How to shoot travel photographs like a pro

Two things will drastically improve your travel photography and save you time as well. They are research and planning.

Planning means just that. And the only way you can plan your photography is to decide, first of all, why you're taking pictures in the first place. Do you want to show amazing slides to family and friends? Sell a destination story to a travel magazine? Augment your collection of marketable stock photography? Come home with a contest winning photograph?

Make those decisions before you leave home and your photography will instantly improve, because when you reach Hawaii or Paris you'll have a clear idea what kind of photographs you want to take. It helps to write down your goals.

But you should be even more precise that than. Once you decide on a purpose - let's say it's to illustrate a piece for a travel magazine - then you can actually begin listing specific shots you need to come home with.

First off, try thinking in threes, just like in the movies: Long shot, medium and close-up. Whether you go to Chartres cathedral or to Death Valley National Park, be sure and get those three shots, in several variations. And then think in twos: Horizontal and vertical. Everyone takes horizontal shots. It requires an act of will, at first, to begin taking vertical shots as well. But having a variety of vertical shots available in an article submission will increase your chance of publication. Vertical shots can also add variety to a slide show.

Research can be done on the web, in book stores, by talking to friends and fellow travelers. Look at picture books of where you're headed.

You can save a lot of time by stopping at a postcard stand.

That's because almost everywhere you go, postcards can show you the basic, easy and common shots available of the place. Looking at postcards can save you hours of scouting out locations. Study the images carefully. You want to know where they were taken from, especially if they show an interesting angle. I once walked to the middle of a long highway bridge after looking at a postcard of what seemed like an impossible view of a coastal town in Oregon; standing there I discovered a view I would never have found on my own.

But study more than location. Look carefully at lighting. Is the postcard photograph shot in the morning, at noon, or in the evening? What season is shown? Do you want to do the same, or can you do better? You don't need to copy another photographer's work exactly to get guidance from it and save yourself a lot of time and mistakes.

Once you've sketched out a basic photographic plan for your trip, you'll have a better idea of equipment and film needs, as well as special stops you want to make. By allowing you to check off shots as you take them, a plan will also free you up to enjoy the trip without a camera now and then.

Dec. 20, 2004