Five Tips for Taking Better Summer Vacation Photos
I shoot in rather harsh conditions. In fact, I have based most of my career on the cold. For me as a professional, this often means long nights, chilly mornings, and camping in front of a tripod while waiting for conditions to level off. But it’s worth it: sometimes, in order to build order, you have to put yourself in an abnormal situation.
Maybe it means wading into the river to capture your friend jumping into it, or taking a very long detour to get the angle you want for the sunset. Putting that extra time and energy into shooting them can really make the difference between creating something you just love or something you really enjoy. Like this image from my recent trip to Yosemite:
Or this one, which took a significant amount of effort to achieve. I spent hours outside in the freezing cold and wind, hardly slept and ate mostly energy bars. But I got it:
With that in mind, here are five of my top tips to keep in mind when creating better images:
- Check your corners! Make sure there is nothing awkward or distracting in your composition. It is much easier to just tweak the composition than it is to delete items in a post.
- Use a polarizer . I use polarizers in most of my work. They add saturation to your colors and reduce glare to make things appear more natural and less harsh. I really love what they do with images and I recommend everyone to try them out.
- Post-processing is really important, but do it with a purpose. Images directly from the body rarely reflect what can be seen with the naked eye. I don’t do many major edits; Basically I’m just trying to get my images closer to how I perceived them. I use Lightroom for most of the post-processing, but I really like Macphun Noiseless Pro for its noise reduction on these noisy night shots, as it performs better than most noise reduction apps.
- Buy a sturdy tripod. Without it, you can’t shoot anything at night or a landscape. I take mine for every shoot.
- Finally, don’t forget to have fun with it! Sometimes we get so caught up in photography that we forget to enjoy the moment. I am a big supporter of shooting small equipment and try to participate as much as possible in what is happening behind my photos.
Remember that sometimes your enthusiasm can be the best tool in your arsenal.