Darren in his latest Digital Photography School tip reminds us to capture the Smaller things in Life when You Travel
An observations of fellow travelers that I made on my last trip was that most of them seemed to focus on the ‘big picture’. When the bus would pull up at a tourist destination they always seemed to step as far back from the scene before them in an attempt to fit as much as possible into the shot. This happened whether the scene was a landscape, a building or almost any other subject. The results of their strategy was that they ended up with lots of great pictures of distant things.
I think it is a good tip. While out and about I often notice great details but for some reason do not always photograph them. It’s easy to fool yourself into thinking people will only want to see the big stuff but in actual fact detail pictures are not only usually less commonly photographed, especially at big tourist locations, they can actually make for better photographs for capturing the mood of a place.
Remember
- Get up close, fill the frame
- Capture the textures
- Get the best use of available light
- Remove clutter from the scene
- Focus on one element
- Move around, don’t try to get all your shots from where you land (this isn’t golf!)
- Change perspective
- Move backwards and forwards as well as using zoom – this flattens and deepens the scene
- With a zoom you can get both the big picture and the details, shoot a lot and decide later what to keep
