Visual Wilderness
  • Get Started
  • Shop
    • SPECIAL OFFERS
    • STREAMING SERVICE
    • Browse by Topic
    • Learn To Shoot
    • Post Processing
    • Online Classes
    • eBooks
    • Landscape Photography Guide
  • Blog
    • Blog
    • Guest Photographers
  • About
  • My Account
    • My Account
  • Search
  • Menu Menu
  • 0Shopping Cart

Tips for Getting Started in Travel Photography

December 21, 2016/in Fieldwork/by Ugo Cei

Ugo Cei is a travel photographer based in Milan, Italy who organizes workshops for his company Mediterranean Photo Tours. He also hosts a weekly travel photography podcast called the The Traveling Image Makers. We sat down with this travel aficionado to talk about his tips for getting started in travel photography. Here’s what he had to say:

I’ve always loved traveling and being able to bring memories home from my travels, so travel photography was a natural choice for me. What started as a hobby soon transitioned to a passion, and now it has become a part-time job. I’m fortunate to have a day job that takes me around the world, so the challenge is to cram as much shooting as possible into the limited time I have on location. In this article, I’ll give you a few tips for making the best use of your time if you’re just getting started in travel photography.

Have a Plan

Because I’m usually traveling for work or with family, I don’t have much time that is fully dedicated to photography. I tend to do a lot of research beforehand so I can pack as many locations as possible into the few days I have at my disposal. If you want to get to the best locations at the best possible times:

  • Start by taking a look at Google Images and 500PX. This will help you to get a sense of what kinds of shots other photographers have taken.
  • Explore Google Maps so you can get an overview of the geography of area you’ll be visiting. For well-known locations, you can almost always find tips from fellow photographers online.
  • To anticipate the direction of light at your location, use The Photographer’s Ephemeris. It’s both a website and an app that will tell you where the sun and moon will be in the sky at all times of day.
The Alhambra, Granada, Spain

The Alhambra, Granada, Spain

Always Carry Your Camera With You

When you’re just getting started in travel photography, it’s essential to actually have your camera with you. People often say, “Yeah, I’m into photography. I’d like to do more.” Then they go out and don’t take their camera. Or they take their camera and leave it their bag. The problem is, when they see an interesting subject, they have to take the camera out of the bag, turn it on, figure out the settings they left the camera in, and take the lens cap off. At that point, the scene may have disappeared. If you are really serious about photography, then you should keep your camera in your hand at all times, turned on with the lens cap off. Leave the lens cap at home.

Shoot Everything

When you’re on location, shoot as much as you can. Of course, there’s something to be said for being parsimonious when you shoot instead of just clicking at random. But especially when you’re just starting out and trying to figure out what your eye is drawn to, just shoot everything and see what works and what doesn’t. We are not in the age of having 36 exposures in a roll anymore, so there’s no reason to limit yourself to that.

Romanian Parish, Lucca, Italy

Romanian Parish, Lucca, Italy

Be Ruthless When You Edit

That being said, you can take a thousand photos and 990 of them are just so-so. Just delete them and keep the best ten. An interesting exercise is to go to a city and shoot as many photos as you like. But when you come home, only allow yourself to keep the best five and throw the rest away.

Learn to Observe

Learn to look at things before brining the camera to your eye. Observe the light, and learn to be patient with it. Sometimes you have great light in a particular spot, but the scene will not be great unless someone walks through that spot and is illuminated by a shaft of light coming from an alley or reflected off of the colored walls. Stay there for ten or fifteen minutes and wait for something to happen. If you decide to move on right way, you might miss something really special.

Santorini, Greece

Santorini, Greece

Take Notes

Carry a notebook with you and write down your impressions. Say your doing a photo walk in a city or park and then decide to rest for a while. Whether you go get some coffee, stop at a restaurant or go back to your hotel room, take the time to write down your impressions of the day. Write what you saw, the smells and the sounds. All of these things are part of the memory, not just the visuals.

Just Go

Travel photography goes hand-and-hand with…travel. Many people say, “I will travel when I have time” or “when I have money” or “when I’m retired” and so on. My advice? Travel now. Travel as much as you can. See new places. Experience other cultures. Go beyond your own backyard. You have to make sacrifices in order to travel sometimes, but I urge you not to wait until it’s too late. You will never regret the things you did, only the things you didn’t do.

About Author Ugo Cei

Ugo Cei is a fine-art travel and landscape photographer from Italy. If you were to ask him what he does, he would say that he is an educator who helps photography enthusiasts sharpen their skills, so that they can take amazing pictures.

He does this in various ways. First of all, by providing a wealth of free content here on Visual Wilderness and on his own website.

He leads photography tours and workshops to some cool destinations, including Scotland, Venice, Cappadocia, Oman, Greece, Kenya, and others.

He co-hosts and publishes a weekly podcast about travel photography, The Traveling Image Makers. Every week, they pick the brains of famous and not-so-famous travel photographers to learn what it means to travel for the love of photography and photograph for the love of travel.

Website | Photo Tours | Creativity Podcast | Travel Photography Podcast

NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY NEWSLETTER

Join 45,000+ Nature Photographers and get the free eBooks, free creativity course & discount codes right in your inbox.

loader

Note: We never share your email address with anyone. More Info.

Blog | Shop | About

 Email Policy  |  Privacy Policy  |  Terms

INFOCUS NEWSLETTER

Join 45,000+ other photographers and get the Free eBooks, Free Creativity Course & Discount Codes right in your inbox.


loader

Note: We never share your email address with anyone. More Info.

All Rights Reserved, © Copyright Visual Wilderness

6 Steps to Making More Creative Landscape PhotographsCapturing Fleeting Moments in Nature
Scroll to top

This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

OK

Cookie and Privacy Settings



How we use cookies

We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.

Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.

Essential Website Cookies

These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.

Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.

We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.

We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.

Other external services

We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.

Google Webfont Settings:

Google Map Settings:

Google reCaptcha Settings:

Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:

Privacy Policy

You can read about our cookies and privacy settings in detail on our Privacy Policy Page.

Privacy Policy
Learn More
NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY NEWSLETTERJoin 45,000+ Nature Photographers

Unlock Your Photography Potential! Get Free Webinars, Tips, eBooks, and More Delivered Straight to Your Inbox! 📸✨

We never share your email address with anyone. More Info.

Enter your email address