Sean Bagshaw's Top Twelve Totally
Tricky Travel Photography Tips

9. While on the move, adopt a rapid fire shooting style and let the chips fall where they may. It isn't always possible to take time out of your travels to really work a scene or wait around for the perfect lighting. When I'm sight seeing, shopping, or just getting from point A to point B, I often adopt a deliberate style of shooting that enables me to quickly take potentially interesting images that are hopefully better than the basic tourist snap shot. Be warned that these techniques have a low success rate and require some practice.
   
   One style that I adopt is that of a photojournalist. I keep an eye out for interesting interactions or cause and effect scenarios and then quickly swoop in and squeeze off a string of shots before moving on, hoping to capture just one moment in time where the dog steals the steak from the counter or the street performer smiles as a passerby drops a coin in the hat. Many of your photos will not be great, but keep an eye out for the gems in which you captured the decisive moment.
   
   Another “on the fly” technique that I like to use is something I call shooting from the hip. It is very helpful if you want to photograph people up close without them knowing. For this technique I preset my camera to automatic settings but manually pre-focus to a distance just a few feet from me. Then I head into a crowded street, theater, market, hiking trail, museum, etc. with my camera slung around my neck or shoulder. I walk along pretending to view the art, look at the sale items, talk to waiters or do whatever looks natural. All the while I have one hand casually placed on my camera and I press the shutter button whenever I think something interesting might be passing in front of the viewfinder. Again, this technique yields a high percentage of throw-aways, but the keepers often reveal great candid scenes of people going about their regular business, completely unselfconscious about being photographed.


10. Make it move. Adding some motion to your photos is a great way to capture the energy of a place or event and provides a different interpretation than the normal static freeze frame. There are essentially three ways to show motion in a still image. All require experimenting with shutter speed to find the right degree of blurring for the specific situation. Technique one is to keep the camera still (use a tripod) while allowing your subject to move past it. This works great with cars, trains, crowds of people, blowing grass, running water, waves and fast moving clouds. A second technique is to move the camera past something that is still. I most often do this in forests with straight vertical tree trunks. By panning the camera vertically with a shutter speed in the 1/10 second range I can emphasize the lines of the trunks while blurring the background clutter commonly found in forest scenes. It is also fun to experiment with shooting slow shutter speeds out of a moving car or train window as buildings, people and landscape fly by. The third way to add motion to an image is to move the camera in time with a moving object. By panning along with a moving object, say a horse and rider, a dancer or a bike messenger, you can keep the subject mostly sharp while blurring the background to express speed and smoothing out distracting background elements. All of these motion techniques take a lot of practice, so don't get discouraged if early attempts don't go well.


11. Lose the clutter. This may be the most difficult skill in photography to master. Often what looks like a good photograph in life does not translate into a good photograph on paper because there is too much going on in the frame. Our brains are wired to appreciate all the nuances of a three dimensional scene and in addition to sight, we use our other senses to rapidly select out the important and interesting bits from the stuff that is just confusing or distracting. However, in a two dimensional image the brain isn't able to parse out the interesting and aesthetic elements from all the distracting ones. Many images suffer from a case of too much information. Before taking a photo it is important to decide what it is about a scene that is most essential and then work the composition to eliminate as many of the non-essential elements as possible. Some of the most captivating travel images have just three or four elements placed within the image, such as woman/basket/wall, tower/bell/sky/cloud or door/flower pot/sidewalk.

12. Edit mercilessly. If you are like me, you come home from a trip with hundreds, or even thousands of images. While the memories are still fresh it seems like every single one is essential to the story of the trip and it is critical that anyone who asks sees them all. Do yourself and your loved ones a favor and resist the temptation to have a weekend-long slide show marathon or post every last one to your Flickr account. First go through and delete/throw away all the ones that are fatally flawed. Then, if time permits, let them sit for a week or two. When you revisit them you will be much more objective in identifying the strongest photos. As you edit, select out a maximum of three to five images from any one location, subject or event and only ones that are technically good and really capture the essence of what you experienced or want to communicate. These are your prime selects that you can work on in Photoshop, print, email, put in an album, create a slide show and so forth. The non-selects should be further culled or at least stored for historical purposes. Fifty to 100 images and 30 to 40 minutes is plenty long for a slide show. Thirty or 40 prints in an album is more than enough and five to 15 photographs is appropriate for a hanging exhibit. Photo editors will want to see fewer than 50 and perhaps only ten. Most photo contests only allow two or three entires. It isn't that really good photographers never take a bad photo. They just make sure to show people only their very best images and leave the audience wanting for more.

Sean Bagshaw is southern Oregon's premier landscape, nature and travel fine art photographer. He has photographed throughout the western United States as well as Mexico, Alaska, Hawaii, Central and South America, Nepal and Tibet. His photographs have been published in magazines such as Outdoor Photographer, Photographer, Nature's Best Photography and Northwest and have won both national and international photography awards. To learn more, check out Sean's photography and follow his blog go to www.OutdoorExposurePhoto.com.