Technique 26 Travel photography Travelling light
Photography News Issue 22 absolutephoto.com
Great travel photography is more than a record of your trip – you need to take your viewers on a journey of the imagination. Find out how with tips from award-winning shooters…
Words by Kingsley Singleton
Above Atmosphere and a sense of culture is incredibly important in travel photography.
Great travel shots don’t actually require far flung locations; because it’s all about presenting the story of a place or a culture for your viewers, they can certainly be shot in the UK, even in your own town. All you have to do is imagine yourself in the shoes of a visitor, seeing the place through fresh eyes, and from there you’ll find inspiration for a variety of locally themed subjects which may seem everyday to you, but will most probably be foreign to someone else. To open the lid on travel photography, this month we’ve gone straight to the top; the organisers and winners of the prestigious Travel Photographer of the Year competition. So, what do the competition’s co-founder and organiser, Chris Coe, and some of
the winning photographers, think defines travel photography? For starters, it’s important not to get too preoccupied with any labels which can fight your creative urges and get in the way of shooting. Chris says, “the genesis of travel photography was simply in replacing the sketch as a way of recording what people saw on a journey. In many ways, the subject was less relevant than seeing something different; an insight into a different culture or place. For me, it’s still the same today.” “Travel photography is universal and with it we have had to redefine what’s considered exotic”, says Chris. “It’s certainly harder to see opportunities and shoot your own country, simply because you are more familiarwith it, but experience
of frequent travel, actually equips you better to do this.” The next step is to apply your own style, though for someone like Simon Morris whose main interest is in shooting cultures that are becoming scarce, this may seem difficult. But he’s quick to adapt: “Documenting the miners in South Wales years ago would’ve been a good storytelling opportunity.” Travel photography is a curious yet familiar thing; an umbrella of almost every photographic style, it covers a huge range of subjects from still lifes to portraits and candid street scenes to sweeping landscapes. It’s shot at night and in the daytime, at sea and on land, indoors and out. Travel shots are unmistakably exotic, and yet can be made closer to home than you
would expect. While it’s not so easy to define what turns a regular shot into a travel image, it’s immediately clear what is travel photography and what is not. Grand winner of 2014’s Travel Photographer of the Year, and other accolades, Philip Lee Harvey, agrees that good travel shots should inspire a taste for adventure, stoppingyou in your tracks with the picture’s visual appeal, “but leaving you wanting to know more and inspiring you to go those places”. This approach requires some level of storytelling, a hook into the narrative of the image, and Simon Morris, runner up in 2013’s Vanishing and Emerging Cultures category, says part of this is achieved in trying to capture the unique atmosphere of a place; “whether
Travel shots are unmistakably exotic, and yet can be made closer to home than you’d expect
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