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. 

The Beginning of Colour Photography

'Tartan Ribbon' - James Clerk Maxwell
The worlds first permanent colour photograph

In 1861 the first permanent colour photograph was taken by physicist James Clerk Maxwell. He used what is known as the 'colour separation' method, shooting three separate black and white photos using three filters: red, green, and blue. He then projected the three images registered with their corresponding filters overlapping them to create a color image. 

Although this development came prior to the invention of Monochrome roll film, colour in photography was not truly embraced until 1936 when Kodak released Kodachrome; the first multi layered (Integral Tripack) colour film. Prior to this, methods such as ‘colour separation’ and ‘Joly Screen process’ were common for those wishing to take colour photographs, however, Kodachrome made colour photography affordable and available for the public.

 

Multiple colour film variations

Even by the 1950’s the expense of colour film as compared to black-and-white and the difficulty of using it with indoor lighting combined to delay its adoption by amateurs. Black-and-white snapshots were still the norm and even by 1960, colour was much more common but still tended to be reserved for travel photos and special occasions.

In 1963 Polaroid introduced instant colour film and like their contemporary instant black-and-white film, their first colour product was a negative-positive peel-apart process. The negative could not be re-used and was discarded. Interestingly, a problem arose when carelessly discarded, chemical-laden Polaroid negatives, began to accumulate, especially heavily at the prettiest, most photograph-worthy locations. Polaroid founder Edwin Land was horrified and promptly developed the later SX-70 system, which produced no separate negative to discard.

In the 1970’s, colour film prices were coming down, sensitivity had been improved and in most families colour had become the norm for snapshots. Black-and-white film continued to be used by some photographers who preferred it for aesthetic reasons but by 1980, black-and-white film in most formats as well as commercial developing and printing services, had nearly disappeared.

All forms of photography have evolved from monochrome photography. Colour film is black and white film with three layers of emulsion. Each layer has a coloured coupler that makes the resulting black metallic silver deposits in the negative respond to colours in the visible spectrum; red, green and blue. Digital photography employs a silicon sensor that records focused light falling onto it in much the same way that light rays reaching the film expose that portion of the film. So all photography has evolved from the original techniques created to record light rays onto silver halides.

Cosmic Photography Firsts

Delving into the history of photography undoubtedly unearths some interesting 'firsts' and milestones.  We as inhabitants of planet Earth have looked to the heavens since time began and marvelled at what lies out in the vastness of space. Astrophotography, the photography of celestial objects, has certainly played a part in making important discoveries and advancing our knowledge of the universe around us:  

January 2, 1839 - Louis Daguerre takes the first known photograph of the moon. Sadly the image does not survive as it was destroyed in a lab fire on March 8 of the same year. Capturing  this image would not have been an easy process, as it involved burning mercury and gold and required great skill in the application of liquids and emulsions. 

July 17, 1850 - Harvard Observatory captures Vega, the second brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere. Vega is the first star after the sun to ever be photographed, and the first to have it's spectrum, or range of electromagnetic radiation, measured. This lead to Vega being the baseline against which other stars are compared. 

February 18, 1930 the planet of Pluto was discovered as the result of a photograph by Clyde Tombaugh. Tasked with the job of finding proof of a mysterious ninth Planet X, Tombaugh took pairs of photographs of the night sky over a two week period in January 1930, then viewed them using a blink comparator, to rapidly switch between photographic plates with the hope of detecting any movement of an object's position in the sky.  This approach lead to the discovery of a possible moving object between the plates taken on January 23 and January 29. The movement was confirmed by a lesser quality image from January 2. Following further confirming photographs, news of the discovery was dispatched to Harvard Observatory on March 13.

Top Ten Travel Photographers Today

10. Elion Paz

Location: New York

Israeli born photographer, Elion Paz, started taking photos at just sixteen years of age after he was given a Canon AE-1 by his father. Paz travelled to the Far East and Australia in 1997. In Sydney, he assisted photographers with various projects ranging from portraits to commercial. He moved back home in 1999 opening up his own studio in Tel-Aviv. He is now living in Brooklyn and has started an interview-based photography project that documents vinyl collectors, Dust and Groove.

9. Justin Mott

Location: Hanoi, Vietnam

Editorial and Commercial photographer Justin Mott works throughout South-East Asia. He photographs for both personal projects and client assignments. Mott has worked for publications and companies including New York Times, Newsweek, TIME, Bloomberg and the Discovery Channel.

8. Jonas Bendiksen

Location: Oslo, Norway

Beginning his career at nineteen years of age, Jonas Bendiksen interned at Magnum’s London office before breaking out on his own. Bendiksen spent several years in Russia documenting stories on communities. His editorial client’s include National Geographic, Geo, Newsweek and the Rockefeller Foundation. He won the 2003 Infinity Award from the International Centre for Photography and first prize in the Pictures of the Year International Awards as well as several other awards for his work. His work on life in a Nairobi slum, Kiera, which was published in the Paris Review, won a National Magazine Award in 2007.

7. Jessica Sample

Location: Los Angeles

Jessica Sample, a Los Angeles based photographer has studied at Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design and the International Centre of Photography. Sample has acted as the Deputy Photo Editor of Travel and Leisure, prior to her solo photography career. In addition to Travel and Leisure, her long list of clients includes Conde Nast Traveller, National Geographic Traveller, Food and Wine, GQ, The Wall Street Journal and Hemispheres among others.

6. Jake Stangel

Location: San Francisco

Jake Stangel, a San Francisco based photographer, has shot for numerous magazines and companies including The Atlantic, New York Magazine, Esquire, Travel and Leisure, Wired, Nike, Burton, Zara and Wieden and Kennedy.

5. Tim Clinch

Location: England/France/Bulgaria

If he’s not travelling he divides his time between England, France and Bulgaria. Tim Clinch has worked for various publications including Conde Nast Traveller, Forbes, Town and Country and Home and Garden. At the moment Clinch is working on a new project with food writer, Kate Hill, about South West France and its food culture.

4. Marie Takahashi

Location: Tokyo

Specializing in interiors, food and travel photography, Marie Takahashi is a Tokyo based photographer who studied at Nihon University College of art and graduated with a degree in photography. Her work has appeared in many Tokyo publications including Hemispheres and AFAR.

3. Emily Mott

Location: West Sussex, England

Mott studied at Dartmouth College as well as at the Art Centre College of Design in California. The UK based photographer has been featured in many magazines including The New Yorker, Travel and Leisure, Conde Nast Traveller, Esquire, Vogue UK, GQ, Wired and Savure.

2. Chris Testani

Location: New York

Growing up in New York, Testani studied cinema and photography at Ithaca College. He assisted photographers like Mark Seliger and Ilan Rubin, before beginning his own career as a photographer. He publication clients include AFAR, Destinations, Bon Appetite, Esquire and Glamour among others. Testani made PDN’s list of 30 photographers to watch in 2012.

1.      John Huba

Location: New York

Huba is a travel and portrait photographer who has worked for clients including Vanity Fair, Town and Country and Travel and Leisure. He brings a visual authenticity to his photographs, immersing the viewer into the subject’s culture. John Huba first discovered his excitement for travel photography when he was learning the trade under the great fashion photographer, Bruce Weber.

George Eastman's Legacy

George Eastman

In the 125 years since it’s beginning, George Eastman and the Eastman Kodak Company arguably had a bigger influence on photography than anyone in history and Eastman is today recognized for the innovative contributions he made toward photography.

Perhaps the most important advancement in photographic processing came in 1884 when George Eastman produced film technology. Eastman; an American philanthropist and entrepreneur secured a patent for the first functional, dry photographic film in roll form, and it became known as ‘Eastman American film’.

The Kodak (1888)

He went on to found the Eastman Kodak Company, one of the first companies to mass-produce photography equipment, and in 1888, Eastman patented the first publicly affordable camera, the ‘Kodak’, with the slogan; ‘You press the button – we do the rest.’ This camera held 100 exposures of film, and once exposed, the entire device was returned to the Kodak company to have its film processed and re-loaded. Eastman’s first Kodak camera marked the birth of amateur, snap-shot photography, a market that the company aimed their products toward for decades to come.

Kodak developed the famous ‘Brownie’ camera series, numerous film variations and processes, as well as producing film for the growing motion picture business. As the company grew, however, so did Eastman’s obsession with the legacy he would leave. Having never married and fathering no children, Eastman saw Kodak as his life’s work and for what he would be remembered. He began to donate much of his fortune although continuing to have a heavy involvement in the Kodak company until his retirement in 1925.

 

Eastman with Thomas Edison 

Eastman’s walk slowed to a gradual shuffle and he found difficulty standing straight. Suffering with spinal stenosis, a degenerative bone disease, He became somewhat of a recluse in later years, confessing; ‘there isn’t much to live for’. On March 14, 1932, while lying in bed, Eastman (aged 77) fired a single bullet into his heart and took his own life, leaving a note that read:

‘To my friends;

My work is done,

Why wait?’

Thousands gathered to mourn George Eastman, he had provided many people with successful careers, helped to improve cities and schools yet he had also created an affordable way to visually capture warm, simple and happy moments in an individuals life and preserve them for reminiscence, a radical idea for the time, one that became the legacy of George Eastman's life.

iPhoneography, Instagram, and the Social Media

Every sunset, cloud, meal and moment this life can muster will be captured, filtered and shared thanks to inumerous smartphones on hand at any given time. Finally, we had access to devices with acceptable megapixels, speed and digital functionality that allowed us to leave the home without a 'bulky' stand alone camera, and better yet they allowed us to instantaneously share all that we could see. While mobile phones have had cameras since well before the smartphone era, this desire to capture life as often as possible only came into being in the iPhone era.

iPhoneography has stirred up a fair bit of controversy in the recent past, especially in the world of journalism. The concerns have revolved around two main issues - the first being the experimental growth of 'citizen journalism'. Suddenly, everyone you know has a 10MP camera in their pocket at all times, at the ready for any newsworthy event that may unfold before them. In the ten minutes it takes for the professional photojournalist to get into the action and capture a few photos with their pricey DSLR, Frank's iPhone has already snapped 15 photos and videos, uploaded them to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube, and already hit 130 likes.

The second debatable concern is the use of filter apps, such as Instagram and Hipstamatic. Though these two apps can create great opportunities, their filters can be seen as the antithesis of creativity. They make all photos look the same, they require nearly no thought or creative input; one click and you're done.

As a growing trend, it is comparable to other things that succeeded on the web as well. Why did YouTube grow so successfully on the internet? It gave people a place where they could always find something great to share; and they allowed us to take those videos and talk about them however and wherever we liked.

Is the digital world swallowing up creative industries like such as photography, writing and video-making, or is it opening up new dimensions for us instead? Let us know what you think.

World Photography Day: August 19

"You don't just take a photograph, you make it" 

Since its inception in 2009, August 19 is the day set aside to celebrate the love of photography -  the day in 1839 on which the French Government officially announced that the daguerreotype process, invented in January the same year, would be a gift free for the world to use. 

Founder Korske Ara states “I believe that a photograph has the power to tell stories, freeze memories, inspire generations and initiate change. 

I’m passionate about photography and the ability it has to change the world.”

How can you get involved in 2013? 

By submitting a photo to the official website - World Photography Day has hosted an online gallery since 2010, to which avid photographers are invited to submit their work. The gallery is open each year from August 19 - 26 here.

Check the Calendar for events happening near you - Planning on hosting an event? Curious to know what is happening in your local area? The official calendar has all the information you will need. 

Plan a photo adventure - World Photography Day is the perfect time to photograph that one location you have always wanted to, but never have. 

Go on a photography date - When the one you love also has a passion for photography, what could be better than planning a date for August 19 to share it. 

Lose yourself in a great photography book - Learn something new about photography, and discover a myriad of interesting historical facts about photography. The official World Photography Day website  recommends The Art of Photography and Photo Inspiration: Secrets Behind Stunning Images. 

The Official World Photography Day Website