When I first started my travel photography journey, I would venture out to Downtown Los Angeles to capture the beautiful architecture of the high-rise buildings at night. I would also only use my Sony a7R III camera with the Sony 24-70mm f/2.8 G-Master lens. Eventually, I started to travel to other cities in Los Angeles and I soon enjoyed photographing sunsets at the beach.
During my London trip in 2022, I used the same camera setup of my Sony camera body and 24-70mm zoom lens for most of the 7 days exploring the city. I used this lens for a majority of the trip because I wanted to capture as much of the beautiful architecture in London as I could within one frame within a wide angle (at this time, I didn’t have my Sigma 35mm lens).
Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about diversifying my setup and overall approach when doing travel photography not only in other countries, but also in Los Angeles.
In this blog, I wanted to share a few tips that I’ve applied in my travel photography that have helped me diversify my photography portfolio and be more productive in capturing diverse travel content.
WAKE UP EARLY IN THE MORNING
When I first traveled to Tokyo, I would wake up about 30 minutes to an hour before sunrise. I would take the opportunity to capture beautiful golden hour street photography images. Because I was staying in a central part of the city, there were a lot of high-rise buildings that made for some beautiful morning cityscape photography.
Another benefit to early morning travel photography is that you have the opportunity to capture images when there are less people out. If you want to capture a travel image without any people (and assuming you don’t want to take the time to Photoshop everyone out of the image), it’ll be much easier to get a good photo in the morning while it’s quiet and peaceful. While I enjoy taking photos and capturing landscapes during sunset, the streets became incredibly crowded and busy with people from early evening to late at night during my Tokyo trip.
BRING A TRIPOD
Another way to diversify your travel photography portfolio is to capture long exposure shots. Whether it’s capturing long-exposure shots of the water on a beach, or capturing light trails in the city, or getting a sharp image of architecture with a moving blur effect of pedestrians walking by, a tripod can go a long way in getting some interesting shots.
Of course, you’ll want to be mindful that your tripod isn’t going to block walkways or act as any kind of inconvenience for others. I would recommend a lightweight and small tripod that you can carry around without burden. Alternatively, if you’re not able to use a tripod, I would recommend using a slow shutter speed on your camera and a nearby surface for stability to see what you can get. For the images below, I just put my camera on a railing and did a long exposure that way.
EXPLORE BEYOND TOURIST ATTRACTIONS
When I travel to a new city or country, I don’t mind visiting a popular tourist attraction if it’s a certain monument or location that I’m excited to see in person. But over the past few years, I’ve learned to enjoy the journey to the tourist spot and to explore off-the-beaten paths that have led to some wonderful hidden gems.
When I was in Tokyo, I planned to visit Asakusa to get a photo of the Senso-ji Temple at sunset. I found myself taking small detours around back alleys, which led to certain paths that I didn’t originally intend to stop at. While I didn’t end up arriving at the location until much later, I was glad I took the detours and stopped to capture some beautiful sunset shots that I would have missed if I was focused on arriving at my original planned location on time.
TRY DIFFERENT FOCAL LENGTHS IN THE SAME LOCATION
As I previously mentioned, I almost always used a wide angle 24mm focal length when I started street photography because I was focused on capturing as much of the scene as possible. If you have a wide range of focal lengths at your disposal, I would encourage you to capture a few different focal lengths in the same spot. Maybe you want to capture a landscape image of a beautiful beach, but you also want to get detailed shots of the rocks and show off the texture. Maybe you want to take a self-portrait of yourself walking on the beach with a few different compositions.
While it might not be necessary to bring every single lens in your backpack every time you go out, it’s good to have a few different options (whether it’s with one zoom lens, or a few different prime lenses).
EXPERIMENT WITH DIFFERENT LANDSCAPES
My London trip in 2022 was solely for the purpose of practicing street photography and to enjoy solo traveling for the first time. While I enjoyed doing street photography every day, I wish I had visited gardens, parks, and beaches rather than going to the same spots.
Even though it meant going at a less than ideal time of day, I enjoyed walking around Tokyo and visiting parks, ports, and other parts of the city beyond the regular high-rise landscapes that I wanted to visit when I first planned my trip.
While I may not have gotten the best photos out of them, the memory of visiting these spots was very important and I’ll have a better idea of what to expect should I ever get the chance to return.
FINAL THOUGHTS
These were just some tips that I apply in my photography whenever I’m traveling to a new destination, or even in my own city when I might feel stuck in capturing the same kind of photos.
If you have any tips or ideas that you like to implement in your travel photography, please let me know.
Until next time!
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