I sat down to write this blog with the intention of giving advice on shooting travel photography, my planning titles included, What do consider when purchasing equipment, e.g size, weight, durability and battery life, Planning your trip around locations and what to consider on your trip e.g security, accessibility to your gear, editing programs right down to travel insurance for your gear. Regardless of what your are shooting on or with - DSLR, drone, film, point and shoot GoPro or your smartphone none of this really matters.
So what comes to mind when you think of travel photography?
Portraits of people you meet along the way? Is that it?
Or maybe a pretty landscape? A photo of sunset with a bird flying, perhaps? That must cut it, right?
Or maybe a photo of an extremely cute monkey and its family grazing in a fruity tree? Surely!
What if I tell you that’s not it? What if I tell you that everything you thought of, is everything that’s wrong?
I just arrived back from a 10 day trip in Sri Lanka. My second day in I faced a crisis as a photographer. I forgot which way the lenses went and where the shutter button was. Why? I was in a place that’s extremely popular. All the photos I felt the urge to shoot, someone had already shot. Think about it. People have seen it all a million times. Vast mountain ranges, glistening snow, rare wildlife, intimate portraits, winding roads, breathtaking sunsets, stretching horizons, glorious peaks. That’s it? If it was that easy, everybody would make money off it, right?
I stopped and sat down to smell the metaphorical roses, and asked myself what is something every photographer, beginner or pro, could do to give an edge to their photos? How do you see, how do you understand and how do you shoot your environment in a way that hasn't been done before? How your vision and your character reflects in your photos defines you as a photographer. And maybe even too as a person.
"So from now on, every picture i stop to shoot, I will question why. And how."
The why tells you if what you want to shoot is worthy of your effort. You don't want to spend time trying to recreate something that has been done plenty of times before, and you do it anyway.
The how lets you get the best out of yourself and brings out your sense of character and style.
"THE PHOTOS FROM YOUR CAMERA ARE LIKE THE WORDS THAT COME OUT OF YOUR MOUTH — MAKE THEM COUNT AND KNOW WHEN TO BE QUIET. MY PARENTS WOULD OFTEN TELL ME, IF I DIDN’T HAVE ANYTHING NICE OR CONSTRUCTIVE TO SAY IT'S BETTER TO SHUT-UP."
I promised myself that for the rest of the trip I'll resist the urge to take out my camera so often, and only do it when it really matters.
I will be carrying my black, pocket-sized notebook (otherwise known as my iPhone) as if it was an accessory mounted to my camera. This 'notebook' is what I turned to when I sat down to start writing this article. It's filled with words, sentences and letters, I use it to write down the addresses and names of the restaurants and hotels I’m visiting, time schedules or names of traditional meals, straight forward stuff. So all of those facts are available, for myself and everyone else.
I soon realised that the most important words to jot down are the details you can’t Google. How it feels like to visit that particular place, what the food smelt like or how the waiter ended up with that scar on his upper lip. The goal is to collect something that not everyone (actually only the people that visited the exact same spot as you) knows.
Why should you go through the effort to take notes? The most obvious reason is that it could earn you money when you’re back home, right?
The thing is, it’s usually a lot easier to sell your photos if you’re able to package it together with some context. You need to be good at writing too! It doesn’t have to be thousands and thousands of words, simple and straight forward writing is good writing. Flip through any travel magazine and you’ll realise that the length varies.
Even if you don’t plan to take up writing blogs when you get back home, the act of note-taking will give you much greater travel experience! Picking up your notebook and spending a few minutes now and then, jotting down what is happening around you, will make you more aware. Suddenly, you realise what the surroundings offer far more than you first thought. You will start to notice the colours of the walls or the sounds of the kitchen.
"A CRAPPY TRAVEL ARTICLE IS MISSING THE SAME THING A CRAPPY TRAVEL PHOTO IS; CONNECTION AND CONTEXT."
Make sure you jot down loads of quotes from different people and get background information from the people you talk to. This will not only help you remember what someone said for later, it will also make you extremely present in each moment, something that is very rare these days.
For me, stopping for a while to write keywords and descriptions has almost been meditative. I helps me to resist the urge to rush off to the next town or landmark. Hopefully in future I'll be able to travel in full. To dig deeper and appreciate even the tiny fragments that a lot of people miss out on.
To discuss your next photography adventure get in touch with me. Otherwise find more of my photography on instagram @iambrycejay or, naturally, on our Travel Shack blog, plus on Facebook and Instagram.