Quick Travel Photos

Quick Travel Photos

by William Lulow

I have written before about making images while traveling. Under such conditions, if you are on a tour or safari for instance, you can’t wait for the right light or ideal weather. You often need to try to make pictures kind of as you see them. Recently, we had a trip to Hawaii planned that had to be cut short due to a family emergency at home. So we only had a few days to try to make some stunning pictures. We didn’t always have good weather and we were not long in one place. As a matter of fact, for the short time we were there, we never even got to use the resort’s swimming pool.

But here are several images from that brief trip that I was able to make:

You may not call these photographs “masterpieces,” but they all have in common the idea of “looking for light” and finding it. The images of the plants were made without the benefit of my 60mm macro lens, but with the addition of the built-in flash on the camera. The extra light generated from the tiny flash was enough to give the leaves some shine and add more detail to otherwise, darker images. I always travel with my on-camera speedlight, but I often find myself with just the camera and its built-in flash which is usually enough to add the right amount of fill-in to my close-ups. I also find that my 20mm f/2.8 lens is really good for close-ups as well as more distant landscapes. It can focus to 0.8in and has a field of view of 94 degrees. It doesn’t have a macro (1:1) focusing capability, but for many subjects, while traveling, it gets pretty close. It is my lens of choice while walking around

exploring new locations. The lens is also very sharp. I think with Canon’s concentration on its mirrorless line of cameras and lenses, this lens is not manufactured any longer, but you can probably pick up a good used one at several camera shops and on eBay.

So I carry this lens with a variety of Cokin filters, the most used one is a gradient neutral density filter designed to  increase contrast to the sky while leaving foregrounds untouched. The other filter I always have with me is the trusty #25A (red) filter which increases the contrast of a blue sky, as in the shot below:

This is not a conversion of the color one above, but it was shot in what I call “original Black&White.” Conversions in Photoshop from images originally made in color don’t have the same contrast. If you are skilled enough in Photoshop and take the time to make layers necessary, you can approximate the effects, but in my mind, it is not the same as making the image intentionally in Black&White.

There are many images one can make even if at a location for a limited amount of time. It is necessary to be looking for light constantly and be able to recognize when it can be used to make an exceptional photograph.