HOW TO SHOOT STUNNING SCENES
Become an expert in planning, shooting and editing colour and culture on your travels
Want to get started in travel photography? Our packed cover feature has all the advice you could need!
Travel photography is an enormously popular genre among image creators and their audiences alike. Images of far-away places have the potential to capture the imagination, and provide the viewer with a gateway to a world they may not be able to easily explore for themselves. Trips can take extensive planning, requiring a significant investment in time and money. Even today, in the age of budget air travel, being able to truly experience wild environments may not be a reality for many people, while seeing a city through
the eyes of the locals is not as easy as it initially seems. For the photographer, travel is a refreshing experience, as the challenges of studying unfamiliar places forces us to adopt new ways of thinking and approach our subject from a novel perspective.
It is important to clearly define a travel image, however – the term travel photography is often misinterpreted, resulting in shots that fail to accurately deliver the revealing story the viewer may expect. Capturing a shot of a street, building or person will not guarantee success merely because it is in a foreign place; it may be little more than a record of what has already become a well-photographed location. To truly highlight the atmosphere of a place takes a good knowledge of the ingredients of a characterful scene and how best to present these elements in a single frame. Here we will discuss the essential considerations a photographer must make when looking to pursue dramatic images of untamed landscapes, intimate portraits of fascinating people and engaging studies of life in foreign cities.