Or rather – which disciplines all belong to travel photography? Is travel photography a specialisation at all, or just general travel photography? And what should I learn to become a good travel photographer?
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Intro
If you ever try to find out about travel photography on YouTube or Google, you’ll probably feel the same as me: there are millions of results with lots of adverts and afterwards you’re just as smart as before. Why is that? Because many different people answer the question differently (and because the algorithms don’t always suggest something useful).
So, what is travel photography?
An icon of travel photography and National Geographic photographer, Ira Block, once said in a YouTube video that travel photography is not a specialisation in itself, but simply photography – when travelling.
Whatever you need for the job will be done, whether it’s landscape, people or macro photography. And whatever skills you need for a new assignment, you have to learn (quickly). Now, of course, he is a professional photographer with commissions and has acquired a very varied repertoire of photographic skills over the years. A true professional.
What does that mean for us ‘mere mortals’ amateurs?
Travel photography is as varied as life itself!
Every travel photographer can have a different specialisation, or several. And everyone can develop a completely different style, or several.
And since we amateurs and hobbyists don’t have clients, we can choose our own photographic style – that’s great!
Travel photography takes place while travelling – I think we can agree on this common denominator, even with Ira Block.
What special disciplines of photography are there in travel photography?
In addition, travel photography can include the following specialisations, for example:
City and street photography
Landscape photography
People and portrait photography
Architectural photography (interior and exterior)
Selfie photography (professional…) and influencer photography (for social media)
Videography and filmmaking
Aerial photography (with drones)
Food photography
Nature photography (animals and plants)
Sports photography (spontaneous sporting events or travelling sports photographer (surfing, skiing)
Adventure photography (outdoors and extreme)
Travel reportage (story-telling)
Event photography (travelling)
Macro photography (insects of the world)
Astrophotography (starry skies of the world)
General holiday photography (with or without children)
Have I forgotten anything else? Surely…
Wo is actually doing travel photography today?
The general travel reports of the past are certainly a thing of the past – at least for major magazines such as National Geographic or GEO in German-speaking countries. Professional photographers are now working on more serious subjects – in faraway countries.
But the demand for travel content has grown many times over – thanks to online marketing! Today, this market is served by travelling influencers and content creators who satisfy the media hunger of the travel industry and tourism associations and make a living from it. They are today’s travel photographers – and usually also film-makers and self-portrayers. This is by no means meant in a negative way, as influencer marketing has become a billion-dollar market and continues to grow.
What does that mean for travelling amateurs like you and me? We are more likely to find help and guidance from content creators, influencers, vloggers and bloggers than from professional photo reporters.
What is story-telling in travel photography?
There are a few travel channels on YouTube that I enjoy watching and that inspire me in my own travel photography. These people are not only good at filming, but also good photographers, good storytellers and manage to convey a journey to me in such an interesting way that I would like to travel there myself immediately.
Gone are the days of ‘300 slides of Aunt Erna on the beach, in the hotel and at dinner’. For the younger readers among us: slides were photos from analogue cameras that you could show on a screen with a projector – many of us used to have these and the home holiday slide shows among friends and relatives (who weren’t all good photographers) were often endless…(tedious).
In times when everyone is taking photos everywhere with their smartphone, the bar is much higher than just taking a sharp, correctly exposed and otherwise rather boring photo.
But what is it actually for? Whether it’s for family, friends, a blog like this one, a YouTube channel or a professional travel report: we want to inform and entertain, not just show.
The attention of the reader or viewer wants to be aroused, stimulated and served. Story-telling is a crucial part of this!
How does a photo series work in travel photography?
And that brings us back to the good old photo reportage: it’s not a great photo that counts, but a good photo series!
What is a good photo series? A sequence of images that helps to tell or illustrate a story. The individual photo may not be all that meaningful, but as a whole it becomes a story.
Let’s take a small example – a little story from your (fictitious) holiday trip:
‘Bali was fantastic, had a great hotel, delicious food, the people were friendly and the landscapes were exotic.’
Yes, and what else?
‘We took a boat trip to a small island, went snorkelling with colourful fish, went hiking in the mountains, visited a colourful market and took a tuktuk around the area. We went jet skiing on the beach and the children learnt to surf. And then there was a religious festival with music and costumes and a nature guide told us about rare birds….’
As you can see, we are moving away from ‘Aunt Erna in the hotel, eating and on the beach’ and towards a variety of photo options:
Landscape photos of the rice plantations, mountains and beaches
People and street photos of the market and people out and about
Architectural photos of temples and houses in the city and countryside
Detailed or even macro photos at the market or in nature
Night photos in the countryside or nocturnal city life
Animal photos by the sea and underwater, or photographing rare birds
Sports and action photos (with family and children) while jet skiing or surfing
High-quality selfies during all activities
Aerial shots during all activities and beautiful landscapes
Food photography at the market and while eating
Event photography at a party with music and lots of beautifully dressed people
Why can amateurs learn from professionals?
‘Do I have to create a travelogue right away?’ No, absolutely not, but when you think about your trip, many different and interesting things happened and if you photograph a few of them in different ways, you tell a well-rounded story with many different impressions – as diverse as the trip itself. And not every picture has to be great on its own, but it helps to tell a facet of your story.
‘But what if I just want to take landscape photos?’ Then do that and enjoy the beautiful landscapes on your travels. I’m not trying to convert anyone, just giving you a few ideas, like a menu you can choose from.
After writing around 270 articles on this blog, I’m now asking myself how I can write better articles and take better photos for them in the future.
And I realise that I like to photograph landscapes, but find people photography rather difficult. But I photograph an amazing amount of buildings and details on them – more than I thought.
Surprisingly, I like street photography (without getting too close to people), even though I’m not a city person at all. And I tend not to take selfies at all. I shoot more with a wide-angle lens than a telephoto lens. I don’t use background blur at all, although you can crop not only people, but also objects or details (which I don’t photograph much).
What does this mean for my photography? I will try to capture more details and more people (or animals) in future, work more with the telephoto zoom and practise cropping with bokeh to emphasise interesting things.
I’m trying to improve my compositions for landscapes (people are allowed in the picture here too) and to include more street photography in my repertoire. I’m trying to pay more attention to light and colours and who knows – maybe I’ll take a selfie or two to prove that I was really there…(we’ll see).
Conclusion
You are welcome to read my future articles and follow along to see whether my photography improves over time and, above all, whether it becomes more versatile, more interesting and more vivid!
And you are very welcome to take up my ideas and suggestions in this article and – who knows – maybe there will be a good idea on how you would like to supplement and improve your travel photography in the future.
I will certainly write a few more articles about how we can learn and practise some of the disciplines of travel photography ourselves in the future.
Until then, I wish you every success and, above all, lots of fun travelling and taking photos!
More interesting articles for you
Coming soon
Cover picture: Sheep on Achill Island (Photo: Ulrich Knüppel-Gertberg)
