Guide To Travel Photography

Travel photography guides can be hundreds of pages long, offering detailed advice on everything from camera settings to composition. In this short-but-sweet guide, we'll show you the basics of preparing, taking and storing your photos - what you point the lens at is up to you!

The best way to get the top photography possible from your trip is to travel round with your camera to hand and your eyes and mind wide open. Absolutely everything you see can be made the subject of an interesting photo - just because the street is strewn with rubble doesn't mean the dust won't glow like fire as the sun sets. If you're desperate for a specific shot, come back at several times of day so the scene might be emptier, busier or better-lit, depending on what the final outcome looks like in your head.

Let's get one thing straight - you don't need a degree in photography to get back from your trip with some awe-inspiring shots. It's perfectly easy to wow your friends (and even get a picture or two published) with a basic camera and very little technical knowledge...

About the Author

Author Lucy Cartwright is a professional studio photographer who took up travel photography on a recent round the world trip...

What do I need?

The type of camera you use does not matter. Whether you've got a brand new 12 megapixel SLR or a cheap-as-chips compact digital from Woolworths, it's what you do with it that counts. Great shots can be taken with any equipment.

That said; some things to check if you'd like to get the most of your camera include:

Whether or not the camera has manual functions

- These include variable shutter speeds and aperture sizes, and allow you a lot more creative freedom, especially when shooting in poor lighting or difficult conditions. Whether you prefer shooting digitally or on film

- Both film and digital have advantages over their counterparts. Film photography is still the favourite of the purists (partly because the size of your prints can be much larger than a digital sensor allows), but digital photography has taken the world by storm. If you enjoy experimenting, digital might suit you better, as you can instantly see if your latest shot came out as you expected (and you won't waste countless reels of film in the attempt!).

The option of taking a spare battery or two

- Some digital cameras have internal rechargeable batteries - they're great, but if you run out it always pays to have an extra set on you somewhere. Chargers and rechargeable batteries can save you a fortune in the long run.

Your storage of choice

- If you're planning on shooting with film, always carry spare rolls with you - there's nothing worse than running out of shots just as the perfect picture comes into view. With digital, find out how many pictures you can store at maximum quality on your memory card - when travelling it's always advisable to keep the quality high, as it might be a long time before you get the opportunity to visit again!

What to do when you finally run out of space

- Whether it's film or digital, you'll eventually run out of shots, and you need to think carefully about how you'll keep them. With film, store your used films carefully in sealed containers, and always be conscious of them when you take your bag anywhere - they can be affected by x-ray machines. With digital, it's most advisable to have your photos copied to CD - most photography stores will offer this service, and it's cheaper than having them printed - and with a CD you can print them as many times as you like! Always check to make sure they've been successfully copied before wiping your card, mind you - mistakes do happen.

Before you leave...

There are several things you can do to prepare for a trip if you're keen on showing off your photographic abilities.

Setting up an account with a website that hosts your photographs for free is a great idea, as it means you can give all your friends and family visual updates of your dream trip. That way, you can just email everybody a link to your page, and they can visit it regularly to be kept up to date!

As a member of gapyear.com you can upload your travel photos to the site for free. Not a member yet? Tsk. The site is free and easy to join – why not sign up today?

The site is simple to use, but we recommend practising by uploading a few pictures before you leave the country, just so you don't end up trying to figure it out while you're spending money in a Thai internet café!

Take a look at photographs in guidebooks and travel magazines - they can be a great way to train yourself to avoid the usual snapshots and are an inspiration to really experiment with the pictures you take.

If you're interested in having your freelance work published in travel magazines or similar publications, contact the editors before you leave, offering an explanation of where you're going and of ideas you might have for articles relevant to their magazine. Once you get back into the country, send a few of your best shots to the magazines you contacted and always follow this up with a phonecall; persistence might seem pushy, but it can pay in dividends.

Once you're out there...

A camera shouldn't just capture what you see - it should encapsulate the feel of a place, so that when you return home, your photos can take you right back to the moment you took them: the smell of the air, the sounds all around you, and so on.

Don't always try to concentrate on the big picture - quite often your best pictures will come from focusing on the little things, such as Lucy Cartwright's shot of incense sticks on the first page of this guide or the photo of the fire extinguisher above. People might say that the devil is in the details, but you'll frequently find the best pictures are too.

A lot of people can feel embarrassed to pull a camera out, especially if they're trying to avoid looking like too much of tourist. We say - forget about being embarrassed! It could be your only chance to get a photo of your subject, so dive in there and take the best shot you can while the opportunity is still there!

Photographing People

To learn how to shoot great portraits takes a long time, and we're not going to bore you with all the details here! A quick summary of the best way to get a good, solid portrait is:

- Have your aperture open wide, if you're able to change your camera settings manually - it'll give you a shorter depth of field and place your subject's background out of focus, placing them in much sharper relief (it'll also mean you need a faster - shutter speed, so camera shake is less likely). If you're using an automatic camera, switch it to Portrait mode for the same effect

- Focus on the eyes. They're the most important part of the face and the one bit you need to keep in focus. Filling the frame with the head or face of your subject can create a very intimate image.

- Ask them! In some cultures, pointing a camera at people can look quite suspicious, and you'll often find them happy to pose for you if you ask nicely. Kids are often great fun to work with - let them look down the viewfinder of your camera or at the pictures you've taken if you're using digital. Occasionally, we agree that's it's possible to get a sneaky shot without your subject knowing, but be prepared to accept the consequences if they spot you and don't appreciate the attention!

Photographing Landscapes and Architecture

A very different process from photographing people, since buildings and landscapes tend to move around less. This doesn't make it easier, mind you.

- When taking a shot of wide open spaces or tall buildings, keep your aperture stopped down as far as possible if you're trying to get everything in focus - the smaller the aperture (a larger f-stop number) the greater the depth of field. The Landscape mode on automatics and compacts should offer the same result.

- If taking pictures at night, use a tripod, especially if you're serious about your photography. Because there's less light, the camera will need to have its shutter open for longer. Around 1 second will be suitable for urban scenes, but 10 seconds and above still might not be enough for a shot where there are no light sources, like the Australian outback. The tripod won't shake as much as your hand, and you'll be able to take much sharper pictures.

- Take the time to frame your composition - split your frame mentally into a three-by-three grid, and use this to place your subject somewhere other than smack in the middle. Look for simple lines of symmetry and perspective that can make a standard snapshot into something much more interesting. It takes some getting used to, but the rewards are well worth it!

General Tips and Advice

- A sunset shot is a sunset shot. After a while they'll all start to look the same, and you'll wish you hadn't taken quite as many when the space could have been used much better elsewhere.

- Flash is best used rarely, especially when it's an intimate shot. The bright glare of camera flash tends to flatten an image, giving it a false and static feel. To keep the ambience of a location, turn your flash off and use a slightly longer shutter speed (switch automatic cameras to the No Flash symbol).

- Try breaking away from the traditional standing perspective. Take shots from higher up or lower down to add an element of the unusual to your shot.

- Don't use the midday sun for shooting with - the lack of shadows makes photos look flat and uninteresting. Sunrise and sunset offer the best lighting; it's warm and the shadows are longer, creating a better sense of texture.

- Finally: have fun! Photography is all about experimentation and enjoyment, so go on, take your best shot (pun most definitely intended)!

Life In The Digital Darkroom

Photo editing and processing is almost as old as photography itself. Since the birth of the photo, photographers have always strived to improve their photos by developing them at home, tinting, toning, and cropping their pictures to make a good photo great. In the days when all we had was traditional film photography the option to edit and process photos was pretty much limited to enthusiasts and professionals. In these digital days however, you no longer need your own darkroom to improve your photos. Get yourself a PC and a piece of digital image editing software and your ready to roll. Contrary to what you may have heard, editing photos digitally is actually quite easy with a bit of practice, but it can be a little daunting if you've never done it before. Don't worry though, because we're here to help guide you through the process.

It seems that these days every programmer and his dog has designed an image editing package so simply choosing what software to buy can be a task in itself. There are loads of packages on the market these days. They vary in price from free and open source downloads to professional packages such as Photoshop and Fireworks.

Free Software

Picasa is a downloadable image organiser from Google which also features some basic photo editing options. There are a variety of quick fix options such as contrast and colour adjustments, as well as the ability to remove red eye and crop your images. Significantly, it also offers the ability to adjust the shadows and highlights of an image, a feature that a number of expensive packages lack. The best thing is it's completely free, so have a look on Google for Picasa if you're interested in a simple editor and organiser.

If you don't find Picasa to your liking, there are plenty of other free options. PhotoPlus for example, offers many of the creative tools you would usually expect to find on a piece of professional editing software such as layer effects, and clone, smudge and erase tools.

Budding designers and photographers after a professional image editor might want to try out GIMP. Don't worry, it isn't like it sounds, you won't have to wear a mask when you use it! GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program and was started in 1995 as a free alternative to Adobe Photoshop. As a result it features many of Photoshop's advanced functions, including basic vector graphic support, layer transparency, layer masks and smart selection tools. It can even open Photoshop documents and features support for most Photoshop plug-ins. If having a plethora of options and tools at your disposal doesn't frighten you then GIMP is probably the package for you as it is easily the most comprehensive free digital image editing package available.

Tip: If you've been using a computer for a few years and have already bought a digital camera, scanner or webcam at some stage, you might already own a basic digital imaging package. Double-check the box if you still have it, there might be some software on a disc in there that already does what you want!!

Amateur & Semi-Professional Software

This is the category that most digital image editing software packages fall into. There are literally hundreds of alternatives ranging from the sublime to the practically useless. As a rule of thumb you are best sticking to the well known ones. If you're in doubt about what to buy, you could try a web search to see what others think of the software. It might also be worth comparing the features to those of the more comprehensive free programs such as GIMP, as very often software manufactures will try and charge you for semi-professional packages which can do a lot less than some of the better free software.

Perhaps the most popular entry level editing package is Adobe's Photoshop Elements, which is a consumer version of Adobe Photoshop, costing about a sixth of the price. It features many cut down versions of Photoshop's tools, but also offers quick fixes that its big brother doesn't, such as quick red-eye removal and the ability to alter skin tones. It is aimed specifically at photographers so doesn't feature many of the graphic design tools that Photoshop does, but if you are only interested in editing photos and are after something thats easy to navigate with comprehensive online support and tutorials, then Photoshop Elements is a good option. A good alternative to Photoshop Elements would be Corel Paint Shop Pro. Formerly published by Jasc, Paint Shop Pro's features measure up almost neck and neck with Photoshop Elements. It therefore contains all of the major functions of Photoshop CS, but without the sharp learning curve. You can try out Paint Shop Pro for free for 30 days by downloading it from Corel's website.

Other popular entry level packages include Microsoft's Digital Image Suite and Ulead PhotoImpact. Both are good for basic editing but fall short of Photoshop Elements and Paint Shop Pro for ease of use and sheer quantity of options.

Professional Software

The battle for this market was traditionally fought out between Abobe Photoshop and Macromedia Fireworks. Both programs are pretty similar in terms of features and functions, but work in a slightly different way.

Photoshop features file support for other Adobe programs such as Illustrator, Premiere and After Effects, making it ideal for graphic designers and video artists, as well photographers. It also comes packaged with Adobe ImageReady which is a great piece of kit for creating gif animations and producing web graphics.

Fireworks on the other hand gives you the option to do all the animation and photo functions within a single program, but lacks some of Photoshop's abilty to export files to the Adobe video software. It is however laid out similarly to Macromedia Flash and supports some use of vector graphics; so anyone with any experience of using Flash should feel right at home with it. Adobe recently bought out Macromedia, so Fireworks may soon be come discontinued, meaning you might be able to pick up a version cheaply in the not too distant future.

If you haven't been editing very long, you are probably best to avoid these big boys. They are incredibly expensive, have a sharp learning curve, and probably do far more than you could ever possibly need.

Where do I start?!

Ok, so you've got yourself a piece of software and you're ready to start editing. This can be very daunting at first, but don't worry, there isn't that much to learn to start making good photos great. Think of your editing software as a way of correcting or perfecting whatever you shot on the camera.

Most editing packages allow you to apply "funky" filters that do crazy things like make your photo look like it's a charcoal etching or make all the colours crazy and random. Before you start, have a play with them, get it out of your system and never use them again! You may think they are cool at first, but you'll probably come to hate them after a while. If you have a nice photo the last thing you should be doing is giving the edges a neon glow, or making it look like its underwater! If you want to be respected as a travel photographer your photos should look like photos. For the most part you should aim to make your travel photos look as if they haven't even been edited... you can do a lot of things to your pictures without breaking this rule, but making the Sydney Opera House glow luminous green isn't one of them!

The most basic alterations are simple colour adjustments. Most image packages have quick fixes for these, which are meant to make the colour look more authentic. Have a look in the menus to find terms such as "brightness/contrast", "hue/saturation", "levels", "curves" and "shadows/highlights." They will most likely all appear in the same place.

Adjusting Colours

Brightness / Contrast

One of the simplest things you can do is make an image lighter or darker, or increase or decrease its contrast.

Sometimes a quick and simple adjustment of the brightness and contrast is enough to turn a dull underexposed snapshot into a nice high impact photograph.

Auto Colour / Auto Levels

Quick fixes that adjust the colours, making them appear more natural. Sometimes if the light is artificial, pictures will appear a strange colour; a quick click of one of these buttons will usually sort it out though.

Adjusting Colours Cont'd

Hue / Saturation / Levels / Curves

An alternative to Auto Levels and Auto Colour are these manual methods of correcting colour. Hue allows you to change the colour of an image and saturation allows you to make an image more colourful. The more you increase the saturation the more colourful the image becomes... be careful not to overdo it though especially on portrait photos... caucasion people's skin contains a lot of red so oversaturating it has the effect of making them look like they are covered in a nasty rash or badly sunburnt! Levels and curves are very delicate, and quite complex. Levels allow you to adjust the amount of the 3 primary colours individually, and curves go one step further by allowing you to adjust the shadows and highlights too. Avoid using them until you have become competent at editing, but don't be scared to experiment later as they are far more flexible and precise than the basic adjustments.

Shadows / Highlights

These adjustments are a relatively recent addition to image editing software, so you may not have them if you're using older or entry level packages. They allow you to brighten the dark regions of an image, and darken the bright bits. Once again this is a delicate process, overdoing it can ruin an image, so be sure to combine it with a brightness and contrast adjustment rather than trying to correct everything using shadows and highlights.

Cropping

The ability to crop images can be a really useful tool for improving your composition. Sometimes cropping an image by as little as 5% can make a world of difference, at other times cropping out over half of a photo can turn an insignificant area of a large image into a stunning new shot. Rotating the image to line up the vertical and horizontal lines with the edges of the image will also help make your image more striking. Cropping is usually done with a crop tool, rotating is generally accessed from one of the menus; check your software's help guide for more details.

Once again, when cropping, remember to make the shot look like an unedited photo; if possible don't stray from standard photo shapes and sizes. Long thin photos look cropped, but cropped photos which are the same dimensions as the original don't.

The image on the right does not look natural as very few digital cameras would be able to shoot an image that is as long and thin as this one!

Toning and Desaturating

Most editing packages will give you the options to do all sorts of crazy things to your images, most of which you will probably want to ignore, but there are a few useful ones. The first of these is the option to desaturate: meaning to turn a colour image into black and white. There are several ways to do this. Some programs require you to go into hue/saturation and bring the saturation right down, others have a desaturate option, and some allow you to change the colour mode of an image to grayscale... all have the same effect.

Choosing what to make black and white and what to make colour is entirely down to you, but as a general rule think about textures and shapes when shooting for black and white. Black and white images excentuate textures as they attract your eye more when there is no colour, and strong geometric shapes often look far bolder in black and white than they do in colour.

Toning allows you to add a colour to a black and white (or sometimes a colour) image. Check the help files to find out how to tone image using your software. Adding a tiny touch of blue to a wintery B&W image, a touch or orange to a summery photo, or a little brown to a nostalgic one can make a difference.

Tip: For better results, once you are comfortable with desaturating, look into converting to black and white using coloured filters.

The Sky's The Limit

All of the editing techniques mentioned here are fairly basic, but should be more than enough to help you improve your photos. There are loads of things that good software packages can do if you take the time to learn them properly. With a little patience and careful practice it won't take long to learn how to adjust the perspective of an image, alter the colours individually, stitch two photos together, or even remove people or objects that you don't want.

The trick is to learn the basics first; and more importantly, to learn when and if to use them. Carefully combining the various colour and contrast adjustments is a skill in itself. Learn from your editing too, and think about it when you shoot photos. If you find yourself recropping a certain kind of image in a certain way, try to shoot the photo in such a way that you won't need to crop it in future. If you find that your zoom isn't long enough to get the photo you want, don't fret about it, shoot the photo anyway and crop it later.

Most of all have fun and experiment. Editing and processing is a skill in itself. Process everything! Almost every single photo ever shot can be perfected and improved in some way. If you shoot and edit enough, you'll soon find that not only are you developing your own style of photography but your own unique way of editing too. This combination will be vital to developing your own style, and making your images stand out in a sea of bland, samey travel photos...

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