After the technical basics and a brief introduction to concepts for a great composition in Part One and Part Two in this series, it is now time get creative. I will explain how you can use light, colour, and focus together with the composition to make your images pop.

Light in Photography

Photography literally means drawing with light and light is your best friend for getting the perfect photo. Interesting light can massively improve an already great composition. Sometimes light is actually what makes the composition work. So, don’t just make sure that the subjects are well put together, but also understand what kind of light there is and from what direction it is coming. In this section I will explain some creative lighting techniques and tips for travel photography.

Let’s start with the type of light, generally you have two types: natural and artificial light. Natural light almost always comes from the sun and so the time of the day can make a huge difference. Subjects in the harsh midday sunlight look very different than the same object during Golden Hour. Golden Hour is the first hour after sunrise and the last hour before sunset. It’s the time of day when the light is very soft and gives everything a golden glow, like in the photo below of the Empire State Building from the Rockefeller Center observation deck. Use the Golden Hour as much as you can, but don’t make it the only time of day for your images.

Understanding where the natural light comes from is important in travel photography and therefore scouting especially at new locations is important. But also make sure you shoot the object at different times of the day; you’ll see the object will look very different. Golden Hour anyway only works on nice days, when it’s cloudy it will be challenging. Conversely, the diffused light on overcast days can work wonders. You will get softer shadows and colours will be accentuated. This effect is due to the fact that the sunlight needs to go through clouds and gets diffused, rather than coming from one single spot. The other type of light is artificial light, I will not talk here about how to fill shadows with light or studio lighting. I will focus on the light coming from artificial light sources, likes lightbulbs or LEDs. In Travel photography most of the time this type of light comes from lamp posts, like the photo above from Bologna, or billboards like in the one below from Times Square in New York City. Artificial light comes in all kind of tones, from the cold blue tone of LEDs to nice soft orange from the old lightbulbs. Make sure you take advantage of the tone and incorporate it in your composition.

Now that I discussed the types of light, let’s have a look at which direction the light comes from. There are three main directions: from the front, from the back or from the side. Depending on where the light comes from you get different effects. Most of the time you want to have the light coming from your back. This will light up the subject’ s front and reveal details. If the light comes from the side, the side towards the light will be lit up and the other side will be darker. This creates a nice contrast and adds some dynamism to the photo. This you can see in the photo of the Empire State building above, especially with the buildings on the left side of the image.

The general rule is: don’t take photos against the sunlight (meaning the light coming from in front of you). But I quite like it, as it creates a silhouette which works very well for people and during Golden Hour. You can see this below in the image of my friend standing in front of a window and looking out. I really like that you see the outside as well as you get an idea of what he’s looking at. Furthermore, his face is half visible which adds to the composition.

Person in Window — 1/125sec - f/4.8 - ISO 500 - Taking photos against the light is not easy, but it's worth a try. Especially people infront of a window have a certain appeal. Make sure though that you always see some parts of the person, some features of the face or the hair. Otherwise it will look strange.

Another good example for the direction of light is the image with the statue highlighted by artificial light. I was recently in Vienna and there I visited the Kunsthistorische Musuem. They are very good in using light to focus your eye on the important objects in the room. Make sure though, that the surroundings of the subject are visible as well if you use light to highlight it, otherwise you will end up with a lot of negative space, which will look dull and boring. In the photo I also used symmetry with the items on both sides of the statue. I could have also zoomed in, to use the door even more as a frame.

One last effect I would like to touch on is Light Trails. We all like those photos in which you see the front or the back lights of a car as a trail going down the street. This effect is actually quite easy to achieve, but you need a tripod or a surface to rest your camera on as the exposure time needs to be quite long. One of my favourites is a photo I took in Las Vegas at night right in front of the Luxor hotel. In this photo I broke one of the rules explained in the part about mastering composition. Can you guess which one? If you are thinking leading lines you’re right. As I didn’t want to use the light rails as leading lines, but rather to show the contrast between the dynamic city life and the steadiness of the pyramid with its light beam it works perfectly here. What do you think?

Focus

I talked about Focus being one of the basic technical things you need to understand to take stunning photos. Here now I would like to reiterate the creative part of using Focus. Making the choice of what to put in focus in your image is crucial to get the somewhat unique result you’re looking for. To do this you will work with selective focus using a single focus point. It works particularly well for photos where you want to highlight a certain detail. Below is a photo of a friend of mine during a concert he and his band played. In the image I wanted to capture him playing the guitar and intentionally focused on his hand. I also like that his hands convey a certain intensity at this moment playing the song. Furthermore, I used the neck of the guitar as a leading line to guide the viewer’s eye to the main subject: the hands. When you decide to go for a selective focus make sure to have enough things in the background as you will go for a shallow depth of field and those items will be blurry.

Freezing the Action

In part one of series, I discussed how shutter speed can either freeze action or show flow of motion. In this section I would like to touch briefly on freezing actions. Freezing actions works if your subject moves quite fast. The effect works well as it captures motion without blur. In the photo below you know the kite surfers are moving fast, and you know the direction they’re moving. But freezing the surfer in the landing of the jump is something you might not be able to see in real life as the motion is too fast. The photo above I took at a beach in Tarifa, Spain. In order to freeze action, you need a fast shutter speed, which can be challenging in low-light situations or at night.

Blur

The opposite of freezing motion is to highlight it. Motion in photos can be accentuated by blur. Blur is the result of a longer exposure and a moving subject. Most of the time you try to avoid blur but it can be a very creative technique. For me it works best if you have a static subject and motions around it. This makes blur great for travel photography. In the photos below you see some examples where blur is great to improve the overall photo.

The first image I shot while visiting the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. Lincoln being one of the most important leaders in US history, the statue conveys a certain serenity, timeliness and grandeur. As a contrast you have the visitors, some in a hurry, floating by. The second photo is another friend of mine during a concert. Blur here is again used to highlight motion and intensity. He’s so into playing his drums. Even though it looks like he is sitting still looking at his arms and drum sticks you know that’s not the case.

For getting a blur effect you need a slow shutter speed and therefore, it’s not always easy to execute especially if you have shaky hands. The limit for me with my camera without a tripod is a shutter speed 1/15. But every person and every camera are different and you need to find your individual sweet spot. If your camera has an image stabilizer, make sure it’s activated as it allows you to go for slower shutter speeds.

Panning

Panning is very similar to Blur, the difference is that your subject is moving rather than the surrounding. This effect will emphasize motion. Choose the object, for me it’s almost always trams, especially historical ones, and when the object comes close enough focus on the part you want to highlight then start shooting. While you take the photos move the camera along in the direction the subject is moving. It’s easier said than done, believe me. I always end up with around 5-7 photos and if I am lucky, I get one good one. But that one good one is stunning. Come with time as you will probably try a few times before you succeed. Below are two examples, the first one from Lisbon at night and the second from Milan during the day.

Colour

As a last creative concept, I would like to discuss Colour. Colour is equally important as Light, but much easier to adjust in post-processing. Most of the time I work with colour in the Lightroom, I already wrote two blogs about how to adjust colour, one for a Polaroid look and one for a Summer Pastel look. I encourage you to read them.

For the photo below, I used my Polaroid preset and it just looks amazing. The original was a bit dull as I took it to the Grand Canyon and the surroundings were all sand tones. With the Polaroid effect it looks surreal and way more interesting.

But colour is all around us and you should use it as much as possible. The next image below is from Nice in France. I walked along Promenade des Anglais and I saw this lady sitting on the bench. It was a beautiful spring day with blue sky and the water in this gorgeous turquoise. For some reason the lady decided to wear a bright red headscarf that day, and it was just too good of an opportunity with the red contrasting the blue. I also used the white structure around her as a frame.

As it was a bright day, the light on the water colour was perfect. If it were overcast the water would have looked very different and the red would have been intensified, but we will never know. As explained before, overcast skies make colours more pronounced, so don’t get discouraged, rather look for these bright colours and you will get stunning photos.

When we talk about colour, we also have to look at the absence of colour. Taking out colour completely will get you a nice Black and White image, or we can take colour out selectively. Black and white works best for situations where you have a lot of contrast. Below you have two photos of the Athena statue in front of the Parliament in Vienna. The colour photo looks okay, but I don’t like the sky as it was around noon and the sun came from the side. Making it Black and White was what improved it massively. When you decide to go for this effect make sure you enhance the contrast. I tend to make the Blacks a bit darker than usual.

Black and White with a selective colour is another of my favourite effects. Basically, rather than taking out colour completely, you select one and leave it in. This works very well when there was not much light and colour in the first place. As an example, I put an image I took in the New York underground below. The environment was dark with white and grey as the dominant colours, which helps. But there was this yellow line as a barrier to not get too close to the tracks. As the yellow was the only significant colour in this photo, it was an easy choice. Generally yellow and red work best for this effect. Other colours like green and blue need to be very bright for this to work.

Selective colour in New York City underground — **1/20sec - f/3.8 - ISO 100 - Selective colour is an older effect, but I really like it. You can get some impressive images, especially if the effect itself is quite subtle like in this photo.**

Common Mistakes to Avoid

I hope with learning about the technical basics and getting familiar with composition and creative concepts you feel more comfortable now to go out and get stunning images. For the ending I also wanted to highlight some common mistakes by beginners that are easy to avoid. Don’t get me wrong, it's not just the novice who makes those, even I make them, but have got much better now at minimising them by being more conscious.

Over-reliance on Auto Mode

The first mistake commonly made, especially when getting your first camera is to rely too much on Auto Mode. As explained in the first part of this series Auto Mode takes away the creative freedom that you want and need to give your photos a certain look and feel.

Avoiding Auto Mode and moving to Manual Mode in travel photography can be daunting, but without that move you will not be able to take that great photo you have in mind. For Manual Mode it’s crucial to have internalized how aperture and shutter speed work together (to a certain extent ISO as well). This will come with practice and there’s no way around it. You have to take 50+ photos to get one nice one at the beginning, but you will get better, no worries. To help with the transition away from Auto Mode start with shooting first in Aperture or Shutter Speed mode before moving fully to Manual Mode.

I am very comfortable now with my mirrorless camera, but still struggle with changing the settings in my mobile phone and the compact camera I bought this year. It’s just too tedious for me. I use my phone and my compact camera more for scouting and as back-up, while for the creative images I rely on my mirrorless camera. I am convinced you can take just as creative photos with your phone, it’s just not for me.

Focus on the classic view

Focusing on the classic view to get the perfect shot is another common mistake beginners make. We all want to have this iconic photo, but as you’re not the only one, it’s difficult to stand out. For sure take that classic view, but then look around and move around to get a different perspective or find the detail that most others ignore. I see it so many times that people take the frontal view of an iconic building and then move on. Instead of going to the other side of the street, to the corner of the building or look for a little hill from where you have a different view. Move around, don’t be lazy.

Taking to many photos

After me preaching to go out and practice it sounds a bit counterintuitive when I say one of the common mistakes is to take to many photos. What I mean here is to take to many photos of the same subject with the same settings from the same perspective. Even though digital photography made it cheap and easy to take photos, it still comes with a cost. Mostly in the form of SD-cards to store the photos in you camera and time during the editing process. I normally end up with around 200-300 photos during one day of travel and sightseeing. But out of those I keep around 50 and will work on maximum 20. Now multiply this by every day you’re out and about and you see how much time it will take you to go through your collection. As well storage on external hard drives or NAS-systems is not cheap. Try to take maximum three photos of the same thing, one you’re sure is great and maximum two for safety.

Ignoring the background

In the Mastering Composition part of this series, I talked about the different layers of images. Beginners tend to focus too much on the foreground and the main subject while ignoring the background. For a great photo the background is equally important, no matter if it’s in focus or blurry. You must find the right balance between not having a cluttered background and having too much negative space. Here trust your eye and your sense of what looks good and what is too much. Even though at the beginning you might only notice this mistake during processing your photo, learn from it and look for things that you can avoid next time you’re in a similar situation.

Over-editing

Taking the photo is only the first step, you most likely will shoot in RAW which will make post-processing easier. Be careful though, unless you really want to go for an unnatural look (like my photo of the tree in the Grand Canyon) avoid over-editing. The tools these days make processing very convenient and with Artificial Intelligence involved we believe we can fix everything. But every viewer has a feel for what looks natural and real. If you overdo your editing, the image will quickly look fake. Be careful as well with filters in social media apps and presets you get from others. For a quick introduction in natural photo editing in Lightroom check out the blog I wrote.

Lack of patience

There’s a reason why Travel Photography is a solitary activity, you need patience! I can’t stress that too much. There will always be something in the frame that will irritate you, be it people (most common if you want to take a photo of the iconic sight in town), a parked car or a cloud covering the sun. Normally, I am travelling solo, and I am a fairly patient character, so I am fine waiting for the perfect shot.

There are different strategies for how to handle situations where you have irritating items in the frame. As mentioned, the most important thing is to wait. For those that have ADHD or are just very impatient, focus on another shot in the meantime while you wait for the people to move on. For example, take the detailed image. Another way is to move a few steps, this works with stationary items like parked cars. You can also incorporate the obstacle in your composition. For example, if the tour guide explains something on the façade and everybody is looking up, capture that moment. It’s telling a great story and gives you a unique perspective. What works great for me every now and then is looking annoyed. People are great at reading faces and most of the time they will get out of your way so you can take the photo. If you know the obstacle will be there for quite some time, like a parade or a construction site, come back at another time or day. Keep in mind: have patience, you will get that perfect shot.

Conclusion – Have fun

And with this we come to the end of the three-part series on how to take great photos. If you followed the whole series and practiced along the way you should have, all you need now is to go out and get that perfect photo.

The first part focused on becoming more comfortable with the exposure triangle to set the right exposure for the image you envision. The second part went through and explained various composition concepts. And the last part here looked at creative ways enhancing your image beyond right exposure and composition. It also dealt with common mistakes by beginners and how to avoid them.

Knowing the technical basics and concepts is not enough, practice is everything. Travel is great for this as you have so many opportunities to try new things or perfect what you already know. I encourage you to practice whenever you can, but keep in mind it will only be fun if you can enjoy it. At the beginning it can be frustrating, use mistakes you make to learn. I can tell you I still make many mistakes. Normally, I have around 300 photos for one day of travel. Out of those I keep 50 or 60 that are great and if I am lucky 5 of them are perfect. Analyse your images and figure out what went wrong. I want to reinforce that photography is more about capturing the moment and emotion, not so much about technical perfection. Every rule or guideline I explained in the three blogs are meant to be broken if this helps to tell the story and evoke reactions from the viewer.

I tried as much as possible to keep everything simple and visual with plenty of examples. For me photography is all about having fun, capturing travel memories and overall enjoying being there as much as possible. Feel free to leave a comment and reach out if you liked the content, would like to suggest topics to cover in my future blogs or if you need help with how to improve your photos.

How to Take Great Photos: A Beginner's Guide for Travel Photography – Part 3: Let’s get creative