Travel Photography How To

We’re all familiar with the notion that the best time to shoot landscapes is early during Blue Hour or late in the day at Golden Hour. But what if you get the photography itch in the middle of a summer’s day?

Vacation photos are often some of the most boring collections known to viewer. Who among us hasn't had to suffer through an overly long slide show (via traditional projector or computer "slide show"), or envelope after envelope of prints when a friend returns from a vacation? Here are a few tips to keep your friends from suffering this fate.

Vacation Tips

1. Take plenty of film...

Easy-to-carry travel tripods are more popular than ever, as photographers have turned to mirrorless cameras and correspondingly small lenses to lighten their load. The challenge is finding an appropriately robust model that doesn’t sacrifice stability, quality and features—just to be small.

It’s often difficult to achieve precise colors in landscape photos, depending upon lighting conditions and the background of a scene. But in this editing tutorial you’ll learn how to render beautiful colors and more.

One reason landscape photography is so challenging is that outdoor scenes tend to be very complicated. Not only is there often a wide range of tones, but composition can be difficult when there are several important objects from foreground to background.

It’s often a case of hurry up and wait. I’ll hurry to a location—often it’s a beach, while it’s still dark, and with a flashlight to guide me I’ll check out where the rocks and tide are. Then I decide on the location for the camera and select the lens that will best tell the story.

Regardless of the type of images you shoot most, it’s a good bet that sooner or later you’ll try your hand at landscape photography if you haven’t already. And whether or not you’re experienced at outdoor photography, you can greatly improve your results by avoiding a few harmful mistakes.