Using Themes for Awesome Travel Photography

It’s an overwhelming experience travelling to new places for photography; your attention is on overload. You’re going to be tempted to snap everything in sight, filling your memory cards with content. It’s fun to snap a load of photos but it can also be over powering.

There are some themes that will help you organise your travel photography so that you can tell the story of your trip a lot more easily.

Night Photography

Don’t be in too much of a hurry to pack away your camera as soon as the sun begins to set; most cameras now are able to ‘see’ in the dark and record clean images that could spice up your travel photo montage. You might just get some amazing shots.

Portrait Photographs

Sometimes the most interesting and memorable photographs of a place are the photos you take of people. It could be intimidating at times, but try to take photos of strangers, and at the same time try to tell their story. The charm of portraits are in the details, include a detail or two that give the portrait a context – what do they do? Who are they with?

Fauna and Flora

Animals and flowers can tell a lot about certain places in the world. Try to capture flora and fauna that is native to the place you are visiting.

Documentary Images

Recording events help give depth to travel photography. One story that tells a lot about a place is work. When we learn about how people work, it is revealed what people value and how they interact with their environment.

When a photographer makes travel photos, they also make memories of that place tangible – it’s a story captured that they can flip through and withstand the passing of time. 

Photography and Travel (The Essentials)

Aside from the obvious, Camera Body, Lenses etc. there are a few essentials for Travel Photography. Here I will go through the utmost important things that every photographer MUST have when travelling abroad.

1.     Insurance.

Before you even decide just what equipment you will need to take with you when you travel you must ensure that you are covered for any damages, loss etc. for the duration of your trip. Travel Insurance is a must have not only to protect your gear but to protect yourself as well. Make sure you get an insurance that will cover you completely, so that if need be, you can replace your equipment with little to no out of pocket expense to you.

2.     Travel Adapter

Most of the time travel photographers will visit many different countries, all of which have different power ports. It is essential to have at least one universal power adapter to ensure you will be able to recharge your cameras/laptops etc. wherever you may go.

3.     Decent Carry Bag

When travelling with photography gear, you should never send it in with your luggage; there’s no guarantee it will arrive at your destination with you. When you’re carrying thousands of dollars worth of equipment, you want to make sure it isn’t going to go missing; so make sure you take it all as your carry-on luggage.

Even on-board, your bags are going to be knocked about a lot with others pushing and shoving through the plane, trying to get their bags to fit in overhead compartments; so; you’re going to need a decent bag to carry and protect all of your equipment.

4.     Portable Hard Drive

If you’re going travelling, you’re going to be shooting a lot of images right? So, you’re going to need some place to store all your photos while on the go. This is where a portable hard drive comes in handy. I would recommend at least 1TB of space, if not more. To ensure minimal wastage of time, I would recommend you have a decent workflow planned out before you leave for your trip, that way you will be able to plug in your camera, transfer the files then keep on the go. When your trip ends, you’ll have all your photographs organised, and in one place.

5.     Laptop or Netbook

Having a portable hard drive is all well and good, but, you are going to need something to connect it to. You really just need something small and lightweight that you can carry with you to review your images and to transfer and save your images on the go. A netbook is ideal as it is going to be smaller and lighter but a laptop will do the job just fine.

6.     Travel Tripod

Sometimes when travelling, the heavy duty tripod you trust and love is not going to be effective. It will be too difficult carrying around a heavy, not so small tripod while you are on an around the world trip. This is where a travel tripod comes in handy. Small, flexible, lightweight tripods are a lot easier to travel with than your average heavy duty tripod. I recommend Benro Travel Angel Tripods.

7.     Battery Grip/Spare Batteries

The last thing you want when you are travelling is to take out your camera to find, those batteries you thought were fully charged, have been run down. Always make sure you have extra batteries handy, or if you can afford it, a battery grip. I recommend Eneloop batteries as they are proven to keep up to 70% of their charge, even after 5 years.

8.     Extra Memory Cards

Going to be out all day shooting without access to a laptop or hard drive? Then you are going to need extra memory cards; SD, Compact Flash etc. Always make sure you leave for your trip with plenty of memory available, you never know, you laptop might die half way through your trip leaving you with no way of transferring your files.

9.     Card Reader

If you happen to have a professional level camera, it is more than likely going to take Compact Flash cards rather than the normal SD cards… You are going to need to pack your card reader so that your laptop/netbook can access the files on your memory card.

Of course this list doesn't include everything you will need in your pack for your trip, it just covers the essentials. I have also included below what I like to include in my pack when I go travelling.

What’s in my pack?

1.      2 Canon Bodies (5D, 500D)

2.      2 lenses (24-105mm, 70-200mm)

3.      Flash meter

4.       Reflector

5.       Tripod

6.       Laptop

7.       2TB External Hard Drive

8.       Spare batteries

9.       At least three memory cards, 8GB or more

10.   3-4 universal travel adapters

11.   Card Reader

12.   All carried in my trustworthy Lowepro Backpack.