Traveling to take pictures
This has been taken from a post I wrote several years ago.
We all travel from time to time some more often some less and usually there is that idea about interesting pictures that you could take while you are there, but it doesn’t always work out. Here are some tips to improve the photos you bring back from there.
Firstly there is the times when you travel with others (for ex. family). If you are traveling with people who themselves are not into photography than they often expect you to do one thing while you know that is not what you want to do so you either just don’t take as many pictures as you would like or ignore them and go out on your own. A good thing when traveling with people like this is to take as little things as possible a camera and one prime lens is enough. This means that whenever they ask you to take a picture of something than you often don’t have the lens that make a good picture of that thing so they will soon stop after they see that the pictures they asked you to take aren’t anything special and are as good or worse than what they can take with their phone so they will eventually stop. If you happen to have a prime that is one of the more general ones like 35mm or 50mm than this might not work. In a situation like that just sit down with them and explain to them why what they want is not ideal. If this doesn’t work than just leave your camera at home at forget taking pictures while traveling with them and instead plan a trip that you will go to with your fellow photographers or on your own.
If you travel with people that share your passion for photography than you should have a good time as long as you are on good relations with them. For what you should take with you it’s simple take your camera and one or two lens. If you need anything else like a tripod take that, but remember they all will also have their gear so there is a high chance that they will have the things that you happen to need, but don’t have with you.
Lastly there is the option of traveling on your own which is the most practical if you belong to the group of people that go out shooting in insane times just because they have a sudden urge to take pictures. Also if you like to spend extremely long times at one place than traveling on your own is the ideal option. You should take just the basic necessities and leave all the excess lenses, back-up bodies and etc. at home, because even if you don’t mind carrying all that gear it will still get in your way.
But the main point of all of this is to have fun even if you are being bothered by people who have no idea about photography or if you are traveling with your friends who love photography and share the same interests as you.
