My passion is travel photography, and I really enjoy bringing home some great images from our vacation travels as my MOST important souvenirs. I'm definitely not a professional photographer, but I consider myself a pretty good amateur travel photographer. This week, I'd love to pass along a few of my favourite tips.

 

1. LOOK FOR DETAILS that others may miss while you are traveling. It maybe the face of a statue, a unique flower or a architectural detail. Here is a detail I love from Queen Elizabeth's retired Royal Yacht Britannia in Edinburgh last summer. (below)

 

2. GET CLOSE as possible to your subjects. Our smart phones can take great photos, but generally do not have movable lenses, so they use only digital zoom. This function is relatively useless as it only internally crops your images and records less information (less resolution). Sometimes just moving a few steps closer to your subject will help your photo immensely.

 

3. CONSIDER A SMALL POINT-AND-SHOOT CAMERA: I love zooming in on details of my subjects, but can't always get close to the subject. I also love using my iPhone 7 for most of my photography (so I can easily edit my images), but it only has digital zoom. I used to carry a big Canon digital SLR camera with big zoom lenses for most of my photography, but now hate traveling with that much bulk/weight. I solved this little photo dilemma by buying a Canon Powershot ELPH camera to carry when traveling. It is tiny (about as small as my smart phone), fits in my pocket, has a great optical zoom (10x), actually will bluetooth the pics right to my smart phone and it costs less than $200 CAD!  Now, when we want to get a picture of both of us in front of a great landmark (or when I'm alone) and ask a stranger to take my photo, I'm only handing them a little $175 point-and-shoot camera rather than my $1000 smart phone!

Me alone at Mont St Michel, France