lights come down to the final draw what will your picture look like? Some people are gifted and can take a picture straight from a camera and deliver a quality shot. It would be nice if we all could do this, but it is not a reality. Nor is a reality that those fortunate people can do this each time they use a camera. What are we to do?

I say we all go bowling and take the rest of the night off, however you are probably waiting to get the brightness adjusted while shadowing and contrasting your photos. Ok, then, I am like Erkle in some ways on the bowling part, except he probably can do better than me. Therefore, let’s edit, since I do have a feel in this area.

Anyway, you snapped a photo that you hoped would come out looking like a winner. In the photo is your favorite pet, yet in the background the scene is dark. What are you to do? Crack open the image-manipulator program because you are going to need a few tools. Now that we have an underexposure shot situation, we want to turn this picture inside out and make it an exposure copy.

Most editing software’s or at least a lot of them will automatically adjust brightness and contrast by using filters. The downside is the computers can’t read a picture as you can read it, and will adjust the photo to its own liking, which is often not to your liking. Therefore, you want to get out your thinking cap, since you are going to manual adjust your own brightness, contrast and shadow if you like.

Assuming you are using Photo Deluxe imaging manipulators, we are going to check out the commands brightness and contrast. Once you select the commands, you will notice a dialogue box appearing in the window. The box should have sliders. With your mouse, click on the brightness slide and move it left or right, depending on what you are seeking to achieve. If you want less brightness, move the slider to the right. Do the same, dragging the slider to the left if you want a darker image. If you notice in the dialogue box, there is a little white box with numbers showing. You can use this box to select your own level of contrast or brightness if you know what you are doing. Likewise, to achieve contrast effect, move the slider either left or right.

Few Tips

You should highlight the area you want to contrast or brighten, since if you command brightness and contrast to adjust the entire pictures and some areas are dark while others are light, you will get an off tone shading. That is, the light areas depends if dark or light will either get darker or lighter.

Note: YOU can use the saturation command to adjusts overexposure colors if they appear flushed down.

One downside about Deluxe Photo programs is that it doesn’t give you the sophisticated commands that Photoshop offers. Still, you can do a lot with either program if you know your moves. It pays to learn the commands in all imaging-manipulating programs so that you have a feel of the table when the cards fall down.

You can use the Shadows Command to cast a shadow over the image. You are the only one looking at this image now, so it is up to you to adjust accordingly. You can play with each command, experimenting with the image as long as you saved an original copy and backed it up. This will give you the opportunity to learn your stuff.