6 Pro Tips to level up your Travel Photography

Travel photography is a genre of photography that involves the documentation of an area’s landscape, people, cultures, customs, food, economic activities, food, and every aspect of society in general. Travel photography involves every aspect of photography and opens in terms of the subject it covers.

Many photographers specialize in a particular aspect of photography such as travel portraits, landscape but it consists of a wide variety of subjects like low light photography, cemetery, capturing the magic of light and all. Today, we will discuss a few tips on how you can level up your travel photographs and stop being a photo sniper or a tourist.

Look for Compositions, not Landmarks

Don’t look for landmarks and instead look for compositions and try to shoot things from a different perspective. It’s not wrong to shoot landmarks but shooting them in the same way as everyone doesn’t make you a better photographer but an average tourist.

Rojen Maharjan via Neptos

For instance, if you go to the Swayambhunath Temple for a photo walk don’t just capture the stupa still but try to capture it through different angles and perspectives that reflect the monument uniquely. Think about the cemetery, the rule of thirds, movement of subjects, shapes, shadows and experiment a little as it is more of a trial-and-error process. This will help your photos to stand out.

Research, Research, and Research

If you are traveling to an unknown place and you don’t have much idea about the place. What you can do in such a scenario is Google that place and see what kind of photos people are taking. The idea is not to copy the same photos but to have a vision in your mind about the subjects you can shoot and the variations you can have in your photos.

Rabin Lama via Neptos

So, you must research about the place beforehand and make mini notes about the things you can shoot. Mishaps like bad weather conditions, holidays, and stuff may happen but having a profound plan will always be helpful.

Time of shoot

When you are shooting the best time is the golden hour and blue hour (sunrise and sunset) as it has beautiful light and is a photographer's dream time. It is always preferred to go to the place before the light is going to be at the best so that you can plan the shots and shoot accordingly and not miss anything.

Ambir Tolang via Neptos

When you are shooting in harsh sunlight it is more likely that your photos won’t be that much appealing due to harsh shadows and highlights.

Pay attention to details

When you are taking photos don’t just mindlessly point the camera to the subject and take a picture. You are not trying to be a photo sniper but an artist that makes a boring subject artistic. Try to capture the essence of the subject to make it interesting and who they are.

Ambir Tolang via Neptos

You must pay attention to where the eyes of the subject are looking, the body language, facial expressions, and emotions. These elements will set you apart from the photo snipers and make your photos stand out.

Take more photos and make them count

When you see something interesting to you just take a photo. Especially, when you are traveling you come across many things that are seemingly interesting to you. So always be spontaneous and take any photos until you feel you got it.

Abhishek Adhikari via Neptos

This doesn’t mean to take photos of literally anything you see but when you find something interesting take more photos than you need from different angles like high and low left and right so that you will not regret later while looking at them and think “I should have made this thing in focus” and the tension of regret in your head.

Tell a story

Remember your parents telling you stories of the treks and travel stories they had had in their time. The same stories your photos are going to convey.

Prajwol Khatri via Neptos

Whenever you take photographs you might have a backstory behind them. Maybe it's about the economic activities of the people, monuments, and landmarks ad some interesting stories of people and places across your journey. So, you should be able to tell a story through your photos by using unique compositions and by giving it an artistic approach.

You can implement these tactics to level up your photographs create inspiring visual stories and blow out people’s minds.

Travel photography helps to deliver stories in such a profound way that no other way of art can do. So next time you set to travel and explore places make sure to follow the tips. These are non-technical and sound obvious but they add deep meaning to your photos if you follow them correctly.