HOW TO TAKE BETTER PHOTOS OF YOUR TRAVELS – Photography Guide

Do you want to know how to take better photos of your travels? All you need is yourself, your camera and a lot of imagination. Yes, nothing else.

And look better, we are not telling to you to buy the last camera come into the market, with high price and performances. We are simply telling to you to take wherever Camera you want, and go just down the street and start to shot.

Even now with a lot of communication-based on short stories, during just 24 hours, like in the Instagram stories, or on Facebook too, you can get over just with your mobile phone.

A lot of Travel Blogger or social media specialist are using just the phone for delivery on their channel the everyday load of work. Happen to us sometimes as well, we won’t going out with a lot of load on our back, carrying two cameras, a tripod, some lenses and other stuff.

We just want to enjoy a walk and do you know the World is beautiful and you finish to take a picture for sure, to your food, an Ice-Cream on the river of the Thames, a drink with friends, a Pizza, a short walk in Portobello road.

The best suggestion we will give to you is not to invest money in an expensive camera without knowing the basics. Start to play with the setting, watch some video tutorial on YouTube, get out of Auto mode and get into the wild of manual.

NATURAL LIGHT IS THE BEST FOR YOUR SHOOT.

Even if the quality of the new cameras, the new phones is really incredibly good, you need to bear in your mind, the retouching software could never change the genial idea behind the picture.

At the beginning of learning how can use your camera, you need to put your focus on the natural light, leaving for advanced training to use lights or night photography.

FOCUS ON THE RULE OF THIRD

It’s the first things a professional tell you to have focused on. It is the perfect definition of photography. If you check on your phone or camera, you can see an option about “Grid“. If you put it on your screen appear a grid divided in 9 square, or more, but on multiple of three.

The Rule of thirds is to put your subject in one of the dials and leave the rest for your scene. You can also put your main subject on more than one point, leaving the rest of the picture for your composition, it needs to be linear and really clean who is watching.

COMPOSITION

How many times have you listen to or read about the composition? This is the second most important rule of photography and especially for travelling photography. In all the picture of your favourite travel bloggers, you can admire the beautiful composition of the photos.

The composition there is the Idea of a genius. If you see a beautiful landscape and try to put your image inside, keeping it as a postcard, it is the best composition and you are starting with the right foot.

SHOOT AT THE CORRECT TIME WITH GOOD LIGHT.

We know, during your travel abroad you want to have a rest, but if you plan to take the best pictures ever, you need to sacrifice yourself. Try to wake up early in the morning and get one of the best light.

Wait to eat at your favourite restaurant, and find the golden hour. It is the best moment to take a picture, when the light is soft and get sunshine reflecting on the object. You can get in just a bit after the sunlight or before the sunset.

THINK ABOUT THE FINAL RESULTS YOU WANT

Having a great camera increases the chances of a good picture, but it won’t make you a great photographer. This is absolutely true. Start to play with what is in front of you. Practice with your camera, you need a lot of practice. Try to hit at the best time of the day, it is not in the middle of the day. All these small things can make a big difference. Find here some tips to avoid common Travel Photography mistakes.

POST PRODUCTION

This is something we want you to do in the end, after a lot of practice and learning the basic of it. A lot of people will avoid editing before they don’t understand the point to do it. Also, a lot of people avoid the post-production because are thinking is to change completely the picture.

Ok, after that, think you have a negative of your picture, and you need to develop it.

Just small changes nothing like retouch in photoshop of the stars, but just make your light and your colours more vibrant.

PRE-CHECK THE LOCATIONS

Yes, just that. Go online, on Instagram, on Facebook and check other contacts have been in the place where are you going, and take inspiration. I don’t saying to you to copy the same shoot, just take inspiration and have a look around at the place where is the sightseeing.

Could be a good idea, if you have a look also on google maps, you can spot some other places around and write your search for a future check. We did that in Lisbon and we took really great photos.

BACKUP YOUR IMAGE ONLINE

Everyone knows how is horrible to lose all the photos you make during your vacation. It’s never easy to carry with you a laptop and spend your time to transfer the pictures.

After a while improving our Travel Photography we decided to buy an expensive SD Wi-Fi of the Toshiba (Here you can have a look), all the cent we had to spend for it pay us in time earn for our daily work.

You can opt for it if your camera doesn’t have the Wi-Fi built-in. You can also check our camera abroad during our trip, and take some inspiration and follow our actual standards. With the Wi-Fi, you can easily transfer the shoot in your memory Card, directly on your phone. The next step is to update the photo into your online space.

THE RIGHT CAMERA GEAR

Carry a Tripod or a Gorilla Pod. Can happen you are strolling at night and something take your attention, so you want to shoot it, but your camera is not pretty well without ideal light condition and struggling at night.

Don’t hesitate to take a shoot, carry with you a tripod and start to shoot manually, stabilizing your camera without blurring your image. In the alternative to a heavy and spacy tripod, you can take a Gorilla Pod, this allows you to take a picture of a diverse angle and can be set everywhere.

ASK HELP TO LOCALS

There is some app, you can use to meet local and go around with them. Try joining an online group of local or ask a community of traveller have already been there.

TRY YOUR SHOOT AND GIVE A CHANCE TO YOUR IMAGINATION

Don’t worry to look strange at the eyes of other people are passing by you. You can look funny, strange or more, but keep always in your mind, they can laugh of you at that moment, but later when they have a look at your photos, they want to be like you, or you.

They want to take pictures like you are taking and do the amazing shot you are posting on your social media channel, they could be your followers, so show to them all your genius.

If you don’t try, even the impossible (Don’t try to kill yourself on the top of a building, please!), you never know how was, and you will never get that moment back.

EDIT ON THE WAY

If you are planning a long trip, the new way of social media doesn’t let you stay away from your channel for long. So, you need to edit your image on the way, make it look pop and smooth.

Also, this is a good idea to make professional Instagram stories on the way. If you plan it and give them a bit of design, you can engage more your audience. There is some app really cool like Snap Seed.

There are a lot of tutorials online to how can use this app. It is completely free and running on Android and iPhone. You can set up your own style and use it straight on your picture, just with one click on it.

Also, you can use, Photoshop CC Mobile Version and Photoshop Lightroom for Mobile, both of them free, with a professional feature on payment. With this app, you cannot process your RAW shoot.

In the beginning, we started to use SnapSeed, but in a bit of time and with a good experience we update our skills to Lightroom for a better professional result.