Travel Photography: Mastering Light and Composition

1. 1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Hello, and welcome to travel photography, mastering light and composition. My name is Jen and I have been a photographer for over 20 years in all sorts of genres including weddings, portraits, families, sports, and currently I've been specializing in travel documentary photography for over five years. I'm also the owner of Launch Your Travels where I show people how to plan and take their own trips. Into this short masterclass, I will show you how you can easily improve your travel photography skills so that you can feel proud to show them off. Once you know how to see and use the light plus how to create compositions that will draw people into your photos, you'll be able to use these techniques over and over for a lot of success in your images. These simple yet effective techniques will up your photography game no matter what type of camera you use, cell, point-and-shoot, DSLR, or mirrorless. At the end of this course, you will be able to determine how to take great photos from any situation. Which is necessary for travel photography, since you're not always in a place at the most ideal time of day. Being able to figure out how to make the most of where you are, when you are will result in many more photos you are proud of. This course is perfect for the beginner travel photographer or for anyone who would like to [MUSIC] up their travel photography skills. I'm excited to show you how to create amazing travel photos so come join me inside. 2. 2. Camera Tips for Success: Camera basics is going to set you up for success with quick tips about your cameras. I want to go over a few tips on how to hold your camera. When you're using your cell phone most people will hold it out like this and that makes the camera really unsteady. What you want to do is you want to tuck in your elbows and create a very steady way to hold the camera. Now this also goes, if you are using a DSLR or a mirrorless camera. You want to make sure instead of holding it out like this, you want to tuck your elbows in right beside your body, tighten your muscles and you want to stand like you're a tripod. Make sure you're in a good standing position so that you are steady and then just take the camera up to your eye. If you do have a viewfinder that you can look through, I highly recommend doing it that way instead of through the live view. But I understand that there are some cameras out there that do not have that option. I'm going to give you three things that are super easy to avoid blurry photos. Now the first one is, a lot of people don't even think about it, but it's cleaning the lens. I've talked about this before, but you want to clean your lens. I can't stress this enough. It goes for your cell phone and your other camera if you have one, you want to make sure that you do have those cleaning products with you can consistently clean them. Now, the second one is how you take the photo. Now, I just showed you how to hold the camera, next you want to make sure that when you do take your photo, when you press the "Shutter" button, you don't want to drop it immediately. Hold it there for a few seconds, and then you can drop it. I see a number of people where they take the photo and immediately drop it and that what causes some blur in your photos. That's not just for your cell phone, that's for your other camera as well. The last thing you want to do is you want to use something to steady yourself, if you're in a windy area or if you just are tired from the day, you want to be able to steady yourself as much as possible. What I like to do is lean up against any buildings, any storefronts, any trees, or anything along that lines. Now, you want to make sure that you hold it again with your elbows tucked in and you're holding it with that steadiness of the wall. You also want to do that for your other camera as well, even if you're bringing it up to your eye, you want to have all that steadiness that you can possibly have. The other thing you can do is you can hold the camera on something, at a bench or a table or anything along that lines and you're able to hold it steady that way. Again, you can also do it with your cell phone or you can also do it with your actual camera. Now, when it comes to carrying your camera, I suggest that you carry your camera out as much as possible or else you will miss those shots that come up very quickly. When it comes to my cell phone, I use my wrist strap I have it around my wrist and I'll either keep it in my pocket with the wrist strap attached or I'll just carry it like this. When it comes to carrying your DSLR or mirrorless camera, you want to make sure that you carry it properly because it could damage to your lens. I see a lot of people carrying it incorrectly and I just want to go out to everyone and tell them how to carry the camera. This is how most people will carry it. They carry it and the lens is facing out from your body. This makes it very hard to one: conceal your camera and two, it's going to knock into everything. You want to make sure you turn that around and hold it like this. It tucks in behind your butt and you're able to conceal that a little bit more and you're not going to bash into anything as much. Now I also see a lot of people carrying their cameras like this. This is two things. It's going to cause havoc on your neck by the end of the day, and then also you just look like a tourist. Not that there's anything wrong with looking like a tourist. But when you're carrying a nice big camera, you do become a bit more of a target for thieves. I want to show you a trick that I use because I carry my camera on my shoulder all the time. There's two things that you want to keep in mind. When you are walking along a road and a street way beside you, you want to make sure that the camera is on your shoulder that's away from the street. This will decrease your chances of someone coming by on a motorbike and reaping the camera off your shoulder. Another thing that I like to do is I always carry a cotton scarf with me and they're super handy for a number of things. But what I do is I will tie it around the strap of my camera, and then when I do have my camera around me, I just put it behind the scarf and that conceals it a little bit more so it's not as obvious. Then you can just push it to the side when you go to take your pictures. 3. 3. How to Prepare for Your Trip Photography: There are a few things that I like to do to make sure that I do get the best photos in the places that I'm going. First, I'd like to use Google Image. I will look up either the city that I'm going to or if there are specific attractions, monuments that I know I'm going to be seeing, I look those ones up specifically as well. This way I get an idea of how people have taken images before, the different types of day that is good to take them, as well as getting inspiration and ideas on how to take photos that I want. Now I don't take photos exactly as I see, but I get inspirations of where to position myself and what locations to go and see these things. When I'm in a new city, I like to take a bus or a walking tour. Most cities will have free walking tours that you can sign up for. I use these as a great base to figure out the lay of the land. They'll take you to a lot of the most popular monuments, areas, and ways to get around. Now you may not have enough time to get the shots that you want, but you can also make note of where you want to go back to and how to get around. You can also use the tour guide to be able to ask questions of best time of day, different areas that you might want to check out, and the little secrets that they may know that you don't. Another thing that is very important is traveling light during your days. Now, don't carry much in your day bag. The lighter this is, the less stressed, sweaty, and tired you'll be which makes for a much nicer day and easier to take photos. Lastly, you want to keep your device accessible. Now you don't want to keep your device in your bag or in your purse, zipper it up, and having to fumble to find it. Sometimes shots appear very quickly that you want to take photos of, so you want to be able to pull out your phone and take that shot very fast. I have a wrist strap around my phone, so I keep that around my wrist and I will either keep my phone in my hand or I will have it in my pocket with my hand or my strap just attached to it, that way it's always accessible whenever I need it. There are some etiquette and restrictions you want to be aware of when you're taking photos. First and one of my main ones is you want to be a good human. When you take pictures of any people, you want to use as much respect as you would want when someone takes your photo. I'm sure most of us would not appreciate someone shoving a phone or a camera in our faces and start taking photos. You want to ask them if you can take their photo, this doesn't have to be verbally, you can just hold up your phone and smile and make eye contact. This mostly applies if it's going to be a noticeable photo taking of them, and this includes pictures and portraits of strangers, religious ceremonies, funerals, people out and about. If it is more street style type photography, then it's not always necessary to be asking for permission. Next is using your flash. You want to know how and when to turn off your flash. My rule of thumb is always turn your flash off, most of the time it does not add anything to your photos. Museums, places of worship usually have a no flash policies, so you want to make sure you know how to turn that off. If you do see a no flash photography sign, you want to respect this and do turn your flash off. Also you want to make sure that you do not take photos around restricted areas. This can get you into trouble, or it could just get your phone or device taken away, or you just have to remove the photos that you've taken. You want to be aware of restricted areas which include government buildings, airports, borders, immigration, military checkpoints, and sometimes soldiers. Again, if you see no photos on a sign, you want to respect that and put your device away. 4. 4. Travel Photography Composition: Next, we're going to talk about composition. I'm going to talk about some best practices, as well as different ideas for you to see and set up your camera and your shot to get the best photo possible. When you're composing the photo that you want to take, there are a number of things that you want to take into account to make them more dynamic. Now, obviously, you don't want to use all of these all at once. But to use some of them within each frame makes the picture so much more interesting. You can look for leading lines and patterns. Leading lines are walkways or streets or stairs going down somewhere. Something that leads right through the photo with patterns like this photo here, the rice terraces adds a nice pattern of all the terraces going up as well as all the palm trees in the background. Take photos from all different perspectives. We will be going over this more in detail later. But this creates unique angles to see familiar viewpoints and monuments from. Another great thing that you want to do is create scale. A lot of times you don't know how big things are in a photograph. This is in landscapes as well as small little things like this flower pot cake that I had in this photo, it looks quite large. But then when I put the spoon beside it and in it, you realize it's actually quite small. You had no idea how large this was until I put something familiar of size beside it. Another thing you can do, especially for landscapes, is add people into your photos. This way, it gives you an idea of how big and how grand this landscape is. You also want to layer elements into the frame, and this will make it much more dynamic. Now what I mean is to have different elements from the foreground to the middle ground to the background. Now, it doesn't have to be all of them but adding those dimensions into it really make it pop like this one here where I have the fence in there. It makes it a little bit more dynamic than if I just took it over the fence and not had the fence in it, it would've been a little bit more flat. You don't want to take just one shot. We do have digital cameras now, we don't have to worry about film. You want to be able to take multiple shots and try different angles and try different viewpoints. You have a variety of different things to look at when you come home. This way, you're able to look at all the different types of angles and choose the best couple that are your favorites, gives you lots of options, which is always helpful. Another thing that people do is they try to include everything into one shot. If you don't have a focal point in your image, it becomes very confusing and cluttered to the viewer. Even if you are wanting to include a lot of things in your image, make sure that there is a focal point so people know where to look and know what they're looking at. Another thing you want to be aware of is where you place all the elements in the photo. Now, if you see where the light post is up at the top, I made sure that I stood in a position where it did not cover the top of that building in the back. That creates a nice line and a nice focal point for you to go through the photo. Same with this one where you see with the lamp post again, I make sure that I am in an angle where I am not covering up the tall building in the background. Again, with this one, I have the lamp making sure that it is not covering the building in the background and also the sign on the right. I made sure that it is also not covering the taller building in the background. Where you position yourself to make everything fit will make a huge difference. The rule of thirds is a basic and popular composition tool. You may have heard about this, but haven't had a chance to understand what it really means. When composing your image with the rule of thirds in mind, you want to split up your screen like this in a grid formation, cut into thirds, both horizontally and vertically. Now, to be really impactful, where you want to put your focus of what is in your photo is on the intersecting lines right where the red circles are there. You want to play around and try different areas of where you want to put your focus on. Try all the different squares and the different intersecting lines. Not only do you want to place things on the intersecting lines, but you also want to place things along the lines themselves. Place the horizon either on the lower third or the top third. Place different elements that are larger in there, either on the right side or the left side. See what works for you. Try different things and then you will find a style that you really like to get to. Now, when using the rule of thirds, you don't want to use it as the be-all end-all, the only way you can take a photo. You just want to know when you can break the rules. This image is perfect to break the rules on and place the horizon right in the middle. It has a reflective surface. It's a beautiful sky and to get that mirrored image one on top of the other. To make it easy to use the rule of thirds, your cameras have a grid that is just like that, that you can turn on so you can always see where you should be placing the elements. To do this, you want to go into the settings sections of your phone and you want to scroll down until you come across your camera app. This might be a little bit different for each phone, but it's all going to be very similar. Then you click into the camera and then you want to go to the grid and you want to turn that to green so it's on. You can then click out of here and return to your home menu and the grid will appear on your camera all the time. To do this on your camera, you want to go into the menu section. Now it will be different for each camera, so you want to refer to your manual on where it is. But on my Nikon, I go into custom settings and then I go into the shooting and display menu and from there I go down to the viewfinder grid display and make sure that it's on. You just want to make sure that you're looking for a viewfinder grid. 5. 5. How to Compose Your Photos to Get the Best Images: When you're composing, you want to make sure that you take all different angles. You want to get down low to highlight different textures on the ground or to help eliminate the amount of people in your photos. It also adds a great variety to your photos to see them down low as well. Another one you want to do is up high. You want to get above people's heads in large crowds. You also want to look up, see what different views and details you might not have noticed if you didn't look up. When doing these, you can also keep in mind of the different things that we've already learned about like creating patterns, leading lines, also the rule of thirds. These all take into account everything that you do. Now there is a tool that you can use that you may not think about that will help you create these two angles. When you're using a selfie stick, think outside of the box. These don't always have to be just for taking pictures of yourself. You can use these to reach up high, go overheads if you are on the ground and there's a lot of people there, you can use this. You can hold it up and you'll be able to take pictures without anyone else in your photos. Another thing you can do is you can create it down low. If you want to get down low and you don't want to squat down, you want to make sure that the camera is tilted up a little bit higher so that you can get down and just take the photo there. You want to make sure that you try different angles and different ways of taking pictures of buildings and any monuments that you come across and you can do that really well with using the selfie stick. Another great way is to get up high and take things from overhead. This creates an angle for taking good food photos. Also get to the top floors to show action, beauty, people from above. Hot air balloons are always a perfect way to see the landscapes in a new way without any restrictions of windows. Get to the top of buildings, find vantage points where you can actually see from above down below, it makes for great images. Unique angles are a great way to add some different elements to your photos. They're great for architecture and buildings. You just want to turn your camera on different angles to create different perspectives of something familiar. You can also capture just portions of the subject to view in detail. With the unique angles this includes turning around and seeing what's behind you of what no one else is taking a photo of. So also including reflections or also shadows on the ground. It just creates a little bit more oomph and a little bit more difference to everybody else's images. When you're taking a photo of a subject, walk all the way around it, and take photos as you go around of the different viewpoints. When you arrive somewhere, when you first see the monument or the subject that you want to take photos of, this may not be the best angle for you to photograph it. You may come across viewpoints in areas you didn't even know about and you could have possibly missed. You can also go back to the areas you think you want to reshoot and see it in a different angle or a different way after seeing everything that is available to you. One important thing you want to do is scan the edges and people. Before you snap that photo, you want to scan the edges of your frame to make sure that there are no unwanted items and that you are not cutting the tops off of anything. This goes for any tall buildings or trees. When you cut the tops off it, it just stops the photo. The more you can include so that it cuts right to the top off in that particular subject, the better your image will be. When taking photos of people, you want to look at the background. So many people have had things growing out of their heads or their bodies like trees and lamp polls and things of that nature, it doesn't look good. Make sure that there is nothing growing out of anyone's head. Another thing you want to do is you want to scan your image and remove any distracting elements by moving the camera angle or moving your feet and moving to a different angle. This can include trash cans, lamp posts, any signs, as well as power lines. If you didn't want them in your photo, make sure you move forward or backwards to eliminate them. 6. 6. How to Improve Your Photos Dramatically With Light: We just went over a number of different composition ideas, now we're going to jump into light. Light is where you're going to be able to dramatically improve your images. It's all about the light. I'm sure you've heard of that, and it's always true. Light is one of the most important things that affect the outcome of your photo. Now it's not the easiest thing to master, it's taking me years to really master how I use light that is available in the scene that I'm taking a photo of. But we can start from the very beginning with the basics to help you get the best out of the light. First, you want to understand when the best time of day is to take photographs outside. Now the golden hours, I'm sure you probably have heard of this term, but this is at sunrise and at sunset and it is the 30-60 minutes before and after the sun rises or the sun sets, these will produce beautiful light. Now, when you're looking for lighting for people, again, the golden hour is super flattering and it will not create harsh shadows on someone's face. Now, if you are going to be outside during bright sunshine in the middle of the day, you want to seek a full shade spot right on the edge of the light. What this means is you want to go into a spot that is in shade, but near where the sun comes in as well. When you look down on the ground, you'll see a sunny spot and then you'll see a shady spot. Stand in the shady spot with your toes and body facing towards the light that will produce really beautiful light. This you can also do with someone standing inside of a doorway facing outside. Now, another one you can do if you're inside, you want to go towards the windows. These are going to have nice natural light for your subject. One of the cheats that you can use with your digital camera is that you can just have it on the selfie mode and just turn around in the scene. Pick a place where you want to take a photo and then just go round in a whole circle, having the camera facing you the whole time, and you'll see there'll be one spot that just pops up in your face, just lights up beautifully. This way is a very easy and effective way to find really good light quickly for someone. Now, with night shots, you want to leave your flash off. The flash on cell phones and cameras are not really good. They're just going to add a really bright light to whatever you're going to be taken a photo of, and it's just not going to be very flattering. If you are needing extra light, you can use a secondary light source, so you can use a friend's flashlight app on their phone. You can also have a little flashlight with you that you can use. Also, if you are able to take the photo from different angles, choose the angle that has a lot more ambient light coming in. You can also use candlelight to your advantage as well in certain areas. You want to be aware when you're taking photos in low light, like in churches and temples, as well as night shots like this one here. If there is not enough light in the image, you can come away with blurry photos. This happens when you are trying to take these types of photos and you're just trying to hold the camera with your hands. Because the camera takes longer to read everything in the scene when it is in low light, you are just not able to hold the camera steady enough for as long as it takes because it picks up every tiny little movement. Now cell phone cameras are getting better and better all the time in low-light situations, but there are things that you can help with this. One thing is you can use a mini tripod. These are now very lightweight and small and very easy enough to pack and also put in your bag for the day. Another one is you can study the camera by using a flat surface around you. Instead of holding it with your hands, you want to place it down onto the flat surface and use that as a tripod substitute. Lastly, another one would be you want to find more light in the image by getting closer to the bright areas. Instead of taking a wide shot where you may not have a lot of light, where it is possible you want to move in closer to take more close-up shots of a specific part in that image. That way it's going to be able to have enough light. I want to go over some lighting tips that really can help you find some really good light and how to take your photos. First, you want to place the sun to your back. If you do this, you will get rich colorful photos with blue skies. Now, with this technique, you want to also be careful of your shadow because the sun is at your back, it's going to create a shadow of you on the ground. If you're taking a picture of the ground in front of you as well, your shadow could sneak into the photo. Now if you shoot into the sun, you will have muted colors. This could be a really nice look and a difference for your album, but you can also have a really beautiful silhouette this way as well. Now, before you take a photo, you want to look to see where the sun is in the sky, and then decide which direction you want to take your photo. This will determine the mood and the look of your photo. During the brightest time of the day, if you can, photograph in markets, take street photos, or go inside and shoot at museums, in churches, in temples. This way you cut down on the harshest light and really not the greatest time to take any landscapes. Again, when you're inside, you want to seek out that window light. If you're photographing a person, you want to face them towards the window so that the light comes on them. If you're wanting to take a picture of the actual room, you want to stand right beside the window and take a picture into the room that way. Now, when you are traveling, you cannot control the weather and you don't always know what it's going to be like. Don't get disappointed when it's all cloud cover, because it is not always a bad thing. This is a great time to take photos of people outside since it provides such a diffused light and nice even lighting on anyone, even during the brightest time of the day. If the sky is really boring and clouded over and not like dramatic building clouds, you want to try and eliminate or use very little of the sky in your photos. This way you eliminate a boring top part of your image. Now if it is a really broody and building, stormy clouds, definitely include those because those add such atmosphere to your photos. Now quick trick for when you do have a dull sky in your photos is you can turn these to black and white. You can't tell the difference if the sky is blue or if it was gray in those black and white photos. It's a nice little trick that a lot of people use. Lastly, you want to really realize that you can't always be at the right place, at the right light of day. Even if you are on tour or if you're traveling on your own, you may not want to get up early in the morning or you do not want to be at this one monument at this specific time of day. You want to just utilize what you have in the moment while you were there. Remember to walk around, find the best angle, look for the best light, or zoom in and take more detailed shots of the scene. Use the tools that you have learned in this course to be able to make the best of the situation that you're in. 7. 7. Travel Photography Tips & Tricks: Now we're going to jump right into some tips and tricks as well as an overview of what we've learned. You want to remember to shoot both horizontally and vertically. It makes your photo so much more pleasing to look through. You want to turn off the sound of your shutter noise on your phone. There are times that you just don't want others to know that you are taking a photo and that noise is going to be an instant giveaway. Or you are in a very quiet place like churches, and you want to be respectful of the sound. Now the easiest way to do this is to turn the volume off on the side of your phone with the switch. This way you can turn it on and off again very easily. Now if you decide to use the volume buttons, be sure you're not in the camera mode as the volume buttons will also take photos when you're in camera mode. Get out of the camera mode, use your volume buttons to turn it down, and then you can go back into camera mode. You also want to be sure to turn the grid onto your camera. We talked about this during the rule of thirds. This just helps you be able to easily compose images and get straight lines. Remember, even all the rules and techniques that you learned here, you can also break all these rules. Try different things that you might think will look really cool or your different type of style, see if it works. Try different things outside of the box. This is where really interesting photos come from. When taking photos, you want to try and incorporate taking a wide shot and a more detailed shot. Now, you don't need to do this for everything, but just certain things where some more detail from a wider shot would be more beneficial. When you do want to get closer to something, the general rule of thumb is zoom with your feet. Now don't zoom with your camera. What this means is walk closer to whatever you are trying to get a picture of. Now if it's something that's really far away, you'd have no choice but to zoom in with your camera. Cameras on our phones are getting much better all the time, so this rule is not as critical as it used to be. If you have one of the top of the line, newer cameras, you're not going to notice a ginormous difference. But if you have a bit of an older phone, you will notice a difference as soon as you zoom in on a photo and take the image, it becomes very pixelated and grainy. It's not a really nice photo. This is really where you notice the difference between a camera on your phone versus a DSLR camera or a mirrorless camera is when you try to zoom in on things. Then also you want to take multiple shots of the same thing, but use different angles and viewpoints. This will give you a lot of variety to choose from when you're putting all your photos together. When you are shooting through glass, say, from the windows of your bus or of a car or of any display shop windows. You want to press your camera right up against that window, so it will reduce the amount of reflections that are coming through on the glass. Now this doesn't always work with the composition that you want to use of taking that photo. You just want to be aware of where the reflections are and try to reduce that as much as you can. Now the exception to this rule is the glass on plane windows. You don't want to put your camera right up against there because they are a different type of glass. You can shoot a little bit away from that. One of the tips for when you are taking pictures through a window or through any glass is you want to wear black top or black jacket so you don't reflect. If you are on a bus tour, make sure you're wearing a dark color because your reflection will stand out if you're wearing a white shirt or a colorful shirt, it'll come through on the images. Another trick for when you're on a bus tour is that you want to be either the first one off the bus or the last one back on the bus. Or you can do both if your very talented. But this way you are able to have the least amount of people in your photos of that area. When you're taking photos of your trips, the more you can tell a story from your photos and of what you did, the more people are going to want to look at your photos and you'll be able to also relive all those moments. Take pictures of the processes of things that you go see. Tell the story of your days. Show what you're doing. Even small snapshots like of this in our cooking course in Florence. How the process was of how to make pasta. You can do this either by doing a photo story and just showing it through photos or you can also do photos and accompanying it with words or a story along with it. To help you to do this very easily is to keep a daily journal of your trips. Take notes of where you go each day, how it was, how you felt, and any other relevant information that you may want to put it in there. Then that way you almost basically have your story written for you by the time you come home. Another thing you want to do to set up your album for when you get home is to photograph the names of places of where you are. This helps to organize your photos too. When you take a picture of a place. It could be either a street sign, any type of signage on walls or I also like to do postcards or any bags that I see that have statements or names of places in a really funky and unusual way. I use these for title pages or pages that I want to highlight what you're looking at next, these bring your story altogether. Lastly, you want to edit any of your favorite photos. Now, every professional photographer does edit their photos so it is not cheating like a lot of people I hear saying. Editing your photos just adds that extra punch and really nice finishing touch to what you already have. 8. 8. Conclusion & Next Steps: Congratulations on completing travel photography, mastering light and composition. Now, you don't want to just stop here. Continue to practice the techniques you learned inside this class. Go out into your community and look at it through new eyes. The more you practice at home, the better your images will be when you are on your trip. Come back and rewatch the video for any parts that you need a refresher on. Be sure you know how to use your camera before you leave so that you can take photos quickly and easily to eliminate the stress while away. Remember to submit your project and any questions that you may have, so I can get back to you. If you're looking for any more travel advice, photography inspiration, small group tours, and free tools to make traveling easier for you, checkout my website, launchyourtravels.com and come join my Facebook group, Travel 101. You can also check out my travel photography at jenwilliamsphotography.com. Thank you so much for watching.