How To Overcome the Touring Photographer Syndrome
by William Lulow
The last article talked about what kinds of images you can make if you are a touring photographer. This means that you are often in one place for a brief amount of time before having to move on to the next spot on your trip. I just had an experience trying to make a good image of the lighthouse at Peggys Cove in Nova Scotia, a very popular place indeed. I decided to set my camera up on a tripod and make a good composition in spite of all the people. I figured that I could retouch some of the people out of the picture if I needed to, so I picked a moment when I thought the crowd was a bit thinner. Here was that image:
This was the original shot. When I made the first couple of exposures I thought that it would take some work, but I could probably eliminate most of the people from the shot. I thought that maybe I would keep the white shirted bagpipe player in the middle of the picture. This was the retouched photograph:
It was also enhanced a bit by adding some vibrance and a bit of saturation, which I seem to be doing with quite a few of my landscapes recently. This usually indicates that I should probably look into adjusting my in-camera “picture styles” settings a bit. Many think that digital photography is way easier than film, but just as a reminder, there are seven picture style settings with five settings within each. That constitutes a whopping 35 different settings you could use. You really need to pay attention to how you set these up if you don’t relish spending a lot of time in post production adjustments.
So this was an example of dealing with the “touring syndrome” by having a preconceived notion of what you want the final image to look like before you even set up the camera. If you are on the road going from place to place on a vacation, this is a great way to be able to make the images you want. See the shot in your mind first, formulate a plan for the post-production work you will need to do, then pick the best moment you can to take the picture. I find that this technique has worked on many occasions.
On this particular trip, as on several others when I could spend more than one day visiting a place, I found that going back and making photographs under different lighting conditions is another way of becoming a good “touring photographer.” I know it isn’t often we can do this, but I went to Peggy’s Cove in Nova Scotia first on the way to Halifax. It was close to sunset when we got there and this was the image I made:
It certainly was a nice light and a great time of day. Most of these images were made with the camera on a tripod. This image was f/16 @1/100th of a second with an ISO setting of 400. When I came back a few days later, I was looking for the postcard picture of the cove and made this one:
This was made from the opposite position because it was made in the morning, when the light was from the opposite direction. This one was made at f/14 @ 1/40th of a second with an ISO setting of 100. Both images were filtered with a Cokin gradient neutral density filter of .6 intensity as are many of my landscape photographs.
As I mentioned, if you can revisit the same place more than once on your tour, you stand a much better chance of seeing the place under these different lighting conditions and that affords the possibility of making really great images. That’s another way of conquering this syndrome.
The best way to photograph on the go is to try to find a good angle, one that’s interesting, visually arresting and captures the essence of the place you are. You can then work on it later in post and try to make it even better.
Here is such a picture. I was interested in photographing this lighthouse in Halifax harbor when I saw the sailboat getting closer to it. I quickly changed lenses from my 20mm to my 85mm because I knew this was the scene I was looking for. The juxtaposition of the boat and the lighthouse made for an interesting composition.
This is another example of a shot of the same island only this time there was an interesting cloud formation above it. The treatment of this subject as a monochrome image made it more interesting because I was able to enhance the tones of the sky that would have just been white and blue in a color image. This seemed more dramatic and lent itself to the wide-angle lens as well.
So, when traveling, one needs to keep a sharp eye for things that might just be photogenic.
