MY TOP 10 PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS #TCTravel
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Top 10 Travel Photography Tips #TCTravel |
I've been travelling around with my camera gears and it was good that I can capture precious moments along the journey. After so many times flying around, I guess it is time for me to share some tips on what you should do especially when you are into travel photography. I am sharing my tips based on my experience so do let me know if you have better travel photography tips to share or correct me on the info written here.
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1. Travel Light
The first and most important tips for travel photographers. I've tried travelling with a huge camera bag which includes one camera body, at least three different lenses including the heavy 70-200mm zoom lens. I was carrying this heavy camera bag around me and walked like 5 km around the town. I didn't take much photo because I've already exhausted myself by putting too much weigh on myself.
Use a comfortable camera backpack with cushion on it so you won't burden your body too much. Especially your back and spine.
2. Prepare enough Memory Card and Camera Batteries
Talking about travelling light, you should travel smart too. Usually one SD card is enough for me if I take photos only. But when it comes to video recording, I definitely need more than one memory card and a few spare batteries as recording video consuming more battery power too. You wouldn't want to disappoint yourself with empty batteries or full HD card too, so double check it before you start your journey.
If you travel to cold place, make sure to keep your spare batteries at somewhere warm, like your pocket instead of camera bag as it will lengthen the battery life for taking more photos.
3. Bring a Tripod for landscape photography
If you are into landscape, slow shutter and even milky-way aerial photoshoot, bring a tripod along with you. Choose the lightest tripod that you can afford as it will be a burden if you need to walk or climb the mountain by carry along with it. I did that in Broga Hills morning Hike and it was woah so challenging! But I am glad I did because I did a cool timelapse of the sunrise and people hanging at the mountain peak.
4. Limit yourself to one or two lenses
Similar to the tips of travelling light, but this one is more specific and to challenge yourself too. During travel, I bring maximum three to four lenses with me to the country I am flying to. But I will only choose two out of all four lenses based on the itinerary and place that I am travelling to. If it is a lot walking, I will definitely think twice before I bring my kinda heavy 70-200mm zoom lens. Sometimes I do bring it along because it shot awesome images!! Other than that I will be using a 50mm f1.4 portrait lens to capture things and people in frame, or a #TCFisheye lens to share a wide angle view of my surrounding to tell better visual story
5. Travel worry-free with data roaming
When travelling, the last thing I want to worry about is staying connected. I want to be able to keep in touch with my family and friends without having to look for free WiFi or go to a convenience store to purchase a local SIM card. Not just that, I also want to be able use my travel apps, like Google Maps and Waze easily and quickly. But most importantly, is to be able to update my Instagram with the travel photos I took on the same day!
If you’re like me, here’s what you can do to avoid all that hassle. Just use data roaming. Yes, most of you might have heard the horror stories of people coming home to a bill shock after using roaming overseas. But that is no longer the case, especially if you’re on the MaxisONE Plan. During my recent trip to Padang, Indonesia, I used MaxisONE World, which offers MaxisONE Plan customers like myself data roaming for just RM38 a day, and comes with 500MB of data. Even better, I could also use my Malaysian high-speed data overseas if I run out of data. This means I was always connected, no matter where I was.
So, while my friends were queuing up to get their local data SIM and waiting for it to be installed for almost 20 minutes, I was already surfing away on my mobile.
Every time when I scroll through travel photo album, I noticed that I will stop longer and admire photo of portrait of the people I met. Other than the beautiful scenery and things that you see during travel, the local people that you meet and story that they tell will definitely tell a better travel story. So brave yourself, when you meet someone interesting during your travel, just go and say hi before ask for their permission to take a photo. Most of the time they are willing to smile to your camera. Here's another tips, show them the photo you took so that he/she will feel more comfortable with you and you can even take better portraits. The worst thing that could happen by asking is they say "No". Just say thank you and look for a more welcomed person to photograph =)
7. Get a portable HDD to backup your photos
All right, this might not be important to you but I had a bad experience before. I took a lot of photos and videos in one single memory card using my travel action cam during my diving trip. I didn't do a backup of all the footage and continue diving the next day. Unfortunate event happened and my action camera just decided to go down all the way into the sea. I was really sad because not only I lost my action cam, I also lost the entire photos and footages that I've took for the whole trip.
Since then, I bring along a portable Hard Disk Drive with me so I can backup the photos every day before I sleep to keep my travel photos and memories safe. The portable HDD that I am using now is WD My Passport 2 TB with Wireless Function. I don't need a laptop to backup my photos as it has a SD slot to automatic backup all my photos.
8. Research and scout for locations for photoshoot
Now you are in this new place which you are unfamiliar with. Not knowing what to do and what to shoot. Well, you can definitely do a research on things to do here by just surfing the net. Trip Advisor usually has most of the travel tips on when and what to do there. For me, I do research on sunrise/sunset time and weather forecast before I plan a morning or midnight photoshoot hunting for the beautiful sunrise and milky way. If you wonder how to check sunrise sunset time, there's this apps call 'Sunrise Sunset'.
9. Be safe with your belongings
Although it is not every time you are in a dangerous zone, but busy place like tourist hot spot and especially when you are travelling alone with all these bulky camera that might attract unwanted attention. Hence you should really keep an eye on all your camera gears including your laptop bag as sometimes unfortunate things might happen but you just want to avoid that. That's why travel light and if can travel in group, with another photographer buddy who can take care of each other.
10. Process the photos before your next travel!
This is the 10th tips that I would like to remind myself every time after a trip too. I've always wanted to process the travel photos to share on this humble blog but usually work just came in and I gotta delay the photo processing. Do you know that it is useless if you just take photos but never look back and process them?? Trust me, once you process the whole travel album, you can do a customized travel photobook to keep as memory, or share it on your blog for portfolio and eventually client might be interested with your travel photography skill and even sponsor you a trip or work on a travel collaboration!!
Oh yeah, you should enter photography competition/contest like Travel3sixty to win awesome prizes like hotel stay for your next travel destination!! Who knows you can save the money to stay in a cozy and awesome property??
I hope you've benefits from the 10 travel photography tips that I personally think it is gonna be helpful for most of you. Just remember to have fun and enjoy the moments you travelling while clicking through your camera shutter. Let's hope my travel photos will inspire more people to travel and share their story through beautiful images too. Cheers!
"Capture precious moments"
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