How NOT to Let Photography Get In the Way of Your Travel
Photography can be a distraction that gets in the way of your travel, but if done right it can significantly enhance and complement your travel experience. Read on to see what I do to make sure it is the latter each time I am on the road.
Travel and photography usually go hand in hand. When done right, they complement each other nicely —you can not only take home memorable photos but also uncover unique details of different places that others may easily miss. However, I often see travelers taking photos in a way that making photography an obstruction for them to fully enjoy the travel experience. In this story, I would like to share a few things I do to avoid such conflict and help me get the most out of each trip —from being able to fully immerse in the travel experience to taking home beautiful photos that tell an authentic story of each travel destination.
Two ends of the spectrum:
When I travel, I often see two types of people traveling with a camera. At one end of the spectrum, there are travelers like the gentleman in the title photo — they carry a lightweight and compact camera, and most of the time they don’t even have their hands on the camera because they want to observe as much as possible with their eyes instead of through the camera lens. At the other end of the spectrum, there are ones who carry an impressive DSLR with a flagship lens, sometimes there is even a flash mounted on the camera body and a tripod being hanged on some part of their body. Also, the second type tends to see things only through the camera’s viewfinder instead of their own eyes, as if they are constantly getting ready to capture that next priceless moment.
There is certainly no right or wrong when it comes to your camera choice or whether you are a laid-back or geared-up kind of photographer. However, in the context of leisure travel, I do think that a laid-back approach is more suitable than being geared up all the time. Please see below a few things I do to maximize my travel experience as a photographer. Remember to drop me a message to tell me whether you agree or disagree with what I am about to share.
#1 — Choose agility over performance.
As someone who loves to pack light when traveling for leisure, I always choose agility over performance in terms of camera choice.
I tend to separate cameras into two camps. The first camp is the small and compact ones, like mirrorless cameras. While this kind of camera is convenient to carry around, there are many drawbacks technically— some have smaller sensors (e.g. 4/3 or APS-C), some have limited controllability (e.g. difficulty to adjust aperture/shutter speed/ISO setting), and some are slow to focus. On the other hand, there are high-performance cameras like DSLR. Traditionally, the DSLR camp has advantages such as fast autofocus, better low light performance, and easier to capture fast-moving objects (note that I said traditionally because mirrorless technology did catch up a lot in recent years). And the disadvantage of the high-performance camp is that it is bulky and heavy, which in my opinion deteriorates the travel experience as it is inconvenient to carry such a camera around, especially if you couple it with a heavy lens and/or other accessories.
In my past experience, I have brought both kinds of cameras when traveling for leisure and found out that I enjoy using a mirrorless a lot more (e.g. Fuji x100, Leica M9, etc.) because it is not as obstructive. While I might have missed some photo opportunities due to their technical limitation, I certainly had a much better travel experience in general as I wasn’t distracted as much when using a smaller and more compact camera.
#2 — Shoot things that are authentic and mean something to you.
When I first started photography, I strived to take the best possible photo in every place I visited — from busy streets in Tokyo or Hong Kong to marvelous nature like the Grand Canyon or the Matterhorn mountain. When I had this mindset, I would spend a lot of time (often too much time) in each photo-worthy spot because I need time to compose, check the result, recompose, check the result again, and then try out some different exposure settings… this chain of actions goes on and on and on. It was not before long I realized what I did actually defeats my purpose of traveling. The purpose of traveling can be different for different people, and it is possible that the purpose of your traveling is to take the best pictures of the place of interest. If so, it makes perfect sense to spend a lot of time exploring shooting options for that location. However, if you are like me, who thinks traveling should be an immersive experience to get to know the place, observe the culture, or even spend time as a local meandering through the streets, you should treat photography only as a side dish and not let it steal the show.
Since that epiphany, I no longer focus so much on technical details like exposure setting or composition, instead, I started to focus on the authentic and candid moments that I can discover. Even in places with stunning views or interesting objects, my focus is usually on the people who are admiring the view or mesmerized by the object, instead of just the view or object itself (like this photo from San Fransico below). I like to remind myself that it is the people and their authentic interaction that mean something to me, not the beautifully composed or perfectly exposed photos that I can easily find hundreds more on Google.
#3 — See things through your eyes, not the camera lens.
Going back to the two types of photographers — laid-back vs. geared-up —I choose to be the laid-back type when traveling for leisure so that I can fully immerse myself in the environment and take in everything that is happening around me. Specifically, this means spending much more time observing than actually taking photos, as if you don’t even have a camera with you, and only taking out the camera when you anticipate something unique is about to happen. This is how you can more effectively spot and capture the candid moments that are truly worth taking photos of. On the contrary, if I constantly had the camera in my hands and saw the world only through the tiny viewfinder, my mind would be limited by this tunnel vision created by the camera lens, making it impossible to be mindful of all the things going on that may lead to the next photo-worthy moment.
Thanks for taking the time to read about how I take photos when I travel. I want to make it very clear that there is absolutely no right or wrong when it comes to the way you travel, your camera choice, what shooting style you use, or how you spend your time and energy in each location. At the end of the day, do what makes you most comfortable and fulfilling. Things I shared above are what work best for me, and what is best for you may look very different. At a minimum, I hope that this would inspire you to reflect on how you shoot when you travel for leisure and if there is anything you would like to do differently the next time you travel.
P.S. I actually hesitated a bit when I was planning to write about this topic because for those who are passionate about traveling (including myself), this couple of years has been extra difficult as the world of travel has almost come to a full stop due to Covid. However, I trust that this will only be temporary and one day we can fly again like before and have a beautiful view like this one I saw the last time I flew. So be prepared. When the world is recovered, where would you want to fly next?
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