A series of Travel Photography Tips that will help you improve your photography for free. This is numero uno!
One of the things you learn over the years as a photographer, is that how-to guides, magazine articles and manufacturers’ advertising don’t always tell you everything you need to know about photography. Don’t get me wrong. These are often excellent sources of information and you will learn a huge amount by reading them, but a camera manufacturer is not going to tell you that you don’t need the latest camera (or that their competitors’ models also work well). Similarly, many magazines are primarily dependent on advertising, so promoting the latest camera models is going to be a large part of their content. Sponsorship and affiliation is a major part of the revenue flow for many photographers; this doesn’t mean that their advice is biased, but one should always be aware of who is actually paying for these ‘free’ articles. So, there’s no gear sponsorship here; if I’m promoting anything it’s my fine art or canvas prints. My intention is that this will be a series of unbiased articles to learn help you learn travel photography.
Talk to people
Talking to strangers in the street is not always easy. You may not speak the language, you maybe can’t think of anything to say. A compliment or a question is always a good start. ‘Nice hat!’, or ‘what is the name of that fruit/musical instrument/decoration?‘ I am terrible at learning languages, but learning basic greetings, ‘what is your name’ and ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ go a long way to breaking barriers. Try to learn a little about the person before asking if you can take their picture.
Ask First!
I work quite a lot in the travel industry, so I often guide tour groups and see a great many more groups as I go. One of my pet hates is seeing tourists, or photographers, taking photographs of local people without asking, or even communicating with them at all. To me it is the ultimate in dehumanising and objectifying people, and it is very disrespectful. When we travel within different cultures it is, in my view, essential that we show respect and try to engage whenever possible. This is a win-win scenario, because most times people will be pleased by this, and your experience will be enriched. You will learn more, you may see more and you will probably end up with much better photographs. There will, of course, be times they say no. Respect their wishes. Sure there will be great looking photographs you don’t get, but put yourself in their shoes and think about how you might react if dozens of strangers started taking photographs of you without your permission.
Photographs are not simply…
Photographs are not simply .. ‘Here’s a picture of a foreign lady I took when I was in Nicaragua. She looked kinda interesting so I snapped a picture‘.
They mean so much more if you can make a connection, tell a story. Photography is often described as painting with light; and it adds so much more if you can paint a story, make an emotional connection.
‘This is Maria; she travels to the square every afternoon to sell woven hats to tourists. The hats are made by her mother and aunt; each one takes about two hours to make..’.
You can see, the first is disconnected, remote; the second is personal, it contains a small vignette of someone’s life. A life probably very different from your own. Of course the second costs more. It takes time, and a degree of courage to talk to a stranger. Who knows, they may reject you, they may try to scam you, they may refuse to let you take their picture, then what? Maybe you’re left silently cursing that you hadn’t simply taken the snap without asking, but in a World with millions more pictures then there are people on this planet, what would be the value of that disconnected snap? A few years ago, travelling in the Sierra Nevada mountains of Colombia, I walked around our camp in the evening. As I walked towards a clearing with a viewpoint I came upon a kogi couple. Kogis are one of the four ethnic tribes surviving in the mountains of Colombia. They are small, mostly around five foot, incredibly handsome people with long jet black and chiselled aristocratic features. They are almost always dressed entirely in white, in simple cotton and wool tunics. I had seen quite a few kogi while we had been walking, they had been polite but distant. This couple had a classic pose; the woman sitting on a rock, gazing in silence out across the foothills way below us as the sun edged towards the horizon, the man standing by her side, a rifle casually slung across his shoulder. I walked towards them, smiled and, gesturing to communicate, asked if I could take a photograph. The man shook his head, so I smiled, waved and walked away. Of course I could have taken the photograph before they saw me, then apologised, but I would always have known that was how I got the photograph.
The first picture may not be the one you want
So this is not a recipe for 100% success. It will not work every time. But when it does work the photographs will be far more valuable. One of the problems with this approach is the tendency of people to pose for the camera. Rather than asking then not to, which sometimes offends and sometimes results in stiff looking ‘natural’ poses, I find the best way is go along with it, take the posed shots, and keep talking. Often they will relax and forget about the camera, allowing you to take the images you actually want.
Buy the damn souvenirs!
I know many photographers are reluctant to pay for photographs. They sometimes feel it contributes towards ‘commodifying things’ or somehow ‘ripping off’ tourists. I have a different take on this. Very often the thing we want to take back most from an exotic trip are those special images. Those unique images of local engaged in their normal activities, so different from those back home. And that is why we pay thousands of dollars (euros, pounds, renminbi) to airlines, coach companies, hotels and tour guides, to get us there; and yet we resent parting with cash to the most essential, and often poorest, link in that chain, the photographic subject. So my take is this. They have something I want, therefore I am happy to trade. While I don’t actively encourage directly parting with cash for photographs – simply because in some places it can be ill-judged and have you surrounded by children or youths wanting their photograph taken – I do always aim to trade where possible. So where that person is selling souvenirs I will buy the hat, the leather bracelet, maybe the T shirt; we’ve all got family or friends we can offload them on if we don’t personally have space in our lives for it. There are also foods you can buy; buy the bananas, the strange looking fruit that you don’t know exactly what it is. I am a big coffee drinker, so I will try to buy local ground coffee or coffee beans. Try not to be the tourist that walks through the market, takes lots of photographs but buys nothing. For one thing, by buying one of their products you have already broken the ice, you’ve established a relationship – albeit brief – with that person. Crucially, you are not a tourist looking down on the attractions (for their perspective) you are now on an equal level. If you ask for a photograph at this point they are far more likely to be receptive, and you’ve contributed to the local economy, right at grassroots level where your dollar, peso or baht will have the biggest impact.
Photography Tuition
I’ve been running one to one photography tuition and small group photography tuition sessions for quite a few years now. Currently I’m in the process of updating my online photography tuition courses, so they are temporarily offline. Updates coming soon!
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Fine Art Landscape and Wildlife Prints
If you’ve read this far why not check out some of the prints for sale on my website. These include fine art paper prints (sold as unframed for you to chose your own frame, but can be sold framed and ready to hang if preferred) canvas wrap prints (ready to hang) and acrylic prints.
