How to Capture Your Family Travel (or Everyday Adventures) Better
Photography is my favorite hobby. I read and write for my job otherwise I’d name those first, but photography is something I do purely for fun. I love taking photos. I love playing with editing photos. I love sharing photos and I love looking back at our old photos.
I am NOT a photographer.
That feels important to state because there are a lot of truly amazing photographers who are willing to teach you their craft. I have however been taking photos since my parents got me a camera for my eighth grade graduation and the interest has only grown. I have taken a couple of classes but nothing too intense. It is a hobby and one I truly love.
If you want more professional advice and take photos with your iPhone – I highly suggest the book THE iPHONE PHOTOGRAPHY BOOK by Scott Kelby. It is a thorough, easy to follow, helpful guide to taking photos, editing them and everything in between.
Since I share regularly on Instagram and obviously share a lot of photos in my posts here, I occasionally have people ask for advice on taking photography – particularly of children and travel. Below I’m sharing my best advice, mostly gained through playing around with a camera for decades, but also from other true pro photographers. Please take it as that though, just advice. What I do, imperfect, not professional Erin.
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First a few technical pointers:
- Which camera you use does not matter that much. Sure an expensive DSLR will create a crisper photo and make it easier to take the picture you want IF you take the time to learn how to use it manually. But if you’re just going to pick up the camera, point, and click – you can get a great photo with a camera phone or a DSLR. Either works. Most of my absolute favorite photos were taken on my iPhone because that’s what I had with me. The only real downside I’ve found to the iPhone is that it can’t zoom in if we’re traveling and I want to photo something far away. Speaking of which…
- Cropping. Do Not zoom in when you are taking a photo with a camera phone. You can always crop in closer later but zooming in will always make your photo more grainy. Don’t do it.
- Editing. I promise you that everyone who has photos you admire is editing them at least a little. Taking a good picture is important – it is the heart of the photo – but knowing how to tweak them (or in some cases massively edit them) is important too if you want amazing photos.
I have Lightroom both on my laptop and on my phone for editing photos. It allows you to tweak and edit just about every aspect of your photo and if you learn to use it well then you don’t need filters. However, I also use other editing apps. I’ve played around with a ton of them, but right now I primarily use AColorStory right now to edit my photos when I just want to quickly make them prettier. - I think apps and filters are 100% fine but I’d recommend two things:
1. Start by tweaking the photo itself in the manual part of any app. Play with the light and the color and the contrast. You will learn a lot just by playing around with it. See if you can get it better or closer to what you want the photo to look like on your own.
2. When you apply a filter, use the button to scroll down on how heavy you apply the filter. Often the full effect isn’t really what you want.
Things to Think About When You’re Taking Photos of Travel and Kids
Now on to the real meat, because although editing is fun, this is really the part I most enjoy playing around with on my cameras.
One of the first tips that always pops into my mind is to think about how you are framing your photo. When I’m taking a picture it’s usually because something caught my eye – usually something cute my kids are doing or something cool we are visiting. Our instinct is to point it at them and click. Do that. Those moments pass quickly, but if there’s time think about what else is in the photo. Can you shift your camera angle or perspective just a little to edit out other people, distractions, clutter?
Pay attention to lighting. One of the biggest issues with taking photos is lighting. Pay attention to where the light is to avoid looking back at your photos only to discover horrible shadows. Avoid having your subject look directly in the sun. Rotate around your subject until they are squinty or covered in shadows.
If you are taking a photograph of a landscape or the beach, having a focal point, something to draw your eye in or show the grandness of whatever you’re visiting will help your photo pop. I generally encourage my kids to go run or climb into the landscape I want to photo and then take a bunch of photos.
Look for unusual angles or perspectives. If I had to pick on thing, this is my favorite thing to play with when I’m taking photos. I love taking pictures from above and below and with reflections and through things. This is the playing with photography that really makes my heart sing, especially when I get a good one. The one above is on the train from Belgium and I was fairly obsessed with the reflection. It took a while to get it right, fortunately my son was reading and didn’t even realize what I was doing.
Think about what you want to remember? Of course we want a gorgeous photo, but it’s really about capturing a memory, right? So when you’re taking photos, what is it you want to remember about where you are or this moment you’re experiencing. The photo above is from a trip to Central Park in New York City. It is a beautiful park, but what my kids loved more than anything was climbing on these massive rocks.
Embrace motion and candid moments – just get in the right position to capture them. This wasn’t staged, although I do occasionally ask my kids to climb up something or run in a particular directions because I’m loving a view or the light. Most of my photos though are just me following them around. Changing where I am in relationship to them and what they’re doing though often makes a big difference. Above my daughter was running on the beach but so were my son and my brother. I went between her and them, where I could see her reflection and started snapping.
How to Embrace Candid Photography : from Click it Up a Notch
Take a million pictures for one good one. I often get asked “how do you get such cute photos of your kids?” or some variation on that question. I always answer “I take a million crappy ones to get one good one” and I think people think I’m kidding. I’m not. I delete tens, sometimes hundreds of pictures a day. Yes. A Day.
Sometimes the best photo isn’t the one that’s “best” just the one that captures that memory the best. I love this picture. It makes me smile every time I see it. For me it captures the shear joy she felt holding on to the cable car for the first time. It is not technically perfect. I wish more of the cable car was in it. The focus is a little off. I don’t love the white truck there. There are shadows in places I wish there weren’t…but I really don’t care. It captures that moment for me and that’s what photography is supposed to do, right?
I already said that above, but take some of the pressure of yourself to get the “perfect” photo. Of course these tips, trying to reduce the visual clutter from the photo, playing with perspectives, paying attention to lighting, learning to edit – those will all help take better pictures. But at the end of the day, capturing the moment in time is what’s most important.
One last thing. Get in photos too! If you love taking photos, it is easy to forget to include yourself in a photograph as well. Looking back though you will want to remember being there as well and even if you think you won’t, I promise you that your family will want photos of you as well. Hand the camera off or use a self timer – I do this on my phone with my twins a lot on our adventures.
My biggest advice though is to enjoy it. Think of it as something fun to play with and just experiment. See what works for you. What doesn’t. Again, I’m not a pro, but if you have questions feel free to drop them in the comments!
Happy memory capturing!
