1 Big Mistake I Made When I First Started Taking Travel Photos
And the simple solution to avoid this yourself on your next trip.
Like most beginners, I made a lot of mistakes when I first started taking travel photos during a trip.
But this was the biggest one, by far:
Not slowing down when taking photos.
Here's what happened:
If you have a day job and have limited vacation leave to travel, you might be like me and want to see, do and experience as much as possible on vacation.
That means you’re might be rushing from one place to another.
Not giving yourself enough time to slow down, absorb the scene in front of you before snapping a photo.
There’s nothing wrong with holiday snaps. They can be just as cherished as a well composed photo captured in the right light, at the right moment.
But to create memorable travel photos—one for the family photo book even—can sometimes take a few minutes.
And those extra few minutes can be the difference between an average joe shot and a memorable photo you love, that takes you back down memory lane when you look back at it years later.
Sometimes these simple things can turn a mediocre photo into an incredible one:
Shifting youself a few feet forwards or to the side.
Crouching down to create leading lines in your photo.
Waiting for the right person to walk in or out of your photo.
All it takes is just a bit more time.
But, it's also worth acknowledging that making this mistake taught me a ton.
Just picking up the camera and making the shot (without overthinking it) meant I’ve taken tens of thousands of photos.
And after reviewing thousands of my travel photos in Adobe Lightroom from the last 15 years, I’ve slowly but surely trained my photographic eye to more quickly see photos I love and discard photos I don’t.
In turn, when I’m back out there travelling and taking photos, I’ve become faster at spotting a good photograph.
This is why I encourage everyone to see their mistakes (and "failures") as necessary steps along the path.
There is always a lesson to be learned.
What’s your biggest mistake when you first started taking photos on your travels?