Travel Photography: by Ed Mercer

When you have free time to travel to any of the beautiful locations of your choice, your camera and your knowledge of how to use it will be the difference of having beautiful visual memories to reflect on forever or to experience the disapointment of lost memories. There are so many wonderful places to travel to around the world, and for most of us it can be a once in a lifetime experience. It is wonderful to have photographs as seen through your own eyes to relive those times over and over. Most of us nowadays have a digital camera to record our travels and they are fairly easy to use, usually just a point and shoot method. But many people forget small basic steps that can lead to disaster and lost photographic opportunites. Simple things like not having spare batteries or making sure their rechargeable batteries are charged. Making sure to have more than one memory card in case one has a problem or you get caught up in the moment and take too many photographs. Not having your owners manual with you to explain a possible error message from your camera and how to fix it, or how to do an advanced photography technique that you may not be able to do in automatic mode. Try to make sure you have had the camera for a while and are fairly familiar with it, you will be gambling if you go with a brand new camera that you are not familiar with. When you are traveling and on different tours you do not always have a lot of time to compose and capture your images, so knowing your camera and being ready will prevent you from missing great photographs. When taking your photographs, you do not want to point your camera into the sun unless you want a sillouette effect. Always try and have the sun or light source behind you to get the best results. When photographing people in the scene try and photograph them in the shade otherwise they will be squinting and the photographs will be very contrasty. Try and use objects in front of the camera to show perspective. Along with your beautiful landscapes try and pick a subject within the landscape as a motif. A small mini tripod is also a great piece of equipment to take low light or night photographs. These are just a few small tips to insure that your travel photographs are as close to the real thing as possible. Enjoy your travels and return to relive them again in photographs.