How to Shoot Great Travel Photos by Susan Mccartney

Author:Susan Mccartney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allworth Press

Cities, Towns, and Villages

London was where I spent my teens, and I’ve lived in midtown Manhattan for almost all of my adult life. I love the energy and culture and mixture of people and the sheer stimulation of the world’s biggest cities. You can often avoid showing snarled city traffic if you shoot before the morning rush hour, or after most office workers have gone home. Graffiti, overflowing garbage cans, or construction debris in cities are less obvious when you shoot in low, angled light.

I also like to photograph old provincial towns and small villages. I spent my young childhood in Littlewick Green, England, and I’ve owned a house in the hamlet of Wallkill in upstate New York for many years. My experience, though, is that even the most beautiful of such places can look a bit drab or unkempt in the brightest light of day. Early and late light and twilight are much kinder.

Tips: Shoot city skylines from high, not-too-distant vantage points with telephoto zoom lenses. This will permit you to frame your composition precisely. A good tripod makes it easy to keep hori-zontal and vertical lines level. A tripod will also allow you to shoot from sunset through “blue time” (twilight), adjusting your exposure as the light level falls. Starting just after sunset the sky will change from warm afterglow to pale then deep shades of blue, and finally to black. I like Ektachrome films for evening and night shooting; they hold excellent blues and blacks. Christmas is a good time to visit cities; in Christian countries there are decorations, of course, and in winter shooting at twilight lets you capture lighted office buildings against a deep-blue sky. If you have a great vantage point within a city, composing with a wide-angle lens can produce fine results.

I always try to visit a place when a colorful local event is scheduled. In New York or Paris or Hong Kong these can be either world-class or more local street fairs or religious processions. In small towns and villages, market days, village fêtes, local sports days, rodeos, and Firemans’ Fairs all make good subjects, with plenty of relaxed people around too.

Most places celebrate something with a fireworks display on occasion. To shoot fireworks, try to choose a vantage point so that buildings or landscape features are visible behind the fireworks. You will need a tripod and to set long exposures. You can’t meter fireworks, but I have luck with 100 ISO film or 100 ISO digital camera settings, and use a f/5.6 aperture. I then vary shutter speeds between 4 and 30 seconds; the brightness of the bursts can vary considerably.

Of course, coverage of cities, towns, and villages is not complete without pictures of their inhab-itants. People pictures bring life to almost any story. Go to shopping streets, markets, and parks to find them in receptive moods.

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