Part of traveling is taking shots of where you are to share with friends and loved ones back home. And with the explosion of high quality camera phones and low costs automated shooters, everyone is in a position to take lots of shots no matter where they are.
The questions is, are the photos any good? If the goal is to have lasting memories that remind you of the time you spent on that once in a lifetime trip, you want to know that the pictures actually reflect the fun and amazing time you had.
This means, you need to know how to take great shots when you travel. You might be thinking that you have to take a photography course to be a good photographer like Shahriar Ekbatani, and if you want to be a professional like him, this is definitely the case. But if your goal is only to take good shots when you travel and not have yourself hating yourself because you did not get a good shot, then these tips will be really helpful to you:
Picture Composition
Picture composition pertains to what you actually have in your shot. This means what you have is your subject. Your subject needs to be the thing that is the most prominent or compelling thing that you are looking at. As an example, if you are looking at a beautiful gothic church, make sure that your picture focuses on that church. You should aim to get the entire church or at least as much of it as you can within the frame so that anyone viewing the picture understands that it was your target.
Be mindful of other things in the picture weather it is in the foreground or the background. Make sure that you do not have people in the picture doing strange things, or other things that might distract from the subject of your picture. To be sure check your picture after you take it. If you noticed anything distracting in it simply take another picture. Your picture composition will often determine whether it is a good shot or not.
The Perfect Moment
Some pictures recognized as great ones, are recognized that way because they were perfectly timed. It might be a mother kissing a baby, a bird in flight, the smile of a handsome man, or the perfect sunset coming over the horizon. When you are taking pictures you need to look for perfect moments. This may require that you wait for some time before you actually take your picture. Believe me your patience will be rewarded because the timing will make all the difference between a decent shot and a great one..
A good habit to adopt when shooting is to always take more than one picture of a subject. These days digital memory is very inexpensive so you can afford to take as many shots as you like without having to worry about additional cost. The more shots you take the more you have to choose from. If you take a group of every important shot, you can be sure that there will be one in the group that is perfect it.
Color
Some of the best photos are not in color. Changing the color on a photo add to the mood Kama feeling, and beauty of the picture. Consider using black and white, and other tones for your photos when you want to set a particular mood or create a specific memory. Modern cameras today have settings that allow you to change the color of the picture after its shot. Experiment with the many filters that your camera offers and you may find a new color that adds to your shots.
Light
Light is one of the most difficult things to judge in a picture and yet it is perhaps the factor that determines most the quality of a shot. Learning how to use lighting takes time and a quick thing to know is that if it looks too dark, it will look darker in your camera. So any time you can add light to a shot do it. Take a shot and have a look at the picture you took. Never assume it will look fine when lighting is an issue. If you need some pointer on how to work with light, go on youtube for some tutorials.
