Vacation Photographs

Vacation Photographs

by William Lulow

When you are traveling on vacation it is often hard to do great photography. The reason for this is that you don’t always have the time to wait for the right light, to photograph a place at the right time of day or to wait for all the tourists to disappear. 

But this doesn’t mean that you can’t get really good shots anyway. There are a couple of guidelines you can follow to help get the best shots possible.

1. Try to get up early in the morning if you visit a particularly scenic place. That way you can try to make the best use of the light you do experience.

2. Try to look at post cards of the place you are visiting. Postcard shots are usually done by local photographers who know the area well. So they know the best vantage points and times of day.

3. Practice doing panoramas. There is a technique to doing them successfully. They can often provide a new take on an old scene.

4. Vary your shooting angle. Don’t just bring the camera up to your eye! Look for low angles as well as higher angles from rooftops, etc.

5. Look for compositions that lead the viewer’s eye into your scene .

6. When photographing family members in front  of a famous landmark, move them off to one side. Don’t have them stand like statues in front of a statue! Have them lean up against it or kneel down beside it.

7. Make use of reflections to add interest!

8. Google “Best views of…” This will often yield locations that will offer local knowledge about best places to get pictures of wherever you happen to be. 

Here are a couple of examples from a current trip:

High-angle shot from a neighboring building.

Subject off to one side of landmark.

Lines leading eyes into the frame.

Making use of reflections to add interest.

So even though your time may be limited by the constraints of travel, you can still get really great shots in a limited time at any one place while on vacation. 

Here is a view of Nashville obtained from Googling “Best views of Nashville”