How to Take Emotional Travel Pictures

Hannah Kozak uses the Tamron SP 28-75mm F/2.8 lens to capture photos with feeling from around the world.

Article by Jenn Gidman
Images by Hannah Kozak

Whether Hannah Kozak is taking pictures of visitors at the Wailing Wall, capturing the landscapes of Lithuania, or showcasing a playful group of children on the streets of Jerusalem, there's a prevailing theme behind her most compelling travel images: emotion. "Truthful, honest photography is the best type of photography for me," she explains. "The power of that type of imagery is the ability to show the here and now. That same exact scene in front of your viewfinder isn't going to be there tomorrow; it's gone forever."

Hannah, who was recently honored as Female Photographer of the Year for the Julia Margaret Cameron Award 5th Edition, compiled a series of her favorite images for Tamron's MyPhotoExhibits, which included pictures from a trip to Bolivia to complete a photo essay on incarcerated women, as well as photos from an expedition last year to Israel, Jordan, Poland, and Lithuania. "Being able to combine my travels with my photography is the best of both worlds," she says. "I don't travel anymore without some kind of photographic story in the back of my mind that I'm going to come home with.

Hannah brought along her Tamron SP 28-75mm F/2.8 lens on both of those journeys. "When I started making pictures at 10 years old, I had a 50mm F/1.4 lens and got most of my best shots with that lens," she says. "Then one of my photographer friends told me about the Tamron 28-75. I'm so glad I trusted him, because it's fabulous. It's light (18 ounces) and portable, I'm able to shoot in low light thanks to the maximum F/2.8 aperture, and it allows me to show so much variety in the places I visit - I do everything from portraits and street photography to landscapes, all with that one lens! That lens is a familiar friend that I understand completely."

Unlike many of the other tourists who long for sunny excursion days, Hannah seeks out cloud cover to maximize her photographic adventures. "I love when it's overcast because it gives me a natural umbrella," she says. "It depends on what I'm photographing, though: Sometimes the end of the day works best, while other times I'm enraptured by the shadows. When I came across a mother camel and her baby in Wadi Rum, a sandstone-and-granite valley in Jordan, it was perfect lighting and perfect positioning. If the mother had been facing a different direction, there would have been harsh shadows on her face. You have to look for those photo ops and have a fast lens like the 28-75 so you can be ready to capture them."

Taking portraits of the locals, one of Hannah's favorite parts of her travel pictorials, requires a well-trained eye and tact. "I love capturing people at decisive moments," Hannah says. "It's often about simply connecting with people. I don't take photos, I make them; it's a conversation. I've seen photographers just walk up to someone and stick a camera in his or her face - that's not the way to do it. Instead, I'll start a conversation if possible and then feel that moment when we're starting to connect. Then I'll ask if I can take a picture. That really helps break down barriers between cultures. In other words, I am an observer and participant."

Hannah approaches resident wildlife with the same friendly, respectful technique. "I try to bring a humanistic approach to everything I photograph," she says. I just talk to the animals the same way I talk to people. When I visited Bolivia, I came across this mama pig and her babies at a little yoga center outside of La Paz. They were so cute and just stared at me as I chatted away. In Petra, Jordan, I paid attention to this one camel, and it actually looks like he's smiling in the image I captured. I was able to make the picture the instant I saw him start to grin - half a second earlier or later and I wouldn't have gotten it."

Sometimes, however, a photographer needs to hang back and do more observing than talking to capture an unforgettable photo. "A lot of that comes with experience and understanding light," Hannah says. "It's like a mother intuitively knowing what to do with her children - it's often a matter of watching, waiting, and having good timing."

One of Hannah's favorite images from her travels, for instance, was during a trip to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. "First of all, the place itself is incredible," she explains. "This is the place where Jesus is said to have been born. The Corinthian columns there alone are worth seeing - they're this beautiful orange, yellow and brown and reach 50 feet up into the air."

As she was admiring the landmark's architecture, Hannah was struck by another visitor dressed all in black. '"I often see things that many people would just walk right by and not notice," she says. "I can't tell you how many people walked right by this woman. When I saw her, though, I immediately thought, 'She's beautiful!' I subtly followed her around. I started to speak to her and waited for just the right moment to capture her against those columns as I thought, 'Here's this woman in Bethlehem, just like I am, and even though we come from two different worlds, we both are here to see this magnificent church.'"

Capturing her subjects' environment is also an important factor in many of Hannah's portraits. "What works best for me in my travel photography is being able to capture someone in the right moment, with the right light and composition, but also being able to show where they are," she explains. "When I was photographing children in the streets of Jerusalem, I could have taken a bunch of portraits of each of them where I zoomed in and just showed their faces. They're cute, but those wouldn't be terribly interesting pictures. Instead, I tried to pull back a little and show the kippahs they were wearing on their heads and their tallit prayer shawls, as well as parts of the streets and buildings themselves. That's what makes those kind of pictures work."

When photographing landscapes, the best way to create an interesting image is to seek out scenes and subjects that interest you personally. "That's going to be different for every person, which is fine, because it ensures your landscape shots will be different from everyone else's," Hannah says. "For example, I have been working on a multimedia project about my father for four years. Nine days after he died, I decided to go visit where he had lived in Poland. He had survived eight Nazi forced-labor camps there."

Hannah had heard about The Hill of Crosses from another photographer friend, so she planned to visit it while she was in Poland. It was an eight-hour drive from where she was. "I was so intrigued when I heard about it," she says. "It wasn't easy to get to, but it was worth it. There are tens of thousands of crosses in every shape and size, as well as crucifixes, Virgin Mary statues, ancient Lithuanian patriot carvings, and tiny rosaries and effigies, all on this hill that's already been razed at least twice. It's an amazing sight to see, whether you're religious or not. It shows the power of humanity. The 28-75 allowed me to make one of the statues the focal point of the image against the sight of all of those crosses and artifacts, with that beautiful blue sky in the background."

No matter what part of the world you're wandering, Hannah offers a final piece of picture-taking advice: Don't be afraid to experiment. "There's an art to travel photography," she says. "You don't want to just pick up your camera and start taking pictures haphazardly. Learn the mechanics of your camera and take it off of automatic. See what F/11 gives you versus F/2.8. Study lighting and composition. Photography is an adventure that can take you places you've never been before. It's an art form you'll never know enough about, and trying different things while you're on the road will work different parts of your brain. You have a fraction of a second to capture the essence of a person. What makes a great photo is the soul of the person behind the camera."

Go to MyPhotoExhibits see more of Hannah Kozak's images from this series.