How to Take Travel Photos Like a Pro

The era of the highly edited, perfectly symmetrical hero shot is over. Now, the travel spam trend is all about detail and authenticity. Professional photographer Caitlin Miers shares her top tips for capturing your holiday.

Tis the season to travel (finally!)

We’ve all been locked up for two and a half years, and it seems the growing trend this year is to - literally - GTFO.

Travel is looking a little different on the other side of Covid, but the beauty is still there.

Wherever you’re off to for the remainder of 2022, creating memories still looks the same as it ever has, and I’m going to point you in the right direction for getting that sweet travel content with ease so you can spend more time sipping and less time clicking!

I’ll start with this: A few years ago, the ‘perfect’ travel photo was all about the grand gestures. The big, bold ‘hero’ shot. Highly edited, almost unrealistic, and definitely difficult to achieve. This is how the travel blogger blew up.

These next-to-perfect, symmetrical images of incredible places around the world - it was a breeze to the elite few and a scramble for the rest of us.

Fast forward to today, and we can see there’s a different trend emerging. Enter - the ‘detail’ shot. Or to be honest with you, enter ‘the real life unedited version!’

These are shots the phone in your pocket is more than capable of capturing beautifully, no fancy DSLR or pro kit required.

It’s kind of cool, because I think social media can be so blown out of proportion at times that we truly forget what’s real and what’s not.

It’s refreshing to see everyone warming to unedited, unfiltered images that simply showcase the very real moments of what’s happening in their life. After all, that is what Instagram's intention was when it started.

So, as a professional photographer, I've outlined my top five tips for capturing your adventures on your iPhone.

Get inspired by colour

I love capturing contrasting colour and always look for it on my travels.

It’s amazing what your eyes can see once you start tuning into this.

Even when you’re just walking around exploring, try and make a conscious effort to tune into the colours around you. Think bright pop!

Keep it real

Stay authentic to you.

You know what you like capturing and what you don’t. So stick to that!

Get creative with it, and always remember that a lot of moments can be much better with the phone down too.

Do a light edit

My favourite phone apps to use to edit at the moment are Tezza and Dazz Cam.

These allow you to do some light colour editing which can be fun to make colours really pop in your shots or give you a washed film look.

It’s fun to take some time and play around with these to see what you like.

You’ll notice you’ll start to develop your own style and this can further inspire more creativity if you’re loving it!

If we’re going to get technical, I would say use ‘portrait’ mode for more still life images and the normal ‘photo’ mode for landscapes and people shots.

This way you get a nice mix of both.

The reason to use portrait mode for objects is that it gives this nice ‘falloff’ or ‘blur’ in the background, which looks like you’ve picked up a professional camera!

It’s all in the angles

I’ve always thought angles can differentiate between a good photographer and a great one.

I love the thought process behind trying out different angles and different views of a specific view. It really adds to the creativity.

Get down low, shoot up, shoot down, the more you move the more you’ll start to see the same location in a whole different light.

Organisation

When you’re travelling, you’re obviously going to be taking a lot of photos, but it can be overwhelming sorting through them.

Here is how I do it: At the end of the day, go through and ‘heart’ your favourite ones, and then you can select them and add them into a folder as ones you’d like to edit.

Then, once you’ve edited them, you can move them to a separate folder ready to share. It’s a bit of a process to get used to at first, but once you’re in that mindset you’ll find you’ll just do this as you go!

At the end of the day, travel photography is really all about photographing what catches your eye.

What intrigues you, what makes you question, and what makes you think.

There’s nothing better than fully immersing yourself in the culture and getting lost in the vibrancy of somewhere that feels so different to home.

This feeling is what pulls me back overseas every single time and something I think I’ll never stop chasing. I hope these tips have given you some inspiration to get out there and document your travels!

Happy flying x