You don’t have to be a photography pro or own a pricey SLR to take beautiful vacations photos, or any photos for that matter. Sure, there are certain effects and lighting conditions that require or at least benefit from specialized skills and equipment, but for the everyday shutterbug who’s mostly using their phone camera, stunning images that help tell your story are easier to achieve than you think. I’ve put together five strategies to help you step up your photography game so you can capture stunning images on your next trip or local outing.
Keep the Horizon Straight
I have to admit, my biggest photography pet peeve is when someone captures a gorgeous landscape but doesn’t take the time to make sure the horizon line is straight. No matter what kind of camera you’re using, it’s an easy problem to fix and makes a huge difference.
Sometimes figuring out where the horizon line is can be challenging, especially if there are objects, like buildings, trees, or mountains, obscuring its natural line or competing for your attention in the foreground. As you’re framing up your picture, find the horizon and concentrate on aligning that with the guidelines on your camera’s view finder or by eyeballing it.
You could also edit with the straightening tool after you take the photo, but keep in mind that when you straighten a photo it also crops out part of the picture, and it could be a part you don’t want to lose. My advice is to always keep the horizon as straight as possible before you take the photo to minimize the amount of straightening (and thus, cropping) you’ll have to do later.
In this photo, the horizon is not straight, resulting in an image that doesn’t look quite right.
Much better!
Go Out at the Crack of Dawn
There’s nothing like flat, mid-afternoon lighting to make an interesting landscape look totally blah. Photographing during the “magic hours” around sunrise and sunset, when the lighting is soft and dramatic, almost always results in spectacular images.
For this reason, I make it a point when I’m traveling to wake up at the crack of dawn and go out with my camera at least once. Not only will your images benefit from the beautiful glow, but you’ll also be up before the crowds, when it’s quiet and peaceful. This an ideal time for capturing interesting photographs of locals going about their regular activities to start the day. And, if you have travel companions who don’t always appreciate you stopping to take pictures, a solo AM outing, when everyone else is sleeping, gets your “annoying” picture taking out the way.
Zion National Park is beautiful any time of day, but for this picture I woke up before sunrise to drive into the park and capture the early morning light and avoid the crowds.
New Orleans is a photographer’s playground, and it’s even more fun when you venture out at dawn when partygoers from the night before are still fast asleep. On this particular morning, I got lucky as fog had rolled in, giving the Natchez Steamboat on the Mississippi River an eerie feel.
In towns and cities, it’s nice to get up early and take pictures of the empty streets waking up with a trickle of locals. I took this from the balcony of our hotel in the small town of Pisac in the Sacred Valley of Peru around 6am. In a few hours, market stalls would pop up and people would be bustling about. (This is also a great photo opportunity, but just different.)
Find an Interesting or Unique Composition
The Eiffel Tower. Taj Mahal. Golden Gate Bridge. Angkor Wat. There must be a million pictures of these amazing landmarks, and for good reason. They are all awesome, and of course you need to photograph them if you are lucky enough to visit them! But that doesn’t mean your pictures have to look like everyone else’s. Differentiate your image with a unique composition.
Discovering a fresh perspective for your subject might require that you move around a bit, but usually it doesn’t take much–just a shuffle to the side or a lower vantage point could make all the difference. Waiting for people, birds, or other animals to enter the frame can also improve your overall composition.
Here are some easy strategies for creating a more interesting composition.
Add flowers and other objects to the foreground
Predjama Castle outside of Ljubljana, Slovenia, is impressive on its own, but add some colorful flowers to the foreground and you’ve got a winner!
Carmel Beach in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, is renowned for its gorgeous sunsets. I wanted to capture the sun as it dipped behind the horizon, but didn’t want it to look like every other sunset. I walked around the beach until I found this strand of seaweed to add contrast and interest to the composition. A well-positioned seagull, dog, or beachcomber would also do the trick, but be sure to snap lots of pictures as they move into, out of, and within your frame so you can review them all and pick the best one.
Wait for people to enter the scene
Oftentimes, when travelers are taking photos of an object or landscape, their instinct is to wait for people to get out of the way. While I agree that in some cases people can make an image look cluttered, I also believe that if you have the time and patience, waiting for an individual or two to enter your frame can be the difference between a so-so photo and a great one.
If you think of your image as a story, then adding a person or small group can provide valuable context to the scene and lend helpful perspective, on the relative size of something for example.
My initial interest with this photo was the doorway with the parked scooter nearby. Then I noticed the bicyclist approaching. By waiting for him to enter the scene (and making sure that his position wasn’t clashing with other objects), the story is no longer just about how cool the doorways in Milan are, but also about how locals get around the city.
Showing people on a trail provides valuable perspective on our place in the natural world, so for that reason I generally like to include hikers (bonus if they’re walking a dog!) or bicyclists, preferably with bright colors that pop against the natural landscape.
Look for interesting juxtapositions
As part of an early-morning excursion inside Zion National Park, I stopped at the side of the road to take a picture of the burnt orange cliffs. I hadn’t planned to include the stop sign, but liked how the bright red popped against the landscape.
I live outside of San Francisco, so already have a million pictures of this iconic bridge, usually showing its entire span. For a more creative take, I positioned just one tower of the bridge in the background behind a building at Crissy Field. It’s not the type of picture you’d expect of this world-famous landmark, and the late-day sun illuminating it while the building remains in the shade creates an added dimension of interest.
Frame your picture
Using branches to frame your picture is a good strategy for eliminating too much sky, especially if the sky is grey or doesn’t have many clouds. You have to be careful though with your positioning to make sure the branches don’t “collide” too much with the subject of your photo (in this case the skyline) or each other. This could result in what a photography instructor of mine once called “visual oatmeal.”
This photo, while not the best, demonstrates how you can use natural rock formations (in this case, a cave I was walking through in San Francisco at Land’s End) to create a frame for the photo subject.
You can’t go wrong with a city skyline at sunset, but it’s even better when framed within window panes. For this shot, taken from the top of the Loews Hotel in Philadelphia, I had to position myself carefully so the buildings didn’t collide with the vertical lines of the window frames.
Resist the Pose
Who doesn’t want great pictures of family and friends while they’re on vacation? No one. And so, the endless posing begins–lining up reluctant family members smack in front of “random tourist attraction X”, everyone straight as soldiers looking directly into the camera and smiling (if you’re lucky.) These pictures are fine, but try having fun and mixing it up a bit.
Experiment with different types of poses, like a human pyramid or having everyone look off in different directions. Better yet, skip the pose altogether. Not many people like doing this anyway, especially kids. Instead, try taking candid pictures of your travel companions simply enjoying each other or the sights around them. Looking back over your photo album, you’ll be happy you were able to capture these authentic, and ultimately more rewarding, moments.
Since my daughters have always hated it when I take their photo, I generally resort to sneaking candids with my telephoto lens. I love this picture, taken on Cape Cod many years ago, because it reminds me of how much fun they had together on that trip.
Even though I couldn’t fit the entire rock face at Zion National Park into my frame, you can tell how grand its scale is by the look on my daughters’ faces as they gaze upward.
If you must pose . . .
When you’re visiting a place as spectacular as Machu Picchu, the posed group photo is a must, I get it. BUT, make sure you’re not blocking the object, in this case Machu Picchu’s famous citadel.
Pay Attention to the Details
Vacations tend to inspire big, expansive landscapes and dramatic city skylines. These are great, but it’s nice to discover the little things too. Turn your attention, and your lens, closer in to focus on the interesting details around you–colorful doorways, bold clothing, street art, whatever strikes you as interesting. By adding these shots to your vacation portfolio, you’ll have a more complete and colorful memory of your experience.
During the Inti Raymi Festival, which is celebrated every year on June 24 in the Sacred Valley of Peru, people don colorful costumes. With my telephoto lens, I was able to snap this picture showing the intricate designs and bold colors of some of the hats worn by locals.
Stockholm, Sweden has many beautiful fountains and buildings. In this example, I couldn’t figure out a way to get a good picture of the entire fountain because of its height, so I took one picture from way back and then this one close up to capture and remember more of the the fountain’s detail.
Our hotel in Fez, Morocco had so many interesting nooks and crannies, I couldn’t resist spending an afternoon photographing its many colorful accessories. I snapped this from the top of a stairway looking down onto a cozy sitting area.