The Touring Photographer

The Touring Photographer

by William Lulow

I guess I can’t emphasize it too much, but when you’re touring any given place, you are usually in a hurry and you need to “grab” photographs as you see them, always keeping a sharp eye out for things that make scenes photogenic like reflections, great skies, interesting doorways, storefronts, and other landscape techniques including composition and whether or not a scene needs to be rendered in color or more classic Black&White. On this past three-week trip to Italy, I wound up occasionally going back to certain spots in cities like Venice, in which we spent six days as well as making the best of one-time visits like in Positano. This was the first organized tour we had taken and although we certainly learned a lot (we had a terrific leader), we spent short times in most places. 

So, I won’t repeat myself too much about touring and making images, but I’ve included some recent shots on the website and a couple of select images for this article. Again, these images were chosen because they were representative of a place we visited or for their intrinsic beauty as photographs.

Ponte Vecchio, Florence, June 2025

The Vatican, Rome, June 2025

The Spanish Steps, Rome (with all the people which is typical), June 2025

Amalfi, June 2025. The color version was so busy-looking that I actually re-shot it on the spot in Black&White which immediately gave it a “classic” look. One of the techniques I often use when faced with crowds in a scenic shot is to look for people that might be interesting and include them in the shot. Henri Cartier-Bresson used to do this sort of thing by sitting in one place in a crowded square, for example, and waiting for some interesting action to take place. Maybe it just consisted of interesting-looking people making their way across the scene. He referred to his technique as waiting for “the decisive moment” that can embody the actual “soul” of a particular place. This image, was made with that idea in mind. 

Positano, June 2025

Maiori, Amalfim June 2025

Capri, June 2025

Venice, June 2025

Venice, June 2025 

As a working commercial photographer, I made roughly 1,500 exposures on this trip. All were made with my old Canon 90D with a Canon 20mm f/2,.8 lens sometimes fitted with a series of filters. Many were shot using my normal LANDSCAPE filtration setup in the camera with extra saturation and sharpness built in. I usually carried my Canon 85mm f/1.8 lens with me for close ups or street scenes where I wanted to maintain a little distance from the subject. All were edited in post-production with Photoshop and several of its enhancement features. 

Again, when you go on a touring trip like this, you will inevitably make images that don’t work as well as others, so you have to be careful, in the editing process, that you aren’t swept away with every image because it brings back memories. Yes, it does that, but when editing your own work, you need to be mindful of the qualities that make images really strong and use only those. 

Hope you enjoyed looking at my glimpses here.