Expert advice on how to take better pictures on holiday
|Published
Travelling and photography go hand in hand. When you are in a new place and experiencing new things, it’s only normal that you would want to get that perfect photo as a way to physically capture the moment.
Learning these tips and techniques will help you if you ever upgrade to a big camera too.
Get familiar with your device
Explore your camera or phone features and make sure that the photo quality is as great as possible.
Learn how to control your camera settings so that your photos live up to your vision for them. Pay attention to where the natural light is coming from.
Get a better angle
Most people just bring the phone or camera up to eye level and take a photo. Sometimes, that’s fine but you can often get far better results with a different angle.
Try holding the camera above your head and aim down. Photographing people from below tends to be rather unflattering, but slightly above often looks great. If you're taking a picture of a child or animal, get down to their level.
Try the golden hour
The “golden hour” is the first hour of light at sunrise and the last hour of light at sunset. During these times, the lighting is perfect for outdoor photography.
The soft, warm light illuminates the landscape in a much more favourable way than the midday sun.
It can take some planning, and even an early wake-up call, to be ready to photograph during these times. but it is worth it. Plus, most sites are usually empty during the early morning hours, another advantage to getting up and about early to snap some pictures.
Plan your shots
Before you arrive at your tourist destinations, spend a few hours planning your list of the images you want to photograph. You can get inspiration from Instagram, Google Maps, travel guides, magazines and more.
Make a note of the pictures and then plan your day around the optimum time to shoot (sunrise or sunset, for example). Doing this will help you nail the shots. All the best photographers use tools like Google Maps or social media to form a shot list and you should get used to it too if you want the best holiday pictures possible.
Follow the rule of thirds
One of the most basic and classic of photography tips is to understand the “rule of thirds”, will help you create more balanced compositions.
Imagine breaking an image down into thirds horizontally and vertically, so it’s split into sections. The goal is to place important parts of the photo into those sections and to help frame the overall image in a way that’s pleasing to the eye.
For example, placing a person along the left grid line rather than directly in the centre, or keeping your horizon on the bottom third, rather than splitting the image in half.
Remember to keep the horizon straight too. Composing using the “rule of thirds" is easily done by turning on your camera’s “grid” feature, which displays a rule of thirds grid on your LCD screen, specifically for this purpose.