Tips to Take Good Pictures

It’s never a good time when you come home from a trip, upload all your pictures to your computer, and realize there isn’t one that you’re really proud of. Or worse, you find that your SD card has filled up halfway through your trip because you take at least 5 pictures of everything you see, thinking you’ll at least get one good shot. Take it from me, you will not sort through 2000 pictures, no matter how good your intentions might be.

Instead of taking a ton of photos or living with disappointment when selecting photos for your Instagram account, take a look at these tips to up your travel photo game. Disclaimer - I’m not a professional photographer by any stretch, these are some things I’ve learned to do which have improved my picture-taking.

Get Acquainted with Photography Basics

The first thing is to understand what some of the photography mumbo jumbo on your camera means and how each setting affects your picture.

DPI: Dots per square inch (often used interchangeably with PPI - pixels per square inch). The higher the DPI the better the resolution, which means you’ll get more detail. Essentially, you’ll be able to zoom in more with higher DPI.

ISO: A measure of the light sensitivity. This higher the ISO number, the more sensitive your camera is to light intensity. So, in a highly lit environment, you can use a lower ISO/sensitivity, whereas, in a low lit environment, you’d tend to use a higher ISO/sensitivity. The tradeoff with higher ISO is that pictures will be more noisy (grainy looking).

Shutter Speed: How long the shutter is open. The longer the shutter is open, the more light can get in. Longer shutter speeds can be used to blur movement (like in those photos of waterfalls you see on motivational posters) or to help capture dimly lit objects (stars in the night sky). However, lower speeds means more sensitivity to motion - both yours and your subject’s - which can make your pictures blurry without the use of a tripod.

Aperture: The aperture is the size of the hole through which light passes and is captured by the camera. This setting determines the focal length of your camera. In other words, it sets the depth-of-field of your picture: large apertures will show more detail in picture backgrounds whereas small apertures will blur the background.

This is the absolutely most basic of introductions to these settings, and I highly recommend you look these up on photography blogs for a good tutorial from real a photographer, if you’re interested.

Let Those Yoga Classes Pay Off

It’s surprising how much the angle and height of your camera affects how a picture turns out. Always shooting from shoulder height is seriously going to limit travel photo outcome. Let yourself move around. Often this results in the photographer being contorted at odd angles... Change your height to accentuate size: crouching can make a subject seem more imposing, for instance. Tilt your torso, don’t just move your arms, when photographing something high up or down low. Pivoting at the hips not merely your arms at the shoulders will keep your camera more stable. Better yet, lie on your back to get a shot of an interesting cathedral ceiling. Don’t be afraid of getting in a weird pose. You might get weird looks from that middle aged lady with the fanny pack and the sun visor, but you’ll get a better photo and have a better time than her!

Here’s a picture of a blue pool in the Golden Circle (Iceland). This place was overrun by tourists for the whole 15 minutes we were there, but you can’t really see the crowds in the picture from the angle it was taken.

Get a New Perspective

Especially when photographing popular tourist attractions, it can be hard to get an original looking photo. Many great travel shots highlight a new angle, a new way to see the subject. The trick is to get a new perspective on things. Climb a hill to get a better vantage point, get closer to focus on a small detail, pace around the subject until you find the most interesting viewpoint possible. Combine this with some contortions on your part to get some really great pictures!

Here I am in the shrubbery trying to get the most dramatic angle of the Ballykeel dolmen.

Patience, Grasshopper...

Do you dream of shots of a popular tourist attraction that are gloriously free of people? I know I do. It may seem to be a futile endeavour and it may not always be possible, but often enough, it turns out to be -- if you wait. One thing I’ve observed is that if you’re patient enough, there will come a time where the flow of people will stem momentarily and you’ll have a window to photograph without someone’s jarring red windbreaker ruining the shot.

Alternatively, head to tourist-heavy locations at odd hours and avoid people altogether! Win-win for the asocial!

For this picture of Dunluce Castle, we waited, chatting at the window of a battlement for about half an hour before, FINALLY, everyone who was milling about in there happened to be hidden behind the walls. Success!

Another way that patience pays off is when you’re photographing live subjects in a natural setting. Sometimes, they’ll do something perfect and photo-worthy but you have to wait for it to happen on its own! I’ve spent more time waiting for crows to circle castle ruins than I care to admit.

Mr. Horse decided to pose for the camera.

Mrs Dog (coincidentally at the same farm as the horse) was excited to have so many travellers around to throw her frisbee. 

Follow the Rule of Thirds

For us casual photographers, the rule of thirds is an easy way to get more professional looking photos. Take your camera viewfinder and split it up into three columns. Usually, you can set your display to show a grid of 2 vertical lines and 2 horizontal lines.

The rule of thirds states that you want your subject (or focal point) to be at either one of these lines at ⅓ or ⅔ of your frame. The same rule applies for vertical or horizontal pictures.

Subject is at the ⅓ mark across the viewfinder.

When there’s not clearly defined subject, place the focal point at a third.

One exception to this rule is in the case of absolute symmetry. If the result is more dramatic than the off-center subject, I will take picture where the focal point is centered.

Perfect symmetry is dramatic, when you can find it, like at the Trinity College Library. Please forgive the poor quality, it was taken with my terrible phone camera.

High Speed (Photo) Shooting

If you’re forced to take pictures from a moving car, volume is key. You can’t predict when and how road signs will show up when passing by at high speed, but snap a few rapid fire shots. Keep the one that worked, and delete the rest immediately so as to not fill up your memory card. Also, make sure you’re taking a picture of something very distant; you’re moving too fast to focus on nearby items so everything in the foreground will be blurry.

This picture was taken from a moving car.

Delete Delete Delete

This last one isn’t really a tip for good photos. Whenever we have long stretches in cars, I take the time to go over the pictures that were taken in the last few hours and delete a large portion of them... That sounds crazy right? As much as I try not to, I still tend to take a couple pictures of the same thing. And more from various angles. While rolling down the highway, I have the time to look at the pictures and select which ones worked best and get rid of the rest. It’s a bit of a chore on your vacation but it makes managing your photos when you get home a lot easier.

Gen

Shoutout to all my weird friends who take photos of me taking photos; I dedicate this post to you. You guys are awesome. Photo creds to Kyla, Jacob, and Steph.