Travel photographer Graeme Green has spent the past 15 years touring the globe, capturing high-quality pix and reporting stories for global newspapers and magazines and The Sunday Times, BBC, The Guardian, The Sunday Telegraph, and National Geographic. He gave us his five Secrets to Taking Great Photos in the advance column. I spoke with Green again about Five Ways to Improve Your Travel Photography.
Graeme, what’s the most commonplace mistake that beginner travel photographers make?
I see various human beings arrive someplace with their camera, and they’re so excited by all the new and different things around them that they are trying to picture almost everything they see. That’s not enticing with a place in a significant manner, and when they get domestic, lots of those photographs don’t suggest a lot to them or everyone else.
Slow down, transfer your brain on, and take a chunk of time to stroll around and look around, perhaps even earlier than taking a photo. In my opinion, think about what you truly find thrilling about a place. It’ll make for more targeted, extra exciting photographs.
Rushing around photographing the whole lot is probably the method you’re now not spending much time composing each picture. Less is extra. A set of 20, in reality, authentic, placing photos that you certainly focused your mind on might be some distance more exciting to examine than two hundred hurriedly taken snaps. Certainly, editors are interested in a hard and fast of creative pics that say something about an area, in preference to loads of photographs that say nothing.
If I need tremendous photos, have I ditched the smartphone and invested in an actual digicam?
I rarely use a cellphone for images, but that’s especially because I don’t seem able to move for more than a few months on the street without smashing mine. Camera telephones can soak up color and be mildly distinctly nice. You can reap desirable results, particularly if you get innovative and avoid taking quick snapshots on the pass.
However, using a good camera opens up an international dimension of creativity, and if you invest a bit, it must assist you in getting higher outcomes. It’s no longer just about the camera frame but also shopping for the right lenses, making a huge distinction. Travel photography can be a high-priced business. It’s worth discovering drastically, earlier than spending some grand on equipment, and, if feasible, to check out a digicam or lens before purchasing it.
All that stated, I’ve been snapshots I took years ago on old, cheap, battered cameras or even on a plastic disc that I’m still happy with. A badly taken photograph on a top-of-the-range digicam remains an awful image. No amount of expensive gear can update creativity, a good eye, and hard work.
