Travel photographer Graeme Green has spent the beyond 15 years touring the globe, taking pictures extremely good snapshots and reporting testimonies for global newspapers and magazines, including The Sunday Times, BBC, The Guardian, The Sunday Telegraph and National Geographic. In an in advance column, he gave us his five Secrets to Taking Great Photos. I spoke with Green again about five Ways to Really Improve Your Travel Photography
Graeme, what is the most commonplace mistake that novice travel photographers make?
I see several people arrive someplace with their digicam and that they´re so excited using all of the new and various things around them that they are attempting to photo almost everything they see. That´s not honestly enticing with an area in a significant manner, and when they get home, quite a few the ones photos won´t imply a lot to them or to everybody else.
Slow down, transfer your brain on, take a piece of time to walk round and look around, perhaps even before taking a single picture. Think approximately what you, in reality, locate in my view, interesting about a place. It’ll make for greater focus, greater exciting pictures.
Rushing round photographing the whole lot also probable means you’re now not spending a lot time composing every photograph. Less is genuinely more. A set of 20 genuinely original, placing photos that you certainly focused your mind on thought could be a long way more interesting to examine than two hundred hurriedly taken snaps. Certainly, editors are interested in a set of innovative photos that say something approximately an area, instead of loads of snap shots that say not anything
If I need extraordinary pictures, should I ditch the smartphone and spend money on an actual digital camera?
I rarely use a phone for images. However, that’s mainly due to the fact I don’t seem able to go a range of months on the street without smashing mine. Camera phones can absorb color and mild pretty properly, and you can obtain appropriate consequences, especially if you get innovative and keep away from simply taking brief pictures on the circulate.
But the usage of a terrific digicam opens up a global of creativity and, in case you make investments a bit, it has to assist you in getting better consequences. It’s now not pretty much the digital camera frame, however additionally buying good lenses, which make a large difference. Travel images can be a high-priced commercial enterprise. It’s worth getting to know appreciably, before spending some grand on tools, and, if viable, to test out a digicam or lens earlier than you purchase it.
All that stated, I’ve got photographs I took years ago on old, cheap, battered cameras and even on a plastic disposable that I’m nevertheless satisfied with. A badly taken picture on a top-of-the-range digicam continues to be a bad picture. No quantity of expensive equipment can replace creativity, an awesome eye, and hard work.
How do I avoid taking clichéd journey photos?
It would possibly sound apparent, however especially by being privy to what the clichés are. The Holi pageant in India or dawn at Angkor Wat, as an example, were finished to dying, so if you’re going to image properly-worn subjects, it pays to look at what’s been performed before and try to discover a unique, non-public take.
I, in particular, try to avoid subjects which have already been hammered and instead are searching for out humans, places, animals and landscapes that aren’t completely over-acquainted. In our over-photographed international, that’s getting tougher, but when I can, I like to get to foreign places or tour a piece further to locate some thing interesting and new to me, and that often effects in absolutely thrilling image possibilities.
Ultimately, although, it’s approximately identifying what interests you and pushing your self to take pics which you’re without a doubt satisfied with. Looking at books with the aid of terrific photographers can factor you in new instructions or help you figure out what you do and don’t like in other human beings’ work, which you could apply in your very own. But certainly, it’s approximately being creative and growing your fashion over time.
