Insight Guides: Travel Photography by Insight Guides

Author:Insight Guides
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: photography, travel photography, Travel and Holiday Guides
Publisher: APA
Published: 2012-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

Elements and Skyscapes

Whatever the weather, it’s a good time for taking pictures. Instead of wishing for sunshine, photographers should make the most of what they find, and be prepared for nature’s little surprises

The fact that there is no certainty in life is no more obvious than when contemplating the weather. The planet is so tireless in playing around the elements, that most of the time we have no idea what to expect.

In much of the world, all predictions are suspect, and any attempts to analyse, quantify or categorise the elements are hopeless. The artist John Constable spent a liftime trying to dream up a system of classifying clouds. He never achieved it. Isaac Newton decided there were seven colours in a rainbow but he made the number up to coincide with a music scale. The Beaufort Scale may describe the wind force, but there are no words for every kind of sea. We have no idea when lightning is going to strike, when volcanoes will erupt or how hurricanes or tornadoes will behave.

All this is enormously exciting for travel photographers, who daily may face half a dozen different changes in the weather. Keeping a good lookout, they may find themselves racing to capture the sun’s rays, scurrying to see the steaming pavements after a tropical downpour, or running to catch a sun that’s setting like a biblical revelation. And fleeting elements, such as rainbows and lightning, require an instant response.

To say that every cloud has a silver lining should be self-evident to a photographer. Look at this great picture of a little girl in the rain, in front of a rickshaw. It’s not cute. She isn’t smiling. In fact she’s fed up that it’s raining. A perfect shot.

A fog or mist can act like a soft focus lens, in which foreground colours and silhouettes can dramatically stand out. And if you don’t want to be out in wet weather trying to keep your camera dry, that’s okay: you can still take pictures from the shelter of a hotel room, a car or a cafe awning.

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