004 - Take your Travel Photos from Snapshot to Wall Art

In Episode 4, we are talking about tips to take your travel photos from snapshots to wall art. I’ll cover 13 tips to help improve your travel photography (or just your photography in general) regardless of the camera kit you use. 

• four types of composition

• three tips for changing your perspective (and why that’s important)

• what to include in the frame

• two tips for catching the right light

• three ways to isolate your subject

• my favourite way to give yourself the best opportunity for great travel photos

Composition

1. The Rule of Thirds

   • Divide your frame into thirds, both vertically and horizontally, and place your subject in one of the cross-sections of those lines.

2. Leading Lines

   • Use lines within your frame to lead your viewer’s eyes to the main subject in your image.

3. Framing

   • Use buildings or other objects to frame your subject and draw your audience’s eye toward your main subject. Frames can also add an extra interesting foreground element.

4. Backgrounds

   • Look for simple backgrounds to put your subject against. Busy backgrounds can distract the viewer’s eye, but a simple background keeps the focus on your subject.

A New Perspective

1. Go Low. 

   • Get low to the ground to show objects bigger than they traditionally are and to create a new perspective on an area. 

2. Go High. 

   • Look for a way to get up above your subject safely. See if there is a hill or building that you can legally climb to look back down on a subject from. This can reveal patterns on the ground around your subject.

3. Search the Area.

   • Look around an area for unique perspectives that other people aren’t shooting.

Wide-angle or close-up?

1. Wide-angle

   • Great for showing off scenes, whole buildings or cityscapes. Gives people a feeling of an area.

2. Close-up

   • Shows off the details of one part of a scene. You can isolate a specific item, like an animal’s face or a statue on a building. 

Get the Light

1. Golden Hour. 

   • Roughly one hour before sunset or one hour after sunrise. Typically, lots of soft light and long, gentle shadows lead to beautiful images. This is also when the sky lights up into beautiful colours (if there are clouds for the sunlight to reflect off of).

2. Blue Hour 

   • Roughly an hour after sunset and an hour before sunrise. It’s when the sun is still illuminating the sky but below the horizon.

3. My Favourite App for Finding Light

   • Sun Surveyor. It tells you the time of sunset, sunrise, moonrise and moonset, as well as the approximate length of golden hour and blue hour.

Isolate your Subject

1. Depth of field:

   • For close-ups, set your aperture to a low f-stop value (such as 2.8, 2.0, or 1.8 or lower). This blurs out the background behind your subject.

2. Use Colour

   • Place your subject against a contrasting colour to have them pop out. Think of it this way, a person wearing a green coat standing in amongst green trees will blend into the trees. But a person wearing a bright yellow or orange coat will pop out from amongst the trees, drawing your viewer’s eye to them. 

3. Background

   • Simple backgrounds really help to isolate your subject as well. 

Get up Early!

1. One of my favourite ways to get the best light and avoid crowds is to get up and going early.