Tips For Travel & Landscape Photography
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“The traveller sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see” ...G. K. Chesterton
ow very true! A traveller is a sort of a wanderer; he has no goal in mind, he travels wherever fate takes him. The tourist has definite plans of visiting some place he has in his mind, to see “what he has come to see”.
Whichever place or land you travel to, there is no shortage of subjects to photograph – people, historical monuments, libraries, street scenes, lakes, rivers, seas, boats, ships, aircrafts, beautiful homes, gardens and landscapes of all sorts to name a few. Since landscapes are probably one of the most photographed subjects during travel, we shall devote this write-up to tips for travel and landscape photography.
Travel
Travel, which at one time used to be time-consuming and often uncomfortable, is now easy, thanks to technological advances in transport and communication. The best way is to first decide on your travel destination. Today, fortunately, we have the Internet to help us. All that you have to do is type out the location in the search engine of your choice, and presto! You’ll have (sometimes) more details than you’d care to know. The Internet shows you various nearby locations too and how to get there. You can also do your hotel bookings, air/train/taxi travel bookings etc on the Net.
If you have decided to travel abroad, make sure that you have at least 6 months left before your passport expires and that you have some blank pages remaining in your passport. Do remember that air tickets bought at the last minute can cost much more, so book your air tickets well in advance. When travelling abroad, be vigilant and take utmost care of your passport
and other valuables like your camera and laptop. Avoid leaving your camera/laptop in the hotel when you go out because these items are the first to be stolen. As a precaution, scan your passport and email the same to your own email ID. Do take health insurance because attending to any medical problem will cost you an arm and a leg. Check with your medical practitioner and carry your personal medicines too. Keep a copy of your hotel bookings, just in case.
If travelling within the country, there is no need to carry your passport but do observe the same guidelines as mentioned above. Yes, do carry some sort of identification (driving licence, PAN card etc) because you may have to prove your identity, especially at air terminals and even for train travel.
Very important.
1) Keep a note of your bank’s telephone numbers in case your credit card is stolen or lost. In such an unfortunate event, contact the bank immediately to freeze your account, lest someone use the card to empty your account. Keep the telephone numbers in 2-3 different diaries/notebooks for safety.
2) Keep in a safe place (not on the mobile phone) your mobile phone’s IMEI number. (Dial *#06# and you’ll get the 15 digit IMEI number).
In case your mobile phone is stolen, send the IMEI number via email to cop@vsnl.net
There is no need to go to the police. Your mobile will be traced in the next 24 hours via GPRS and the Internet. You will also know where the mobile phone is being used, even if the thief changes the mobile number.
What else should you carry?
Always carry a torchlight (don’t forget to check the batteries), a GPS device if possible, your day-to-day clothes (but don’t overload your travel bag; often you’ll have to carry your own luggage!), and cash/traveller cheques. Also remember to carry two more important items – courtesy and your smile! Courtesy and a smile may ease your discomforts with fellow travellers and those in authority.
Landscapes
Landscapes are found everywhere, whether you live in a city full of maddening crowds, or whether you live in a picturesque village in Switzerland! Hence opportunities are available to everyone, albeit to a greater or lesser degree. In case you feel that you can get great landscape images only if you go to a beautiful countryside, I am still with you, but that does not mean that you can never get good landscapes in the city you dwell in.
Discipline
Travel and Landscape photography, like any other genre of photography, requires dedication and discipline. Lazy photographers – those who want to sleep till 9am, those who only want to move around in a car, those who do not want to face the vagaries of nature, those who do not want to face difficulties – should not attempt travel and landscape photography! You have to be up and around when the sun peeps its golden head through that mountain range; you have to be around when the sun calls it a day! Remember, when you photograph landscapes, it is the light in its various shades that you are recording, not the topography. And good light for landscapes is generally from presunrise up to 10am and from roughly 4.30pm to after sunset (also depends on the season and your location on the globe).
Equipment
Then comes the question of photo equipment to take along. This is, for me at least, the most difficult decision. Which camera body/bodies should I carry? Which lenses should I carry? Which filters should I carry? Am I game lugging around my trusty tripod? Should I carry a macro lens too? And what about that flashgun? Should I carry a hand-held light meter? Well, here are my personal views:
a) Camera body: Always carry an extra camera body if you are using an interchangeable lens camera. If you are using a fixed lens model, carry an extra camera! Remember, if your camera body/camera conks out when you are at an exotic location (and such things do happen), and if you don’t have another body/camera, you’ll kick yourself in the back.
Suggestion: Considering the fact that you would be lugging your camera for the better part of the day, a Micro Four Thirds model would be very helpful in keeping down the weight. Also, a camera body that offers a ‘Level Indicator’ or a framing grid would be of additional help.
b) What size sensor? Should your camera have a full-frame (36 x 24mm) imaging sensor, APS-C (approx. 24 x 16mm), Micro Four Thirds (Approx. 17 x 13mm), 1-inch Type (12.8 x 9.6mm) or one of those tiny sensors used in Compacts and Bridge cameras? Theoretically, the full-frame sensor scores when it comes to image quality. It uses larger photosites and hence has better control over digital noise. It also offers better dynamic range. In practical terms, the APS-C sensor can provide almost similar results (many people may not be able to distinguish between pictures shot with fullframe and APS-C sensor cameras). Micro Four Thirds sensors offer very good image quality too, but in low light situations (and in shadows), may not be as good as the larger sensors, particularly with regard to digital noise and dynamic range. Also consider the 1” Type sensors found in some modern ‘professional-type’ cameras which give very good results. I am not a fan of small sensor cameras and would not consider using a small sensor camera for any serious photography, unless the intention is to see the images only on-screen. Having said that, with every new generation of small-sensor cameras, I see a lot of improvement in image quality.
c) Lenses: You may have a ton of lenses, but obviously you cannot carry them all (unless your name happens to be Hercules!). Remember,
whichever lens you don’t carry, you’ll have a need for it! (Murphy’s Law?). So then how do you get over this problem? Consider how often you are likely to use a particular lens. If the answer is ‘rarely’ or ‘may be’, then leave the lens at home. You can surely do without that lens!
Generally, landscapes involve the use of wide-angle lenses, but that does not mean that you cannot photograph landscapes with ‘normal’ or ‘telephoto’ lenses. It all depends on what you want to convey to the viewer. And whilst we are talking of lenses, let me crib about how zoom lenses are responsible for poor image perspectives.
Here’s how photographer ‘A’ takes his shots using a zoom lens. He stands at the same position and merely takes shots at the various focal length settings his zoom lens offers. He feels happy because the angle of view his lens covers is different for each shot!
Photographer ‘B’, in spite of having the same zoom lens on his camera body, uses his feet to ‘zoom’; he considers each marked focal length as a different prime lens and goes towards or away from his subject to compose his frame. Whom do you think will have images with better perspective? Everything else being equal, photographer ‘B’ of course. While photographer ‘A’ will have different areas covered (because he changed the focal length between each shot), all his shots will have identical perspective; photographer ‘B’ will have different perspectives because he changed the position of his lens for each shot.
A lesson to learn: Don’t use your zoom lens as a zoom lens; instead consider each focal length setting as a different prime lens and get different perspectives by moving your feet instead.
Then there is the question of duplicating the focal lengths. Let’s say you have a 70-200mm as well as a 70-300mm lens. Should you carry both? The 70-300mm includes the 70-200mm range so why carry the extra weight? You might say that the 70-200mm is f/2.8 throughout while the 70-300mm is f/5.6 at the longer end and hence carrying the faster lens gives you a 2-stop advantage. True, but then again you get into a Catch-22 situation (a situation from which you cannot escape). You either carry the slower lens with the longer focal range or carry both and then crib about the extra weight! Or if you are more likely to shoot in low light, consider the faster lens with the shorter focal range and leave the other lens at home.
What about a macro lens? Should you carry it? If you plan to do only landscapes, you could consider leaving the macro lens at home but if you are also carrying say, a 50mm ‘normal’ lens, you could instead consider the 50/60mm ‘macro’ lens which can serve the purpose of the ‘normal’ lens as well as the ‘macro’ lens.
Should you use ‘fast’ or ‘slow’ lenses? For landscape photography we generally try for maximum depth of field and more often than not, use narrow apertures like f/8 or f/11. Hence having a ‘fast’ lens is not important, but do remember that ‘fast’ lenses autofocus faster (and often more accurately too).
d) Filters: The filters I would recommend for travel and landscape photography are Circular Polariser, Neutral Density and Gradual Neutral Density.
e) Flashgun: What about the flashgun? Again, if you are unlikely to use it or use it very rarely, you might as well as leave the flashgun at home.
f) Tripod: Don’t leave home without one! Early mornings and late evenings, which are the best times to shoot landscapes, come with their own problems – medium to low light. You could always push up the ISO but that also means more digital noise and lower dynamic range. A tripod will allow you to shoot at your camera’s native ISO (ISO for which the imaging sensor is designed) with whatever aperture you like to control the depth of field. But do remember that if the shutter speed gets too low, subject movement (swaying trees etc) is likely to cause blurry images.
Note: Some readers may consider this point as moot or even silly. I do understand your reasons for feeling that way. I do understand that you don’t want to be burdened with a tripod when you are out enjoying your holidays. There are times when I myself feel that way but nothing stops me from carrying a small lightweight tripod. As someone had once said, a lightweight tripod is better than the steadiest hands!
g) Hand-held light meter: Most photographers today do not carry a hand-held light meter. The newer generation do not even know that such a thing exists or how important it is to have one. If I am going for serious photography, I always rely on my hand-held light meter because it gives me the ability to measure off a very tiny area (1-degree), whereas the Spot Meter in the camera reads 3-5% of the screen area (depending on the make and model of the camera) and
this is not good enough for me. So many a times, I include my hand-held light meter and, if necessary, travel with one lens less.
Please remember that the tips given above are intended for travel and landscape photography without breaking your back with equipment weight. Someone once asked me, what is your message to budding travel and landscape photographers? My answer, which applies to all genres of photography, is “Give up your comforts. If you prefer comforts, better stay at home and watch some soap opera on TV”.
Composition
“Composition is the strongest way of seeing” - Edward Weston
Composition to a photographer is what flower arrangement is to a florist. Your neighbourhood florist just does not pick up flowers from his basket, wrap them up in a bundle and hand them over to you. He painstakingly arranges the flowers in a bouquet in a manner that looks most beautiful. An artist carefully chooses the colours and the various elements in his drawing and places them at strategic positions which create the best viewer appeal. Similarly, a landscape photographer has to choose which elements in nature should be included in his frame and which discarded. This arrangement of various elements in our frame is what we refer to by the term ‘composition’.
Good composition can improve a not-so-good photo but bad composition can ruin an otherwise good picture. Volumes have been written on how to improve photographs through good composition but the limited space for this write-up means that we can discuss just a few.
1. Go close to your subject
Most beginners in photography try to include anything and everything in the frame. In a few situations that might be okay, but in most cases, this only helps to clutter the image and take away the importance of the main element in the scene. Hence it is often necessary to go closer to the main subject so that the viewer’s attention goes straight to that element. Other elements in the frame, if any, should be subservient to the primary subject.
2. Keep horizons levelled
This is especially true when your subject is a water body. Remember, water maintains its own level and tilting your water- body composition feels as if the water will run down to one side!
3. Avoid horizons passing through the center of the frame
Avoid placing the horizon in the dead centre (or close to the dead centre) of the frame. Doing so divides the picture in two equal (or nearly equal) halves
and thus divides the viewer’s attention.
4. Create visual depth
Our photographs have only 2-dimensions (width and height), whereas we see in 3-dimensions
(width, height and depth). Hence it is necessary to create the third dimension of depth in our photos. This can be done using leading-in lines, aerial perspective, having an element with distinct foreground interest, mid-ground and background, frame within a frame, and also by using a narrow aperture that increases the depth of field.
5. Rule of Thirds
If you mentally divide a scene in three equal parts, vertically as well as horizontally, the four points of intersection are strongest points that attract the viewer’s attention. Hence important elements of the picture should ideally lie on one of these points. Do not place the centre of interest in the centre of the frame (Because it looks dull and static) unless its an extreme close-up. The four points of intersection are the strongest to place the main element of your scene.
6. Balance
Try to create a balance between the various elements in the frame, lest it appears lop-sided.
7. Diagonal lines, C-curves, S-curves
Diagonal lines, C-curves and S-curves tend to strengthen a picture.
8. Format
Pictures can be shot in an horizontal format (as most people do) or in a vertical format. Most landscapes look better in a horizontal format (probably because we see wider using our two eyes), but that shouldn’t stop you from using the vertical format. Tall thin mountains, trees, rivers meandering through a
forest are examples where vertical framing can look very nice. Do remember that about 85% of books and magazines are in the vertical format!
Yes, and don’t forget, a square composition can often look bold and beautiful.
The Final Word
Be different. Be creative. Take the route that others don’t take. Don’t shoot the same pictures that every Tom, Dick and Harry takes. Your pictures need to be different. This is the key to unlock your potential.
Some do’s and don’ts
These do’s and don’ts apply to all genres of photography but in some ways it is more important from the tourist’s point of view. A tourist can’t always go back to his travel destination for a variety of reasons and hence these guidelines are more important to him.
1. Make a list of all things (especially photography related) to take along
2. Carry extra memory cards
3. Don’t take along memory cards that have had some problem earlier on. For example, a particular memory card has given you some sort of error warning which later on went away by formatting the card. This becomes a ‘suspect card’. Either throw it away or leave it at home (or present it to a photographer you don’t like!)
4. Change the memory card in the camera before it becomes 100% full. You can set your camera to show how many frames are remaining and when the camera shows that 2-3 frames are remaining, replace the card.
5. Get into the habit of backing up your images, either on another memory card, CD/DVD, laptop or
an external hard drive.
6. Don’t keep all the backup images in the same carrying bag. Put them in different bags, just in case one bag is lost/ stolen or pilfered.
7. Carry extra camera/ flash batteries. And don’t forget the battery chargers.
8. Double ( and triple) check your list to make sure you have not left out anything. Tick mark each item when you place it in your bag.
9. If you are like me who sometimes forgets where I have put what, make a smaller list to remind yourself but don’t lose that list! Try subtle variations in your exposures and take many pictures. Not all will be masterpieces, but the good ones will keep your memory fresh for a long long time.