How to Take Stunning Travel PhotosUsing his recent trip to Spain’s Granada Province, Michael Snell illustrates how to convey a sense of place during your own travels. |
Article by Jenn Gidman Images by Michael Snell |
The Granada Province in southern Spain is steeped in history and filled with architectural and natural wonders, from fortified Moorish palaces and the Berber terraces of the Alpujarras to the Iberian Peninsula's mountain ranges and the cave-dwellers of Guadix. |
Michael Snell recently traveled to this spectacular section of Andalusia with his Tamron 18-270mm VC PZD lens. "I carry two camera bodies with me," he says. "The 18-270 stays on one of my cameras the entire time. It's great to be able to use the full range of that lens at all times, which comes in so handy when I'm traveling. I can be shooting a wide landscape, but then suddenly I'll see something I want to photograph on the more telephoto end. The 18-270 allows me to do that without having to change lenses and potentially miss a shot. I leave the Vibration Compensation (VC) feature turned on all the time-it's especially helpful for distant shots when I'm using slower shutter speeds." |
Read on for Michael's tips on how to achieve travel images that convey a destination’s history, people, natural beauty. |
Take advantage of the lighting at all times of day. |
There are certain times of day I prefer to take pictures. I look forward to the evenings, for example, because I can get the warm light at sunset. The wind kicks up lots of dust into the atmosphere throughout the day, which makes for fiery sunsets and golden light on architecture and landscapes. |
However, my favorite time to go out and shoot is in the early morning. Not only can I find dramatic sunrises-it's also really quiet because none of the other tourists are out and about yet. I don't have to fight other photographers for space to get the images I want. It's also a more genuine time to see the city or location I'm in, because it's just me and maybe some shopkeepers sweeping the sidewalks. |
Nighttime images can really offer a sense of place, too. One evening in Lanjarón I was able to capture a group of people listening to a guitar performance at the Hotel Alcadima. It was a cozy, warm gathering, and I wanted to show that in the image. Much of the lighting was candlelight, with some incandescent lighting. I took that picture using a "Daylight" white balance rather than using a tungsten setting to render the scene neutral and white. I didn't want to compensate for the warmth at all, since that was exactly what I wanted to show. It's how the evening felt to me. |
Use a lens like the 18-270mm VC to shoot wide for a sense of place, then get in tight for details. |
To fully do that, I always want at least one wide overview shot that shows the general setting of where I am, what the landscape is like, the architecture, the time of year. That kind of image sets the tone for the viewer. Then, once I've established that, I'll get into the details and build up the texture and color of a place, whether that's through food shots or the details of a door handle-whatever's unique to that particular location. |
One example of this is when I took pictures of the Alhambra, a palace and former fortress building complex in Granada that was originally built in the late 800s and expanded in the mid-11th century by the Moors. I took a few wider shots of the complex from across the valley to show its location in the Andalusian landscape. Then, inside the Alhambra's courtyards, I zoomed in to get details. It's a different type of architecture than I've run into in any other part of the world, a sort of embossed, molded plasterwork that let me get some nice textural shots to complement the wider images.
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I also use the 18-270 to focus on the more eye-catching parts of a scene. I was taking wide street shots of this alleyway in Lanjarón that had lots of balconies and flowers, but then I zoomed in to get a tighter shot of just the fuschia blooms. It was a pretty busy background, but by achieving a shallow depth-of-field, I was able to simplify that background and draw the viewer's eye to the sharper part of the image. |
Use slow shutter speeds to emphasize movement. |
It was a really interesting place to shoot, because the lighting was unusual. They had a variety of colored stagelights illuminating the place-there was blue light coming from one side, yellow coming in from another. It was an odd combination that produced some wild-looking skintones! But you realize it's an unusual situation, so your brain accepts skins that are turning a little purple. |
However, it was hard to get a bright, crisp image in that lighting without a lot of noise from pushing the ISO. So, to capture images of the dancers, I let them blur a little from the motion so that the action created something additional in the image. I gave up some sharpness, but I gained something more unusual by portraying the action.
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I also used the blur-motion effect a bit out on the streets in the outskirts of Madrid on my last day before flying home. I used blur to my advantage rather than looking at it as a fault. I panned my camera along with the action as I photographed everything from cars driving down the street to kids on skateboards, using a 1/15th of a second shutter speed as the sweet spot to achieve the amount of blur that I like. The resulting images are more about the hustle and bustle of the place than the actual shops that line the street.
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Have respect for the place and the residents and other visitors. |
Also, when you're in a heavily touristed place and you have so many other people photographing around you, be respectful of them, whether they're just people on vacation or professional photographers. Realize that the people on vacation especially may have saved up for years for this experience. Sometimes I see people jostling for space, standing wherever they want to take a photo, everyone's iPads up in the air trying to get a better picture than everyone else. Be respectful and cognizant of others so that everyone will come away from the trip with a better experience as well as better photos. |
To see more of Michael Snell's work, go to www.michaelcsnell.com. |