What are the travel photography tips?

What are the travel photography skills?

Nowadays, digital cameras have become essential equipment for people to travel. Many people like to record the scenery during their journey, the unusual things that happen along the way, and the unusual people they meet. When taking pictures of scenery during a trip, you often need to rely on a mask. When the weather is good and the place is nice, you will make the film.

Now, let’s take a look at the ten most common mistakes in travel photography.

Don’t do your homework before departure

Traveling always needs to be planned. If you are traveling with a group, then you can worry less. If you travel independently, if you don’t do your homework, You will feel sleepy during the trip, which may be a waste of time at best, or refer to "Tai_" at worst. So do your homework before setting off and have a smooth trip and return. Traveling is about happiness. Smooth is best.

To do your homework, of course, you must first understand the various conditions of the destination, including transportation, accommodation, weather, temperature, humanities, attractions, food, etc. In the past, you had to consult books for these things, but now you just need to look at other people's itineraries online and learn from them, which is basically enough.

Transportation has always been a big problem. To solve the transportation and accommodation problems, even if you have prepared most of the travel, the rest depends on how you want to play. But when it comes to taking pictures, you have to do your homework after all, for example When it comes to going to the beach, then the camera must consider its waterproof properties. If you still want to take pictures, a rugged camera is indispensable.

When choosing scenic spots, you also need to do your homework in advance. What are the beautiful places in which seasons? These are the preparations that must be made to take good photos. For example, in Japan, you can enjoy cherry blossoms in March and red leaves in November. . If you are going to these seasonal attractions, you need to prepare the travel days and specific itinerary in advance.

What kind of equipment you should bring for travel photography is also related to the local environment and humanities. If it is a scenic spot with open terrain, you can bring telephoto equipment to take close-ups from a distance. If it is a city with many high-rise buildings, then short to medium focal lengths will be more suitable. In short, doing your homework before traveling, whether taking photos or not, is a very important process.

Go with the crowd when traveling

Traveling is inevitable with crowds of people, especially during holidays. There are so many people. If you want to take photos, you are usually defeated by the people in the photos, and in the end you can’t. Don't give up on leaving a photo or something.

In fact, if you want to take good photos when traveling, sometimes it is necessary to give up popular attractions. There are always some good places with few people and beautiful scenery in tourist areas. These places are usually because It is not a popular attraction and is not widely publicized. The end result is that more people go to places where there are more people. Going out to play turned into seeing people. And it was so crowded that I lost my mood for traveling, let alone taking photos.

There are many advantages to not following the crowd, and it does not mean that you should completely avoid popular attractions. 24 hours a day, there are always free times when there are fewer people. It is also a good idea to take advantage of these times to visit major attractions. choose. Taking a niche route will make you feel a lot more relaxed, except that you can finally take photos. There is no need to queue up for consumption.

Taking pictures without opening the lens cap

This sounds like a very silly thing, but in fact many people do it. Many people who use SLR cameras make this mistake. kind of error. As soon as I turned on the camera, I couldn't see anything, then I complained that the camera was broken, and finally found that the lens cap was not open.

Those situations where the picture is not displayed without opening the lens cover are already very embarrassing. If you are using a rangefinder camera, such as a Leica, then the consequence of not opening the lens cover is often that there is no problem with the view. I am very excited. After taking the photo, I found that the lens cap was not open and nothing was captured. And if you always use your Leica to hang around in the crowd for a long time without opening the lens cap, you may feel humiliated by the sharp looks from others.

Not opening the lens cover usually just looks a little silly, but for some compact cameras, not opening the lens cover will block the extension of the telescopic lens, which may cause damage to the lens assembly.

Not willing to take two steps for composition

Many people love zoom lenses because they are easy to use, especially those with large zoom lenses, which are particularly popular among ordinary users. Of course, the image quality of such large zoom lenses is usually not very popular. It’s good for recording travel. Photography players are not very fond of this type of product. There will be more people using small zoom and fixed focus lenses.

The convenience of a zoom lens lies in the ease of composition, but even a zoom lens has a zoom range, beyond which you cannot compose the picture as you like. This is the so-called limitation of the lens. For those who use zoom lenses from the beginning, once the viewing range of the zoom lens cannot meet the composition requirements, they think that the picture cannot be taken by themselves, and they rarely feel like taking two extra steps. You can complete a satisfactory shooting. Especially those who buy kit lenses, once they find that the distant scenery cannot be well composed, they are thinking about buying a telephoto lens. In fact, it is more effective to take two more steps.

Except when you really want to take pictures of the scenery across the river, where you can usually make the composition more perfect by just taking two steps, the principle of zooming by walking is still very practical. A zoom lens can provide some convenience in composition, but when a zoom lens cannot meet the requirements, it is necessary to move to get a better composition.

Don’t dare to use high ISO to take pictures

Anyone who knows a little bit about photography knows very well that high ISO will lead to poor image quality, so many people are worried about the deterioration of image quality. Because of the poor quality, I insisted on using a lower ISO to take photos, and ended up with a batch of photos that were blurry due to shaking. For some friends, in order to pursue better picture quality, they would rather act reluctantly.

Taking photos is a very casual thing. If you are restricted by so-called rules and regulations, the final photos will be unsatisfactory. There is no fixed rule on whether to use high ISO to take photos. It is important to pursue high image quality, but you cannot put the cart before the horse. If you use a lower ISO to take photos to maintain high image quality, you will only be able to take one picture because the shutter speed is not enough. As for blurry photos, this is not worth the gain.

Today’s digital cameras all talk about improving the image quality. To put it bluntly, it means improving the image quality under high ISO, because there is not much difference between most cameras under low ISO. Whether the image quality of a camera is the same Well, the main thing is to look at the imaging performance under high ISO. Nowadays, cameras with ISOs up to 6400 are at usable levels. In most environments with poor lighting, using high sensitivity to shoot has a higher success rate, and the image quality is guaranteed. Judging from the current performance of the new camera, there are only a few people who are afraid to use it because they are worried that high light sensitivity will affect the image quality. There is no need to worry too much and miss out on shooting.

Take night scenes without a tripod

A tripod is an important accessory for photography. For serious photographers, almost all photos should be taken with a tripod, but those with sufficient light In an environment where the shutter speed is fast enough, even without a tripod, a high shooting success rate can be guaranteed. But that’s not the case for night scene photography.

When taking photos at night, the light is basically not guaranteed for handheld shooting. Unless you have a pair of iron hands, if you want to take good night photos, you can only obtain a higher shutter speed by increasing the ISO, or even say Even if you increase the ISO, there is no guarantee that the shutter speed will meet the requirements. Therefore, a tripod is an essential accessory for shooting night scenes.

When shooting night scenes at low ISO, the shutter speed usually exceeds 1 second, so not only the support of a tripod is required, but also the stability of the tripod is also required. Those that can guarantee tens of seconds A tripod that is stable and free of minor shakes is a must-have for night scene shooting equipment for photography enthusiasts. Even if ordinary camera users have lower requirements, it is still important to have a tripod for night scene photography.

SLR cameras use automatic transmission to shoot

In the eyes of many people, SLR cameras are artifacts for taking pictures and are top-notch photographic equipment. I thought that if I bought a SLR camera, I could take satisfactory photos as I pleased while traveling. This wishful thinking is really called a mistake. Although SLR cameras have higher performance, they also have higher requirements for users. It is not a camera that can be used immediately and requires some knowledge of photography.

In the field of SLR cameras, mid- to low-end products are usually equipped with automatic transmission and other specific scene modes. It is a mistake to think that these modes can be as intelligent as compact cameras. Although the principle of automatic transmission on a SLR camera is similar to that of an ordinary compact camera, the settings of the SLR camera itself are biased toward professionalism. Therefore, the automatic transmission applied to the SLR camera is not very smart. For example, there are only a few options for selecting the focus point. The focus point coverage is much less than that of compact cameras. If you use the automatic focus point selection function at will, sometimes you cannot focus on the place you want to achieve focus. When judging whether to use flash, you often cannot control it as you wish, and the photos you take will naturally have various problems.

The most commonly used gears on SLR cameras are the four gears M/A/S/P, including manual and semi-automatic exposure gears. These gears allow the SLR camera to be used more freely. Of course You also need to have a certain understanding of photography. If you don't know it, the best thing to do is not to set it to automatic, but to learn it first, and read the manual for the operation of the camera.

The flash is used as the main light source to take pictures

Flash is found on many cameras, and this convenient fill-light tool is useful in many situations. Especially when there is insufficient light, having a flash allows you to take higher-quality photos under insufficient conditions.

However, the flash is not omnipotent. Its flash effect will be affected by the power and lighting angle, so we say that the flash is used as fill light. If in an environment, there is only one light source, the flash, as lighting. The photos taken in this situation are usually terrible, and this happens all the time when traveling. At this time, other settings need to be used to make up for it.

Generally speaking, when using flash, the exposure parameters of the camera itself are used to adjust the exposure of the background, while the exposure of the subject is determined by the camera exposure parameters and the power of the flash** *Same decision. However, the lighting capabilities of flash are limited. If you use flash to shoot in a dark environment, and the power of the flash is not enough to illuminate the background, then the subject will be bright and the background will be dark. Whether this kind of photo looks good or not, you will know after taking it.

Therefore, if you want to increase the background brightness, you can increase the aperture, slow down the shutter speed and increase the ISO. After the background exposure is increased, the subject's exposure does not require too much flash lighting. When the subject is exposed, the flash compensation power required is at the rated power. Inside, the flash mainly acts as fill light, and the shooting effect at this time is better.

Lack of communication with the subjects

Many people want to take pictures of the local culture when they go out to take pictures. If they take pictures blindly, the subject will be unclear and the photos will be overshadowed. So if the photos are taken for local people, the documentary significance of the photos will be greater.

For this type of photos of people, it is best to communicate with the subject and take the photo with permission, which can reduce conflicts and friction. After all, people speculate, and most people are taboo about being photographed for no reason. If you shoot with the permission of the other person, the harmony will definitely be higher.

Don’t pay attention to the use of light when taking pictures

Photography is the art of using light. If there is no light, there will be no taking pictures. Therefore, when shooting on the road, you also need to pay attention to the use of light. Front light, side light, and backlight will have different shooting effects. Common overexposure, underexposure, and photos are either too bright or too dark. Usually, use automatic Or the result of using semi-automatic exposure without thinking. Even if you don’t plan to create something special, taking clear and beautiful photos still needs to be adapted to local conditions.

When shooting during travel, the light cannot be controlled at will. This is different from the precise lighting of studio shooting. You can only make good use of the ambient light on site. Generally speaking, when taking pictures in smooth lighting conditions, use automatic settings. It's still very safe. The light shines from behind you on the front of the subject. At this time, the light is even and the contrast is generally small. It is easier to take photos with accurate exposure and low contrast. This type of photo is less dramatic, but generally safer, and the automatic mode is no different.

Sidelight and backlight will cause greater contrast. At this time, you need to think about whether you want to retain the details of the subject or the background. If you can only choose one, how to control the exposure? . Generally speaking, if the subject is backlit, the outline of the subject will be illuminated and the foreground will be relatively underexposed. When shooting in automatic mode, the exposure will be automatically lowered to satisfy most bright scenes. If you need to make the details of the subject appear, use the exposure compensation function to increase the brightness until the subject is properly exposed, and observe the background. Whether it is seriously overexposed. Using reflectors and flashes to fill in the subject means reducing the contrast so that the details of the subject and background can be revealed. Regarding lighting techniques during travel, you still need to practice and accumulate experience.

Summary: The purpose of traveling is to be happy, and to take pictures is to be beautiful. No one wants to miss the opportunity to take pictures while traveling, so it is very important to use the camera in your hand well, no matter you are using a mobile phone Whether it is a compact camera or a SLR camera, mastering the necessary photography skills will allow you to better record your travels.