Traveling With Your Camera
Published in
4 min readJul 4, 2015
In the last couple of years I have flown, driven, and hiked to a number of beautiful locations. My Nikon D7100 and a number of lenses have accompanied me along each of the journeys. I am currently on a 2 week trip in New York to see the city and meet with various people who may be able to help me improve my skills as a photographer. I figured since I have learned some interesting tips while traveling with my camera why not share some of them with you guys.
- Stray from touristy areas: You will find that the really amazing moments to be captured are in the places where the atmosphere is real rather than an act put on for the tourists.
- Know when to bring a tripod or when to bring a string: Tripods are a pain in the ass to carry around with you and they tend to be needed only on the days that you forget to bring them. A simple trick is to carry a long piece of string in your bag so that you can make a string tripod! Check out this video to see how: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjqPuHFoqhE … yes it looks dumb but you’ll get the shot if you need a long exposure!
- Pack smart: We all know how heavy our camera bags can get especially on hikes where it is literally an uphill battle. Remember that it is always good to pack all the essentials for the given situation. For hikes I usually bring my Nikon d7100, a wide angle tokina 11–16mm and a nikon 35mm. This usually all fits in my Lowepro Fastpack 250 AW II Backpack and is light enough while still giving me what I need to shoot. In contrast while walking the streets of New York you could easily ditch the backpack and have a 35mm or 50mm prime lens glued on your camera in order to more easily and more securely travel around the busy city.
- Ask people to be part of your photos: Landscape photos can be breathtaking and architectural photography can be beautifully composed, but sometimes there is nothing like the emotion that people can bring into your photos. It is often the interaction that humans have with the world around them that makes a photo relatable and appealing to others.
- Take photos for fun: I think photographers in general get so caught up in capturing “the perfect photo” that we sometimes forget the power that photography has. It is a way to remember a point in time as well as the emotion that comes with that given image. So along with composing beautiful shots and looking for that great image that you can show to all your friends and family, makes sure to take some photos for yourself. Ones that you can look back on and remember fondly instead of looking at that one perfect image and only being able to think about the 1000 raw files you had to search through in order to find that one picture where the lighting was “Just Right”.
- Put down your camera: I talk about this in length in my article “It’s the Pictures You Don’t Take”, but this last tip was one of the most difficult, yet most important lesson that I have had to learn. It is hard to set your camera down while in a new place. There are so many new things and opportunities to photograph and share with the world, but after you have taken your pictures it is important to see the place without a view finder pressed to your eye. I remember countless times when I have gone on a beautiful hike or to the beach with friends and haven’t really been there with them. I would be continuously taking photos and then when I went back to my computer to edit and see what I got I’d realize that I didn’t really get to experience being at the place at all. I think that’s what separates a good photographer from a great one. Being able to understand what a place is instead of what you can take away from it. When you can do that you can really capture a photo that embodies the place rather than just what the place looks like.
Thank you guys for reading and I hope you can use some of these really basic tips on your photography travels. Check out my Website cktmedia.com and follow me on Instagram: https://instagram.com/casetanaka/
