Articles Published by RafaelA lot of random articles and tweets published by Rafael

To complement my post about landscape pictures, here are some general tips for your travel or vacation pictures:

1. Get up early for the best light and fewer crowds. I know you’re on vacation, but if you want the best light for your pictures with fewer people around, you have to get up early in the morning to take your pictures.  The soft light in the evenings may be a little better, but the crowds are a lot bigger as well.

2. If you have an SLR (Single Lens Reflex) camera, try to carry several types of lenses, or some zoom lenses with you so you can take closeup and far away pictures.  Sometimes, zooming in on a detail provides for a better picture than a wide picture of the entire scene.

3. Don’t just take pictures from a distance, go in close and create interesting pictures

Image via Wikipedia

4. Some pictures may look better when taken in landscape mode than in portrait mode.  When you’re not sure, take a picture both ways and then decide which one you like best later on.

5. Don’t just shoot from eye level.  Change the position from which you take the picture.  Shoot looking down from on top of a building, then come down from the building and shoot looking up.  Basically, shoot from up high looking down and from down low looking up.

6. Compact cameras take good pictures as well.  Don’t think that you need to have an SLR camera with a lot of lneses etc to take good pictures.  You can take really good pictures with compact cameras as well as with SLR.

7. Don’t just use the camera in the auto program mode.  Sometimes, if you slow the shutter down, you can get some interesting shots as well.

8. Don’t be afraid to use the flash. Even during the daylight hours, the flash can fill in dark shadows in faces and objects and help bring out detail.  Also, don’t be afraid to not use the flash, although you should definitely have either a tripod or a solid surface to steady the camera.

9. Stick around for the sunset shots. This is the golden hour since the light has a golden glow to it. Also, stick around for the after glow pictures as well.  Be aware that there may be throngs of people that you’ll need to work around, or not.

10. Speaking of people, don’t forget the people. The people at your destination can be just as interesting as the location that you go to, so don’t forget to take pictures of them as well.

There are many other tips and ideas that you can use for creating great photos.  Do you know the best way to determine if you should use natural light or flash light in a picture?  The best way to learn things like that, is to pick up a book on digital photography.  Cheers!