Eight tips to improve your travel photography

Strictly speaking, “travel photography” could be defined as the documentation of an area's landscape, scope and sphere of activity, but I don't think that definition really tells the tale.

To photographers, travel photography involves telling the story of an area through photographs which speak about its physical landscape, its cities and towns, its outposts and their history, people, and culture, but there are more elements of travel photography.

Travel encompasses both the human-made and natural worlds. So, in addition to the human-made world, travel photography includes telling the story of the natural world and it's physical landscape, history, its denizens and their way of life.

There is still one more, often forgotten element of travel photography.

What is takes to make great garden photos when traveling

Garden tourism draws millions, across the world each year. Australia's National Botanic Gardens attract 400,000 visitors per year while Britain's gardens attract more than 16 million garden enthusiasts every year. In the U.S., Longwood Gardens, in the suburbs of Philadelphia, welcomes more than a million visitors each year.

Most every garden visitor can be seen documenting their visit with a cellphone, point and shoot camera, or DSLR. Some take their garden photography very seriously, using high end cameras, multiple lenses, tripods and other photography gear.

If you're interested in improving your garden photos, I've have some tips for you, about equipment, lighting, expanding and contracting your “field of view,” choosing when to shoot and three specific hints.

Introduction to White Balance for Digital Camera Users (Part III): Gray Card or White Card?

In the last week I received many emails asking which is better for measuring white balance accurately via a digital camera, a white card or a gray card, so I'm adding an unexpected Part III to my series on White Balance. (Part I, Part II)

Without knowing it, they've asked a question which has an technical answer, though not one they're expecting, and an unexpected practical answer too.

Let's go back to Part I of the series and review what white balance is:

"White balance is the process of adjusting color casts, so that objects which appear white to human eyes/brains are rendered white in the photograph by the camera."

To put it more simply, photographers set a digital camera's white balance to get the colors in images “right,” where the images' colors are what photographers' brains tell them their eyes are seeing.

Introduction to White Balance for Digital Camera Users (Part II)

Last week, in Part I, I discussed the concept of white balance and defined it. The general idea of white balance is to get objects which appear white to human eyes/brains to be rendered white in your images, so the rest of the colors will render properly as well.

I also discussed the important concept that sometimes, things we consider to be “white” aren't always white when we look at them, and that it's not wrong to ensure they don't look white in our images. During the “golden hours,” for example, white can appear “golden.” At sunset white buildings can take on red and golden hues.

This week I'm going to discuss the practical side of getting your white balance “right,” or at least as “right” as you can get it, so the colors in your saved image are rendered as you saw them.

Introduction to White Balance for Digital Camera Users (Part I)

I'm often asked about white balance by travelers using digital cameras who periodically have a noticeable and sometimes severe color cast on their travel photos. More often than not I'm queried about what white balance actually is, why “auto white balance” doesn't work, and how to get the color rendition of a scene “right.”

It turns out that white balance is a difficult term to define for most people. Here's my try.

White balance is the process of adjusting color casts, so that objects which appear white to human eyes/brains are rendered white in the photograph by the camera.

I'm sure you're asking what the heck that means.

Photography is all about light. If we examine light, which from the sun appears white to our eyes, we find it's made up of a whole spectrum of colors, each with its own color temperature which describes its individual color. Cameras need the ability to render the colors of scenes as the human eye sees them, and that isn't necessarily easy.

Smartphone Apps for Photography: Focalware

One of the ideal times for taking photographs is during the golden hours, sometimes known as the magic hours, essentially the first and last hour of sunlight during the day.

The wonderful tones you can get in your photograph due to angle of the sun during those times is amazing.

Focalware is one of the best Sunrise/Sunset apps for the iPhone I've found. It's not currently available for Android smartphones.

Photographing Water: Reflections and the Deep Blue Sea

Many travelers think the secret to successful reflective water photographs is pure luck, nothing more. Of course, you already know, if for no other reason than I’m writing this article, that it’s not true. Then again, for the traveler, luck does play a part in making successful water photographs, but you can make your luck to an extent.

A significant problem for travelers wanting to make great water photographs is the serious time constraint in which we often find ourselves. Sometimes you can’t possibly schedule yourself at a particular location at a particular time. Sometimes when we’re at a great place for a photograph, the weather, wind or rain, for example, won’t allow us to create the photograph we’ve been looking forward to making. And sometimes despite our best efforts we just never get a chance to return to a great location a second time.

Photographing Seascapes

Traveling to the beach, a seaside city, a seaport, visiting a location on a bay, or cruising seems to be on almost everyone’s list. Each has a myriad of photographic opportunities.

Each of the opportunites have similar components, but in a vast variety of arrangements and conditions. Seascapes can be extremely demanding. The variety of weather conditions, and lighting can rapidly change, and offer difficulties in protecting photographic equipment.

Seascapes, like any landscape photograph are often considered best devoid of structures and people, but actually can be enhanced by indiginous buildings and wildlife. Sometimes having people in the shot can enhance it as well, although many would say, including me, that it’s not exactly a seascape at that point.

Avoiding Some Digital Travel Photography Goofs

From time to time we’ve all been there; a great photo opportunity blown because of a silly mistake, misstep, forgotten item, or other reason. Here’s a few suggestions for you to avoid eight common digital travel photography goofs.

• Don’t forget the spare battery — Actually, this one has never happened to me, but a few years ago, in Las Vegas, I realized I left my Nikon battery charger in my office. Fortunately, I was able to have it Fed-Exed it to me. If I would have been out of the country — oh my! I now have a permanent checklist to make sure I take all necessary equipment.
• Don’t forget, your camera has the settings from the last time you used it — Did you ever pick up your camera in the morning, to take a photo of a scene that quickly disappeared, only to find it’s out of focus because you left manual focus on the day before? I have a set procedure each time I get ready to take photos, to ready my camera. I use a DSLR, but you should have a checklist for whatever type of camera you use. Following my checklist ensures my DSLR properly set for the first shot of the day.
• Check battery power.
• Check memory card capacity remaining.
• Set auto-focus to on.
• Set focus mode appropriately.
• Set lens vibration reduction appropriately.
• Set shutter mode into single shot vs. continuous shooting.
• Set the ISO.
• Set shooting mode to aperture priority.
• Set meter mode to 3D Matrix Metering.
• Turn vertical grip shutter release off.
• Set shooting menu setup to appropriate bank.
• Don’t leave your spare memory cards at home — I know many who have done this. Their extra memory cards are always on the dresser. Just like batteries, memory cards are on my checklist.
• Turn off your “Digital Zoom” (Digital Point and Shoot Cameras) — Often if this is forgotten, your telephoto shots will have terrible quality compared to the rest of your photos. “Digital zooming” is not really zooming, in my opinion. “Digital zooming” enlarges a portion of an image, “simulating” optical zoom. To do that, the camera crops the image and then enlarges the cropped portion to full size. That’s why you lose image quality. I recommend you turn your “digital zoom” off, but if you feel you’ll miss a photo you really want, and you aren’t printing your photo past 4”x6”, you may be okay.
• Don’t let your travel photos of your family look like “Police Lineups” in “Law and Order” — I keep seeing this when people show off their vacation photos. In those photos, family and friends are standing erect with straight faces or forced smiles. It’s as if someone said, “Say cheese, or else!” When you take those shots, make them come alive by having your group do something. Have them relax, especially children. You could have them looking at someone, talking, or maybe leaning at a railing. The possibilities are endless.
• Contrary to popular opinion, the light at noon isn’t ideal — Midday is about the worst time to take photos, if it's sunny because the overhead sunlight is strong and harsh. Even if you properly expose the photo, the colors tend to get washed out. Of course, sometimes your opportunity for a particular photograph will not be at an ideal time, so make sure your exposure is spot on. The best daylight times for photography are in the early morning and late afternoon; the “Golden Hours,” which I’ve discussed before. The low-angled sun produces photos with soft, rich, warm colors (yellow, reds, and oranges), and the long shadows produce great contrast.
• Don’t avoid taking cloudy day photo — I just shake my head when I hear travelers put their camera away on cloudy days. Cloudy overcast skies are great for photographing close-ups of people. The diffused illumination softens their facial features. The colors of flowers are often more vivid under gray skies. Dark angry skies can help you make fantastic landscapes.
• Don’t let your spouse be just a dot in her photo at the Grand Canyon — You’ve got to decide what the real subject of your photo is when you document “You were there.” All too often your real subject is too far away. If you’re taking a photo of a person, remember, they are the subject of the photo, not the background. A tip you might want to follow for this type of photo is to use the “Rule of Thirds.” Put your subject in the right or left third of the photo. That way you’ll get a great photo of the person, and the background will still stand out too.

Tips for urban photography (Part 1)

Taking photographs in urban areas has its own particular challenges. Often there’s little room to get back far enough from your subject. Vehicles, poles, wires and other distractions seem to be everywhere. Often there are crowds of people blocking access or certainly not allowing you a clear shot. Lighting is often difficult.

Here are the first 9 of 19 tips to consider when taking photos in cities (The next 10 are in Part 2 which will be posted next Monday.):

• Like landscapes, each city and town has its own look and feel. Cities have distinctive settings, architecture, and skylines. Cities may be known for a particular place, dress, food, site, or history, etc. There's always seems to be something unique which literally names your destination. When photographing an urban area you need to accomplish three basic things, if at all possible:
• capture the sense of the area as a whole, which can be effected via a wide shot that shows the skyline, or other view that describes your destination,
• capture landmarks which in essence name the city,
• capture the life of its inhabitants, possibly with photographs of the city at work or play.
• Pay close attention to details and distractions in the background of your photos and especially behind the heads of your subjects. A telephone pole or tree sticking up behind your subject can ruin the shot. Move around to get an angle which reduces the background distractions.
• You never know when that “money shot” will reveal itself, so be prepared to shoot at all times. I usually keep my camera in “aperture priority” mode, with a reasonable ISO setting for current conditions, rather than manual, so I don’t have to worry about setting the exposure, as I turn the corner and see a great shot which could vanish in seconds.
• Use the “golden hours,” which are the times just after dawn and just before sunset. Just after dawn has the additional advantage that most people are still in bed. Shadows are long and pronounced during this time, so look for angles that feature these contrasts. Perhaps your hotel is near a cathedral or any other interesting building. Make a point to check out the light early or late for a special photo opportunity when the light gives a golden cast to almost everything.
• Shoot signs. I use a GPS connected directly to my DSLR whenever I’m shooting outside, so I know exactly where I was when the photo was taken. Even so, I take lots of photographs of signs to help identify and document my photographs. Signs can sometimes give me extra background material to help describe the photos.
• Often in cities you won’t be able to take a photo of an important statue, work of art, person or other subject, with the sun illuminating it directly. Instead you might find the sun shining on it from behind. In that circumstance, use fill-flash to “fill-in” shadows and illuminate the front of your subject. Fill-flash can remove shadows when the sun is overhead too.
• While you generally have the right to take photographs throughout urban areas, the right is not absolute. In the US, you normally can’t take photos of Department of Defense or Homeland Security installations, and other government owned buildings or land where photography is banned. You can’t take photographs of buildings from private property without permission, but you can take photographs of buildings from public property. You can take photographs of people in public where there is no expectation of privacy, but not otherwise. Elsewhere in the world, such as in France, photographs of people are normally not permitted without their permission, even in public. In locations such as the Middle East and South America, the issue of photographs of people is even more sensitive. Frankly, I don’t take photographs of anyone, unless it’s incidental to the photograph, without their permission. Moreover, before taking photographs in any country, research, not just their laws, but their customs as well. You don’t want to run afoul of the law, or rile the local population.
• One of the reasons I normally have my DSLR in aperture priority is it permits me to set the depth of field of my photographs. Normally in urban photographs I want most everything in them in focus. Controlling the aperture in the photograph permits me the focus control I desire.
• Put kids and old people in your shots for context. While including anyone in your urban photographs will add context and interest, if you think about photos you’ve seen of cities which are in travel magazines, and get smiles and “oohs and ahs” it’s one of kids and seniors. Getting them in your photos with a simple background will produce real winners. Think about a landmark photo at Ellis Island, New York City. Catch a shot of the main hall there and you have a snapshot of a historic building. Catch the same shot with an older person in the foreground, and you have a photograph.

10 travel photography to-do’s before you depart

After your plane has landed on Baltra Island, while waiting for the zodiac to take you to your boat, you see sea lions lounging on the dock. You pull out your camera, press the “on” button, and nothing happens. You forgot to charge the battery.

Aboard the boat, while your battery charges, you miss great shots of whales while traveling to North Seymour. Five days later, all your memory chips are filled, but you have two more days left on the cruise, and you haven’t even been to see those Giant Galapagos Tortoises in the highlands of Santa Cruz Island yet.

I can’t tell you how often these and other lapses in trip preparation plague travelers.

Whether you use a Digital Point and Shoot (DPS) camera in “automatic,” or an advanced Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera, you still need to plan and prepare to take photographs while traveling. Travel photographs become keepsakes and can refresh extraordinary memories, so don’t let a lack of a little preparation stop you from saving those memories. Here are ten preparation tips for anyone who takes photographs while traveling:

1. Determine your photo storage requirements. You definitely need enough memory cards to store each day’s photos, so you can keep shooting without worrying about running out of space. If you have a portable hard drive which can directly upload memory card images, such as a Hyperdrive Colorspace, or a laptop computer, you can upload your photos each evening and reuse your memory cards after formatting them. If not, since memory cards can be expensive, and difficult or impossible to find while traveling, I recommend bringing enough cards with you to store all your photos for your entire trip. Some locations have “photo kiosks” you can use to write your photos to CDs, or you may be able to upload your photos at an Internet café to a photo sharing website while traveling, but you can’t depend on their availability, hence my recommendation.
2. If you don’t have one, purchase a spare battery for your camera. It can take several hours to charge a digital camera battery. You don’t want to loose a single “perfect photo” opportunity while your battery charges. Charge both batteries just before you leave on your trip, and don’t forget to bring your battery charger with you.
3. Make sure your charger will work wherever you’re traveling. Most digital camera battery chargers can handle voltages from 100-240V, so they will work the world over. Unfortunately, the electrical outlets where you’re traveling may be different from those at home. You can determine if you need to purchase an adapter for your charger’s plug, online, at sites such as Magellan’s Travel Supplies, where you can also purchase the adapters.
4. Know your gear. I can’t emphasize this one enough. Digital cameras today are packed with great features, and even if you use your DPS in “automatic” there are some camera functions you should know how to control. For example, many museums permit photography, but not with a flash. You need to know how to turn your flash on and off, and for portraits you should know how to turn on the “red eye” setting. You need to know how to format memory cards in your camera after you’ve uploaded your photos, to clear the cards and refresh them. You need to be able to set your focus mode or turn on image stabilization, if your DPS has these features. DSLR cameras have even more to learn. You should familiarize yourself with all your camera’s features to get the most out of it possible.
5. Well before you leave, test your camera. Last week, a good friend left on a 10-day pilgrimage to see the Apparitions of Lourdes, La Salette, and Laus in France. Just before he was to leave, he pulled out his camera, which he hadn’t used in months, and found it was broken. He borrowed a replacement. You may not have a “loaner” available to you, so test your camera far enough ahead of time that you could replace or repair it in time for your trip.
6. Before you leave, make sure you have a well-padded camera bag that is sized right for your camera and accessories. Your equipment should fit snugly, and be easy to organize and access. You need this to protect your equipment from vibration and shock which can occur while traveling. Last fall while in Paris, near the Eiffel Tower, I was accidentally pushed into a railing. My bag protected my lenses beautifully, so I could keep using them on the trip.
7. Pack your camera (and all your valuables for that matter) in your carry-on, not in your checked-in luggage. You don’t want to arrive at your destination, only to open your luggage to find your camera stolen or broken, plus airlines exempt themselves from liability due to theft or damage of valuables, including cameras, in your checked-in luggage. And did you ever watch baggage handlers in action?
8. Once you set your itinerary, consider doing some photographic planning. Look for specific photographic opportunities among your destinations. Photographers talk about the “golden hours” with good reason. The light quality around dawn and dusk is warm, golden, and casts great shadows. Research your itinerary, and if you have to, get out of bed early or eat dinner late to catch the golden hours. Don’t forget those incredible sunset photos everyone loves. Here’s a good site to help you determine the time of sunrise and sunset.
9. Before you travel, study your destinations and the customs of its peoples. You don’t want to offend anyone or run afoul of laws. Many people do not like being photographed, and in some Islamic countries, photographing women is forbidden.
10. Be prepared for bad weather on your trip. Moisture can be deadly for digital cameras. It isn’t worth it to take chances while you travel. The simple precaution of carrying a polythene bag to protect your gear, if necessary, can save your camera and those precious memories you’re trying to keep. Some camera bags come with their own rain covers. I have an inexpensive, but highly effective, commercial rain cover for my camera, which allows me to shoot in the rain. If you’re near the sea, or on a cruise, take care to protect your gear from salt spray and the salt air.

Enjoy your trip!