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Do your friends fall asleep during your slide shows of past vacations? Do your colleagues’ eyes glaze over when you bring out your travel snapshots? Are you frustrated, after a memorable trip, when lackluster shots come back from the lab?
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Travel photography, like many other aspects of the art, requires a special mindset, a philosophical approach that demands images that reflect only what film records. For many of us, our pictures remind us of the whole fabulous day; one shot brings back a host of memories we might cherish for years. It is difficult to remember that, for your audience, this does not happen. For them, the photograph must stand on its own merits. If you can recall this when framing the shot, you’ve mastered the hard part of travel photography.
Travel photography should be a microcosm of many aspects of the art; portraiture, macro, scenic, nature, action. In essence, you are creating a photo essay of the travel destination, a story in pictures that portrays the region as you perceived it. The people, scenery, flowers, activities, and restaurants all contributed to your travel memories.
The most effective travel photographs are those we call “destination specific”. Almost anyone who has been to the coast of Maine will recognize the silhouette of Cadillac Mountain. Visitors to Venice will surely respond to the sight of the main canal, in the lagoon town of Burano. You can never miss with the CN Tower in the background of any shot of Toronto, or the wind-blown lines of the white sand dunes in White Sands National Monument. The characteristic rounded edges of New Mexican architecture places you squarely in Santa Fe.
Keep in mind that those destination-specific photographs have been done many times before; they are almost cliches. Use your imagination to come home with a different image. Try the “bird’s eye view”, or the “worm’s eye view”. Use a wide-angle lens, or a telephoto, for creative distortion. Frame the shot like nobody has done before. Use deliberate blur, zoom your lens, or come back at night for a time exposure.
Images of occupations, to a certain extent, can also tell a story. Catch a shot of somebody hauling lobster pots, or
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holding up a lobster, and you place the viewer on North America’s East coast. Wheat fields to the horizon and a threshing machine pretty much spell ‘prairies’, be it Washington or Saskatchewan. Mountains and blue water, with a ferry captain at his wheel, puts you on the Pacific coast (or a few dozen other places!)
To make a travel photograph effective, you must often place a person inside it, enjoying a favorite activity. Many images are only background, crying for a point of interest. Your favorite mountain hiking trail is only a background, until you place hikers going up or down, and use the trail as a leading line. Close-ups of sailboats make interesting abstracts, but a shot of people hauling on a halyard, or somebody’s kid hiking far over the side of a dinghy, makes your audience want to go sailing. What’s the point of photographing an empty swimming pool, when you can show it full of happy children? White sand dunes in New Mexico are interesting, but place a few kids sliding down them, and you have a people shot. This is the essence of good travel photography: make your viewers want to search for their passports!
. . . And then, there are God’s gifts, that make you want to constantly carry your camera. My wife and I are travel writers, constantly on the lookout for good “quotes.” In New Mexico, we were talking to several people in a book shop, when one fellow loudly claimed: “I’d rather be in jail, in Albuquerque, than free and on the loose in almost any other place I can think of!” Off Rockport, Maine, while preparing to hoist sail on a large, historic schooner, the first mate suddenly announced: “I want six healthy, happy, halyard haulers!” Travel photographers, too, must be always watching for that great grab shot to come along, and be ready when it does.
Photography is the art of painting with light. “Magic hour” for photographers is the first two hours after sunrise, and the last two hours before sunset. The low angle of the sun at these times creates wonderfully long shadows, lends texture to any rough surface, and paints everything with a fluorescent quality of light. To come home with fantastic images from a trip, get up early, and eat late suppers. Remember, in desert locales like New Mexico, the temperature drops with the sun. You will easily go from shorts to long pants and goosedown vests inside half an hour. Be comfortable while you’re shooting.
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There are great shots to be made during the day, but you must help your film. Mid-day light is contrasty, throws harsh shadows, and fools the eye, which is much more sensitive to shadow detail than any photographic film. Assume that any shadow you see will be much darker on film. Galen Rowell suggests you ’stop down’ your lens with your depth-of-field preview button, to see how the shadows will affect your photograph. Then you are ready to fill those shadows.
Fill flash is the easiest way to put light into shadow areas. Your shadows should only be a stop or so darker than the ambient light . . . you will still have shadows (which make photos three-dimensional), but you can see detail in them. In New Mexico, you may notice there is more available light. The air is clearer in the Southwest . . . don’t blame your light meter!
Most modern flashes allow you to specify the “f-stop of light” you wish them to produce. If you’re shooting at f8, set your flash to put out “f5.6 of light”. (John Shaw, in his several books, suggests you always think in distance, and in light variations, strictly in terms of f-stops.)
There are several commercial reflectors you can carry that will produce wonderful fill light on a sunny day, and you can instantly see the results. They come in a variety of sizes, and fold away to practically nothing. You can use one using cardboard and aluminum foil, if you can convince somebody to carry it for you. To increase the limited contrast range of film, use the split neutral-density filters now on the market. You can hold back the exposure from a bright sky by 2-3 stops, to bring up detail in a darker foreground. These filters come in both “soft step” and “hard step” (referring to the degree of transition from clear to dark), and are available for the popular Cokin filter holders.
Good travel photographs appeal to the eye for the same reasons that good paintings do. Learn the rules and techniques of composition, and be prepared to bend them when necessary. Nothing sharpens the compositional eye like attending slide critiques at a camera club. You’ll soon be ‘cropping in the camera’, a very difficult technique to master, with the best of them. If you can’t find a camera club, marry an artist. They see the world in the most amazing ways.
Start by looking carefully through your viewfinder. The eye will be attracted to the brightest spot in the image. If that happens to be a bald sky, a streetlight, or the reflection from a car bumper, get rid of it.
What are you trying to say, in this photograph? What else is in there, to distract the viewer? Get rid of extraneous detail, and simplify by getting closer. Then, get closer still.
How can you lure the eye into looking at what you saw? Start by placing the object of interest at one of the “intersection of thirds” in your frame. Now, can you produce a ‘leading line’ (a wave, a ploughed furrow, a winding dirt road) that leads the eye to your subject? Can you place an interesting frame around your subject? Is there a repetition of shapes creating a pattern that you can employ? Yes, you can train your eye to see these things, it only takes practice, like touch typing!
Make your pictures dynamic. In general, don’t place a horizon directly in the middle of your frame. Very high, or very low, is much better. Always try to achieve a low angle of view, so that heads, mountains, trees, or sailboat masts will “break” the horizon line. Remember that you don’t have to include sky in your shots. If the clouds aren’t interesting, or the sky isn’t blue, better you should lower the camera lens.
Don’t put your camera away on a stormy day. When the sky is black, bright colours will jump out of your image. Umbrellas and red raincoats will demand you burn film, and wet streets at night will produce wonderful reflections. Watch for the special light that often results just as a storm passes, and be ready to use it.
A polarizing filter will make still water surfaces go absolutely black, and painted boats will then look spectacular. Heavily polarized blue skies in desert country may appear almost black with golden or white sand dunes jumping out of the frame in contrast. A warming filter will help the colour in stone, and (if you must) assist a bald sky. Many of the coloured split-density filters now on the market will augment your ability to show travel destinations in a new and exciting fashion.
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Be sure you are comfortable, while you’re doing travel photography. If you’re hiking, or walking around a city, carry your gear in a photo vest, or in a hip pouch, not in a shoulder bag. Use a wide strap to sling your tripod or monopod across your back, and be able to add or remove layers of clothing as necessary. Be sure your foot gear will protect your feet and keep them dry. In a hot climate, sandals make an amazing difference in keeping you cool. Don’t forget your hat. You can’t be creative if you’re not relaxed.
Keep in mind that tourists take pictures, but photographers make images. When you find a worthy subject, work it to death. Walk all around it, look at all the angles, get up high and get down low. You may not come this way again.
I recall standing by the side of the road in the Grand Teton mountains of Wyoming, where a wonderful view of flowers, water, and snowcapped mountains all came together. While I was taking a break from the tripod, a car pulled up, and a couple got out. They each took one picture of the mountains, then roared off. Neither even glanced down at the marsh, in a valley below the road, where a bull moose with a full rack had been occupying my attention for the last fifteen minutes.
You will find that, generally, people will have no objection to your photographing them, if you ask them politely. I can usually coax passersby into holding my reflector, or even posing in special ways, if I explain what I’m doing, and how it will affect the final photograph. If you involve people in your photography, they’ll want to contribute. I always go away with addresses where I will send copies of the shot, after I’ve returned from the trip.
When you’ve found that wonderful image, be sure you bracket your exposures. Don’t just trust the camera’s autoexposure. As the New York Institute of Photography says, “The camera is an idiot!”
The ‘technically correct’ exposure is not always the most successful one. For slide film, I underexpose by a half stop, and overexpose by a full stop, which generally leaves me with two successful images, and a throwaway . . . but I can’t always predict which will be the throwaway! My technique for checking exposure is to meter the ambient light reflected from the palm of my hand, and open up one f-stop from that reading. The technique is infallible, and takes into account any filters on the front of your lens.
I pack as much gear as I can, for my trips, but I sure don’t try to carry everything with me. Instead, I reconfigure my hip bag for the kind of shooting I anticipate, and for the way I will be travelling. A judicious choice of lenses will cover most situations you’ll encounter in a city. I may carry just a 28-90mm. zoom, or I might opt for a 24mm, 50mm, and 135mm combination, perhaps with a X2 telextender as well. The 24mm lens is often discarded in favour of a 17mm, for restaurants and other interior shots, or a different viewpoint on scenics. Most of my lenses carry their own polarizer, and I carry double the amount of film I will usually shoot in a day.
No more glazing eyes and dozing audiences. You’re ready to come back with shots that will knock their socks off, make them reach for their passports, and have them calling you for slide shows. Go join the Michael Melfords, the Bob Krists, the David Muenchs of the world . . . and shoot those great travel shots.
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