Top 10 Tips for City-break Photography

If you want to avoid capturing the typical tourist snaps on your city break read our top ten tips on how to improve your photography.

1. Look for the unusual

Keep an eye open for anything that looks different or unusual when discovering a new city, as this will inevitably add interest to any shot.

2. The road less travelled

If you limit your excursions to tourist hotspots, most of your shots are bound to end up looking touristy, so try to get off the beaten track for a deeper experience. Local markets can be especially good.

3. Lighten the load

People are often nervous of photographers carrying loads of kit. For travelling light, a super zoom lens is ideal and also enables you to react quickly to almost any opportunity that arises.

4. Get with the Program

When you want to be really creative, Av, Tv and M modes are great, but for quick-fire shots, P (Program) mode is ideal, especially when combined with an Auto ISO setting.

5. Out of hours

For uncluttered views and great light, it’s good to get out early in the morning. The ‘golden hour’ before sunset is also a must.

6. Night Life

Take your camera with you when going out in the evening, as D-SLR’s are great for late-night cityscapes. Increase your ISO or support the camera on a wall to save lugging a tripod around.

7. Plan ahead

Research your destination and look for places that are interesting from a photographic point of view.

8. Get high

High vantage points often make for exciting aerial views, so put towers with public access on your list of places to go.

9. Picture Styles

If you’re shooting in JPEG, make full use of Picture Styles, for example switching to the Landscape style for parkland and blue skies. Or, shoot in RAW so you can switch styles at the editing stage.

10. It’s good to talk

People are often more accommodating towards foreigners than locals, so try chatting with people and asking if you can photograph them, rather than going for furtive candid shots.

Take great shots this summer

Top 10 Travel Photography Tips

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 14th, 2012 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Canon D-SLR Skills. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.