Travel Photography How To

All Photos by Peter McGowan

Taken from the viewpoint of one who clearly loves the outdoors, Peter McGowan's images of water sports draw the viewer in and make you feel the excitement of the open sea.

The azure blue skies, bright sands and dramatic coastlines of beaches have long been favorite travel photo subjects. These images often appear in travel brochures, calendars and posters, and make us long for vacations in exotic locales. It's easy to capture the beauty of beaches if you keep a few basic concepts in mind.

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It wasn’t long ago that I began to notice I had competition—and I’m not talking about other travel photographers.

Anyone who loves shooting scenics probably enjoys capturing the grandeur of mountains. As with most landscapes, it's best to photograph mountain scenery very late in the afternoon or very early in the morning. Some of the best high-country photos are shot by photographers who get up before daybreak or stop shooting only after dark. You'll find that an otherwise...

There is no place on the bucket lists of more landscape photographers than California’s Yosemite National Park. Nowhere else in the world can a photographer find such a concentration of waterfalls, dramatic rock formations, enormous trees, great light, and easy access shooting. Who hasn’t seen amazing shots of El Capitan and Half Dome and thought, “I need to shoot there someday.”

One challenge with outdoor photography is that landscape scenes tend to be complicated, often confusing viewers and directing their gaze away from your main subject. One of the best methods for simplifying a busy photo is to blur the background, thereby emphasizing what you consider the key point of the shot.

Making complex masks and precise selections can be an intricate chore especially, if you’re using a Raw editor in Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw. That’s why one pro turns to a Photoshop trick whenever he needs accurate control over a specific area in an image.