what makes a good travel photo
A good travel photo is about a place or event, or even a small aspect of a place or event, like the people or the food. It captures the feeling the photographer felt when he was there. Maybe it captures the history of a city, the serenity of an almost deserted island, some tiny detail unique to your area, or even just your friends and family relaxing and having fun.
Travel photography is a very broad genre. When shooting, you may combine elements of portrait photography, landscape photography, street photography, sports photography and many other disciplines. The best travel photos rarely stand alone, they are usually part of a small group of related images. All photos in this article are from my trips to New Orleans.
Technical Information
Travel photography is often unpredictable. You’re walking around a new city with a camera in hand, and something happens. A certain combination of light and subject creates the great moment you need to capture. Your camera needs to be ready for this.
First, you need to choose the right lens. While telephoto lenses make for great sports photos and portraits, they’re unwieldy for travel photography. You need something with a wider angle. The traditional focal length for this kind of photography is 35mm on a full frame camera (about 22mm on an APS-C camera), although any focal length between about 16mm and 50mm will work. Fortunately, the kit lenses that come with most cameras cover most of this range, and smartphone cameras are often equivalent to a 35mm prime lens, so there’s no reason not to have the right gear.
– At least it should be – the secret to good street photography is “f/8 and be there”. In other words, if your aperture is set to f/8, all you need is to press the shutter button in the right place, and you can capture almost any moment. It’s up to you to find moments and places worth capturing.
With that in mind, set your aperture to f/8, turn on autofocus, and set your ISO to around 400 (this guarantees a fast enough shutter speed for any daylight shot).
If you’re working in low light, you’ll need to make some compromises with these settings. Check out our guides on taking good photos at night and taking great sunset photos . Find a balance between the three guides that best suit your situation.
Additional Tips and Tricks
There are two main types of travel photography: those where you wander around, experiencing places, taking photos as you go, and those where you go out with a specific lens or series of photos. Neither is inherently better, and you should switch between them. Wander aimlessly for the first day or two, and once you get a handle on the layout of the land and find a shot or two you want to take, go out and do it.
You can also scout locations ahead of time. Use the likes of Flickr , Google Maps , and Instagram to figure out where good photos are. Just be careful about capturing the same image as everyone else. If you want your images to stand out, you need to put your own unique spin on things.
Even if you’re wandering, one of the best ways to get great travel photos is to find a great location and wait for something to happen. Maybe someone will linger by doing something interesting, or maybe a dog will run across the scene. Whatever happens, if you have a great location, you should be able to get a great photo.
As I mentioned before, good travel photos rarely stand alone – they are part of a series. Don’t try to capture one perfect photo; instead, use it as an opportunity to create eight, ten, or thirty related photos that stand together to fully capture the spirit of a place.
Weegee’s “f/8 and be there” is a very strong rule for many different styles of photography, but you should always be willing to break it. If you need a faster shutter speed or shallow depth of field for portraits, stop up to f/3.5 or f/1.8. If you want greater depth of field, tighten it down to f/16. Good travel photographers are able to adapt on the go.
A major concern with travel photography is weight. Lugging a heavy camera, four lenses and a tripod is tiring. If all your camera gear doesn’t fit in your carry-on, it could get damaged in the hold when you fly to where you are. You should travel as light as possible. Whenever I go somewhere with my camera, I bring two lenses: a Canon 17-40 f/4L for pretty much everything, and a Canon 85mm f/1.8 for portraits and sports. In fact, the 17-40 rarely leaves my camera. Find a lens that works for you and stick to it. It could be a 24-70 or even a 35mm prime, but travel photography is a lot easier if you change lenses without much fuss.
