TAKE MORE BEAUTIFUL TRAVEL PORTRAITS: TIPS
The best trips connect us with the most beautiful places and people. While most people take photos of landscapes and attractions to document their travel, photos of local people make the experience so much more meaningful.
Whether you find yourself in some exotic land, ancestral homeland, or even just the next town over from your home base, people and their cultures add color, texture, and, of course, emotion, to the total picture.
To best understand and appreciate wherever you are, it helps to connect with people and their ways of life there. To get the best photos -- images that convey both a sense of place and a sense of humanity -- it helps to keep a few technical, aesthetic, and interpersonal aspects in mind.
We are sharing a few tips, gleaned from some of the best travel photographers around, that can help you take the most beautiful travel portraits wherever you may roam.
First, you want to start out with a smile on your own face to put people around you at ease. And if you want to take an up close and personal portrait, it’s always best to ask permission. Most people, we’ve found, say “yes.” And they relax more, which always makes for better photos, both posed and candid portraits.
There are clues in every picture that tell the stories of the people and place featured. Obvious elements, like clothing and props, and more subtle nuances, like moods, textures and body movements convey the present reality, with inferential trails of breadcrumbs, telling us who, how, where, when, and why.
Portraits that are within vignettes can be worth even more than 1000 words.
Candid portraits have their own special magic. Each illustrates a unique moment with its own special movement, emotion and expression. If it’s candids that you are after, shoot often, shoot a lot, and be patient.
“There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment.” -- Henri Cartier Bresson.
The golden hours of early morning and late afternoon make for the most dramatic natural lighting. Sunlight, coming in at a low angle, makes for richer color and poetic sculptural shadows.
“A kind of golden hour one remembers for a lifetime... Everything was touched with magic.” Margaret Bourke-White
Portraits can be very powerful both when they are extreme closeups and when they are long shots. In both cases, what and how you choose to show the surrounding environment can add both interest and power. It tells the viewer more about the people and the place. It’s fascinating the play with depth of field and light to shift emphasis and tell different kinds of stories.
One of the joys of travel is meeting new people and making new friends that bring new color into your life. Whether you share just a few warm moments and never meet them again or they become a more permanent part of your circle, your connection can make a lasting impression in an interactive portrait.
So say “hi,” ask a question, offer a kindness, share a laugh, and capture the energy if they are game.
Everyone has a twinkle in their eyes. You just need to know how to find it. And if you can control your light source, or control your angle in relation to the light, you can capture the catchlights in your subject’s eyes.
Whether you are an amateur or a pro, you probably instinctively think about basic composition when you take photos of landscapes or still lifes. But the best photographers know that composition can make all the difference between a meh and a magnificent portrait photo as well.
You can stick with the tried and true “rule of thirds,” in which you make sure your frame is divided and balance in shapes, contrasts and color. You can align edges and paths that draw the viewer’s eye to the desired focal point. But once you master these techniques, you can create even more drama by breaking these rules on purpose, with purpose, for a portrait that has star power.
Read more about Powerful Portraits all this week on BeautifulNow. And check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Wellness, Impact, Nature/Science, Food, Arts/Design, and Travel, Daily Fix posts.
Do you have amazing photos? Enter them in this week’s BN Photo Competition.
