As a digital photographer and filmmaker, I thought I’d share some of my knowledge of this in this installment of our travel blog so that you can benefit from what will help when you take your vacation photos. There are a number of things I have learned over the years that help you get the best photos while on vacation. If you keep them in mind, you just mind end up with a better vacation portfolio than you have in the past.
How to Take the Best Vacation Photos
Follow these simple steps to improve your travel photos:
- Don’t take “everything.” Professional photographers will tell you that they only use about 3 out of every 10 photos they get. This is a pretty low average for a professional, but that’s what they say. So take enough shots that you can pick from, but don’t waste digital card space on lost shots. Take the time to focus well, compose the shot, and look at the result. With digital photos, the beauty is that you can always look in the camera to see how you did before deciding if you want to keep it or not.
- Consider what is important. When taking landscape pictures and photos of monoliths or great landmarks, make sure and hit the highlights. You can’t take everything, so choose the attractions you want to include in your vacation album and shoot accordingly.
- When getting people shots, make sure you get lots of them. You want to remember who was on vacation with you and many of them may also want copies of the pictures. So take lots of photos of the people on vacation with you doing various things, especially while at key landmarks. This will give you plenty of family and people pics to include in your family vacation albums.
- Take pictures of specific location signs. When you enter Colorado, for example, stop a minute and take a picture of the road sign that says, “Welcome to Colorful Colorado.” This can serve as a starting point for DVD menus and slideshows later when you are organizing your media for your final production.
- Organize your media as soon as you get home. Take it from me, when you do a lot of media, it’s easy to lose track of it over time! So organize it into neat folders on your desktop as soon as you get home. Another option is to utilize “Cloud” storage or an external hard drive such as Seagate. That way, it will be easier to organize the photos for your DVD slideshows and label them according to the different locations you visited.
Taking the Best Vacation Photos Recap
Just a little organization, thoughtful photo composition, and planning can go a long way when it comes to getting those winning vacation shots. Include plenty of pictures of important sites, people, and landmarks. But, most of all, have fun. Though the staff at Skycap News has lots of ideas on how to improve your vacation photos or vacation experience, the important thing is that you enjoy it and do it your way! We just thought these tips might help a bit when taking vacation pictures. Happy traveling! See you in the movies. . . Ready, Set, Action!