Travel Photography How To

Summer or early fall is when many of us go on vacation, whether it's a quick weekend jaunt to the beach, a flight across the country, or a carefully planned international destination. So buckle up and spend the next nine minutes learning how to commemorate your trip with beautiful photographs rather than mere snapshots that quickly fade from memory.

Do you avoid using Lightroom’s powerful Tone Curves because you find them confusing or difficult to use? Well those days are over thanks to the simple tutorial below from Danish travel photographer Alex Bjorstorp.

Outdoor photography can be challenging for the best of us, with ever changing light, broad dynamic range, and a variety interesting objects at different portions of the scene. In the tutorial below one of our favorite travel and nature photographers discusses common shooting errors and explains how to avoid them.

Given a choice, most outdoor photographers prefer to shoot at the beginning or end of the day. At Blue Hour, just before sunrise, the landscape is bathed in soft, cool tones, while at Golden Hour, just after sunset, beautiful warm tones prevail.

The September 25, 2016, issue of The New York Times Magazine was titled "The Voyages" Issue, and it featured an impressive collection of images. In the introduction to the issue, the writer Gideon Lewis-Kraus talks about the idea of the image as document or experience: this is what a place looks like as opposed to this is what it feels like to be there. He notes the cliché of “the traveler so busy with documentation that he misses out on some phantom called the ‘experience itself.’”

Nighttime is often the right time for making dramatic images, especially if you know how to utilize long exposures to your advantage. And if you need some inspiration to give this technique a try, feast your eyes on these gorgeous shots from a British travel photographer.

Travel and nature photographer John Shaw lives his dream, traveling the world with his camera, without deadlines or obligations. His images go toward stock sales worldwide, in addition to being used in his many books. While he doesn’t shoot on assignment, magazine editors familiar with Shaw’s work will come to him when needed, or he’ll occasionally pitch story ideas to them when planning a trip.