Tips on how to take great travel photos

By Bob Difley

Nearly everyone who travels–and what RVer doesn’t?–likes to document their trips with journals and photos. With the rapid advancements in digital devices, the Internet, and social media, travel documentation has become both instant and easy. Instead of journals there is now blogging, sending instant reports to friends, relatives, and followers. Social media permits photos and short text descriptions instantly across the internet. And digital cameras, tablets, and smart phone cameras used with apps like Instagram permit even the most amateur of photographers to take photos of the places they visit and post them with a couple clicks or button pushes for all to see–and admire.

But the biggest advance–the game changer, as Kodak followers can tell you–has been the invention and adoption of the digital camera. Film is gone except for special applications–and so is film expense. With digital you can snap away with complete disregard for the cost of the film and processing that will follow every photographic episode. Now it’s possible to take your travel photos from every vantage point, to experiment with different angles, shoot from ground level or from rooftops, change your speed or depth of field, take dozens of shots of the same subject to see what works–then delete all the ones that don’t. And it doesn’t cost a penny to delete even 90% of your shots just to get the right one.

And one of the truly neat things about digital photography–as almost all photographers will tell you–it’s not the equipment that makes the picture, it’s the photographer. So feel free to experiment constantly and study your results. You will see a scene in a different way than any other photographer. And that is what makes your photos unique.

To help you along the path to great photography, Chuck Delaney–who is the Director of the 120 year old New York Institute of Photography and a professional photographer for over 30 years–has put together a new book, Top Travel Photo Tips, which he describes as “a quick-and-easy everyday photography guide,” to show you how to do it.

Delaney picks the brains of ten of the world’s top travel photographers for the tips that they use daily to create the photographs that fill the pages of the most prestigious travel magazines, and lays them out for you in this book. If you want to take better–even great–travel photographs then this is the book for you–and it will fit in your camera bag where you can refer to it as you are shooting. As a photographer, this is a book I wish I had when I was developing as a photographer.

Top Travel Photo Tips is published by Allworth Press of New York at a cover price of $16.95 and is available at bookstores and online at Amazon and other outlets.

For RVing articles and tips take a look at my Healthy RV Lifestyle website, where you will also find my ebooks: BOONDOCKING: Finding the Perfect Campsite on America’s Public Lands (PDF or Kindle), 111 Ways to Get the Biggest Bang for your RV Lifestyle Buck (PDF or Kindle), and Snowbird Guide to Boondocking in the Southwestern Deserts (PDF or Kindle), and my newest, The RV Lifestyle: Reflections of Life on the Road (PDF or Kindle reader version). NOTE: Use the Kindle version to read on iPad and iPhone or any device that has the free Kindle reader app.