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How to Take Good Vacation Pictures

How to Take Good Vacation Pictures

Want to learn how to capture special memories with your vacation pictures? Here are some photography tips and tricks for how to take good travel photos! 

Research Locations
Before you reach your destination, research the area on Google Images and Instagram “Places” to search for any pictures that really interest you. Usually, the most obvious places with a crowd of tourists taking pictures don’t make the most interesting travel pictures. Take a few hours to research before you travel and you might find some really unique locations.

Explore Before Photographing
It’s hard to not whip out the camera and start clicking as soon as you see a spectacular site on your travels! However, if you pause, walk through and enjoy a space, and then thoughtfully spend some time on travel pictures, your photos will really shine. You never know what hidden gem you might find just around the corner or down the beach!

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Shoot in Early Morning or During Golden Hour
Mid-day overhead sun isn’t ideal for travel pictures. Colors become washed out, shadows overpower your pictures, and everyone looks sweaty and tired. During the early morning or golden hour, the sun lowers and makes for much more vibrant photos. This is especially true in the Mediterranean. Taking a photo of the water during the day makes it look desaturated and completely uninteresting. If you wait until the golden hour, the true blue and green glimmer of the water really pops. Another reason why midday is terrible for travel photos is that all the tourists are out during the day! If you take travel pictures during the morning or golden hour, you flip schedules with all of the other tourists. On these off times, you’ll find popular plazas nearly empty and beaches all to yourself. So, it’s recommended that you get out of bed and see the world as early as you can, return for a siesta and some food in the afternoon, and then explore in the early evening. You won’t regret it! It might be the best tip for how to take good travel photos.

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Capture People and Candid Moments
Rather than line the family up and demand that everyone say cheese, capture the beauty of the setting with people in a more candid setup. Of course, taking this kind of shot does require some re-enactment at times. Sometimes, that may include directing your subjects to walk down the same street a few times, or simply to stop and look up at the buildings! The way that candid poses help to capture the moment is something you may prefer to a cheesy family photo. However, you may still want to capture a few of those funny vacation pictures!

vacation photo

Don’t Distort Your Picture!
This one is especially true when learning how to take good travel photos. It’s really easy to make buildings look all wonky and distorted. You want to keep your Canon Mirrorless Camera from Beachcamera.com facing straight and not angled up. This is especially hard in cities where you want to capture entire monuments or buildings. Back up a little bit, maybe across the street, so that you can keep the camera straight and then crop the image later.

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Edit, Edit, Edit
Never save or share photos straight off of the camera. Many times, the unedited raw images from your camera won’t match the colors you saw. That’s what editing is for. Don’t feel shy about bumping the colors of pictures to match what your eyes saw. Most digital pictures need some clean up before they are ready to go. The Nikon COLLPX B500 from Beachcamera.com is able to transfer photos to your phone wirelessly. This means you can transfer photos for both back-up and editing. Use these tips on your net vacation if you’re looking to up your game when capturing special memories with your travel pictures.
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