The Easiest Ways to Take Better Vacation Photos
Most people don’t use their phone cameras to try to express their artistic vision; we just want cool photos from vacations and family get-togethers. But casual, candid photos of most people are pretty bad. Luckily, improving your photography skills is easy—you don’t need to take a serious course in photography to noticeably improve as a photographer. You can make even the simplest photos more interesting and memorable by following a few simple steps.
Make sure there is someone in the photo
This is the first and most important rule of everyday or vacation photography: we love looking at photos of people.
Vacationers tend to take pictures of interesting things – landscapes, monuments, etc. – but this does not make interesting photographs. A photo of the Eiffel Tower or a beautiful sunset is boring because it doesn’t tell a story, but photos of “Clark drinking wine in front of the Eiffel Tower” or “Braden standing in front of the Christmas tree” inherently tell stories.
Even if you’re traveling alone, a selfie-style shot with an interesting item in the background is almost always better than just the item itself.
You probably need to get closer
Most amateur photographs can be improved if the photographer takes a step closer to the subject. Too much negative space in a photograph creates a feeling of coldness, and moving closer to it is more likely to result in a feeling of “you’re there with me” in the viewer. So fill the frame.
How to Capture More Natural Expressions of Emotion
If you’ve ever wondered why people in photographs often look staid or lifeless, it’s most likely because the “smile” they’re told to put on is a forced expression. Or they pose unnaturally, in their opinion, this only makes them look better. This is someone smiling with their mouth, not their whole face. But if you take a photo of someone genuinely smiling, happiness will emanate from them, creating a more natural and interesting image. Same thing with a real facial expression instead of a rigid pose.
Here’s my personal secret to photographing genuine smiles: Instead of saying “say cheese!” or something like that, I say, “Okay, I want you to look completely sad, like this is the most depressing vacation ever,” or “look like you’re really mad at each other.” The result will be fun photos of your sad and angry family on vacation, but more importantly, they will inevitably crack after you take the photo, allowing you to take a second photo of people having fun without a care in the world. For example: My family in Hawaii:
Wicked:
Happy:
Pay attention to the light source
“These photos are backlit,” you might say, and you’re right. The photos might have turned out better if the sunlight had hit in front of my subjects, lighting up their features, rather than behind them, making them darker – but that’s where we sat.
When shooting, pay attention to the light, but don’t let it stop you: you can still take beautiful, random shots if you don’t do everything “perfectly”, and it’s easier to capture a random moment if you don’t. shuffling everyone around so much that you become annoying. You can also use backlighting to your advantage to take cool silhouette style photos, as you can see below.
Lines behind your subject
When taking a photo, look behind your subject. Try to find lines in the background—whether it’s the walls and ceiling or the horizon and the ground—and try to place your subject where those lines intersect. See the photo above for an example. The viewer’s gaze subconsciously follows the lines of the sea and sky, and they “lead” to the subject of the photograph. Here’s what it looks like if you don’t bother:
Just crouching down to get away from eye level and using natural lines to point towards your subject really makes a difference.
Take a lot of photos
You no longer have to pay for film or development, so you can take as many photos as you want. Use Boost mode if your phone has it. Move. Try different angles. Experiment. Ignore every rule you try to follow. Later, you can discard the bad photos and keep only the good ones.
Go beyond eye level
Most amateur photos are taken at eye level because that’s where you hold the camera, but try raising or lowering the angle to add interest and get different effects.
Composition: Center and the rule of thirds.
If you place the subject of your photos in the middle of the frame, you’ll do better than most. But if you want to make things a little more interesting, use the rule of thirds. Imagine that the image is divided equally into thirds both vertically and horizontally. Then take a photo of the subject at the point where the lines connect. Phone cameras often have a grid built into the “viewfinder” to make things easier. Don’t worry if you leave. You can trim it later (more on this below) and often place the object where it should be.
Trimming and patching
Smartphones make cropping and color grading incredibly easy, without you having to know what you’re doing. The iPhone camera’s built-in Magic Wand tool will automatically fix your photos and almost always make them look better than before, and you can easily crop your photos. This allows you to play with composition, get closer to your subjects, and otherwise correct your messiness.
If you decide to take photography more seriously, there are plenty of tools to help you “fix it in post,” but for casual vacation shots, just these two simple tools will noticeably up your game.