Museums banning photography is becoming commonplace

During the past month, I traveled in the Middle East, having wonderful stays in Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt.

In Cairo, at the world famous Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, commonly known as the Egyptian Museum, photography is forbidden. It isn't just flash photography, it's photography of any kind. In fact, you can't even bring your camera into the museum. If you have a camera with you, the guards turn you away. You must leave your camera in your car, bus, or other place. The Museum doesn't have a place to “check” cameras.

The Museum, does permit cellphones to be carried into the Museum, but if you try to take a photo with it, be prepared to be roughly and emphatically escorted out of the Museum after you delete any photos taken in the Museum.

Protecting your lenses while traveling

Immediately when purchasing it, most everyone considers protecting their camera for travel and home. Typically, everyone purchases a camera case or bag to haul it around. Some travelers purchase a camera strap with a steel cable in it to prevent slash and grab thefts.

The same travelers rarely think about protecting their SLR or DSLR lenses from being damaged, which when you think about it, makes little sense.

SLR and DSLR users generally own at least two lenses for their camera, and often have more. Looking at many vacationers' stable of lenses, I often see a wide angle zoom, a normal-telephoto zoom, and often a fast prime lens. Sometimes they also own a macro or telephoto lens.

If you add up the cost of the lenses, even when they own just two, they will equal or more likely exceed the value of their camera.

I was in Paris a few years ago. I went to the Eiffel Tower one evening to take night photos. The crowd at the tower was huge. After finishing we walked back to the Metro to return to our hotel along with many who had visited the Tower that evening. The neighborhood is filled with row homes having front steps with metal railings.

Along the way I was accidental pushed into one of those railings by the crowd. The front of my lens hit the railing. Despite the lens cap on the lens, the UV filter atop the lens was smashed.

Photographing motion with your still camera

“Photographing motion with your still camera” sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it.

Actually photographing motion with a still camera can produce startling photographs showing details you can’t see with your eye, or in a standard speed video. Not only that, you can make a still photograph of motion which can even give you the feel of motion.

You can use your DSLR, SLR, or Point and Shoot camera to either stop motion completely, freeze everything in motion in your photograph, which is the option most travelers take, or you can capture motion itself, by showing a bit of a blur, where you control what’s blurred and how much blur you show.

Travelers often find “motion” photo opportunities during their journeys. This week I will discuss some basic ways to capture motion, and in a later article, discuss more advanced techniques to capture the feel of motion in a still photograph and have some fun and extra creativity while making the photos.

Photographing Stained Glass Windows

With the tremendous technological improvements in DSLRs and even digital point and shoot cameras, coupled with the improvements in software used to remove lens and positional distortion as well as edit photographs in general, it’s now possible for travelers to make wonderful photographs of stained glass windows in the churches, synagogues and mosques they visit.

In most instances you’ll be able to get very good exposures of incredible stained glass windows while you travel, but there will be pitfalls, and most of the time there will be distortion to deal with in post processing once home.

If you’re going to at an out of the way church or museum you may be fortunate enough to be permitted to use a tripod and remote shutter release, but if you go to busy places like I’ve visited recently in Paris, such as Notre Dame de Paris, Musée de Cluny, or Sainte-Chapelle, that won't be possible.

Photographing Sacred Spaces

When we travel we certainly see and often visit churches, temples, mosques, synagogues, and other religious shrines. Many contain some of the world’s great artwork. Many are architectural gems unto themselves. Many have extensive grounds. Many are important for their history, or their part in historic events.

Some are the center of their town’s or city’s culture, and attract visitors from across their region, country, and some attract visitors from across the world.

Often we find shops, vendors, and other places supporting the sacred space. That means many photo opportunities besides the place of worship itself, and those of its grounds and interior.

Gaining access to a place considered sacred by those who maintain and belong to it, brings responsibility to behave with sensitivity to the place of worship itself, those who worship in it, and those responsible for running it. The building, grounds, and the people must be respected.

Traveler's "must" photos - Shooting Landmarks

Landmarks like Philadelphia's Independence Hall, New York's Statue of Liberty, San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, The Great Wall of China and Paris' Eiffel Tower are all subjects emblematic of their locations. They are geographic icons which you must capture with your camera, if only to say, "I was there!"

The problem with so many landmark photographs is that often when travelers return home, they find their photos of some of the most incredible and famous world sights boring, flat or humdrum. Why is that?

I think it's because their photos look the same as every one else's.

It's not easy to create a unique photograph of a landmark. After all, with millions of photos already taken of them, is there an unusual or distinctive shot left? The answer is yes. Here are 8 tips for making your landmark photographs special.

1. Change your perspective or angle on the subject. Take a picture from a different side. Tilt your camera. Perhaps get low to the ground and shoot upward.

   Don't just take the common "full-on" shots with people waving and smiling in front of the landmark looking toward your camera.

   Scout around for a new vantage point. Rather than just photograph the Panthéon like any ordinary building, I went inside to catch the detail of its magnificent dome.

2. Take a photo with the landmark in the background. Landmarks are special, often embodying the spirit and history of the area in which they're located. By placing a landmark in its surroundings you add interest and context to your photograph.

3. Use local inhabitants in your photograph to add human context and eliminate the sterility found in so many landmark photos. Not only does creatively adding people into pictures tell stories, it provides a realistic sense of the scale of the monument in contrast to the size of the people in your photograph.

   A bicycler riding past it, can add context, scale, visual interest, and the human element to the Betsy Ross House, to what would otherwise be an ordinary photo of a brick building with a flag.

4. If you're using a DSLR, try a special lens, such as a fish-eye. With it, you can gather the surrounding area around the landmark with the unusual perspective it can lend to your photo.
5. Shoot in low light, or near dusk or dawn for their golden tones, or even in the evening. Shooting in natural low light can add a special ambiance to your landmark shots, and by shooting your photos during "off-hours," the crowds of tourists are normally diminished, so you can get less busy shots.

   Cities have both night and day personalities. Some cities start to come alive at dusk, then seem to burst open after dark. Shooting in Las Vegas' and capturing Paris Las Vegas' Eiffel Tower at night is a more interesting photo than if taken during the day.

6. Add visual context to your photo. We see zillions of photographs of the Statue of Liberty taken from the shores of New York Harbor, standing alone in the Harbor as a sentinel. We don't see many photos of the Lady with a ship passing by, which would give the photograph context and echo the history of many immigrants' first sight of their new country.
7. Try processing some of your photos in "black & white" instead of color. It's rare today to see travel photographs in "black & white," but their monochromatic tones can add substantial drama and emotion to a photograph. Consider "film noir" movies and the way their cinematography enhances the drama, feel and tone of the movies.
8. From the above suggestions you can see that the rules of landmark photography (there aren't any) don't require you to take only full shots of the landmark. Often isolated portions of it, or close-ups of a small part of the landmark can be more interesting than the whole.

   In this photograph taken at the Hearst Castle, note that several of the hints discussed above were used. The photograph concentrates on the main entrance of the primary building in the Hearst Castle complex; Casa Grande.

   The photo was taken from an elevation well below the entrance, and framed by some of the lush vegetation of the Castle complex. The tendency of the lens to add limited "barrel distortion" to the photo was used to advantage to further frame the Castle entrance.