This article focuses on capturing photos that are your images and building them into a travel slideshow.
Have a list of subjects that you can capture to use as ingredients for your travel show—not your standard travel images. A list helps you to see so much more on your travels, such as markets, artists, buskers, and even shop windows.
Shop windows are great for illustrating different countries. And images of food bring back good memories and can add “taste” to your travel show.
And don’t forget amusing incidents like the attack of the doves…
Or even your self-catering.
Remember, travel photography is the way in which we go about recording our travels so that we can revisit and share our experiences time and time again and really enjoy each revisit.
And to do this you need variation, surprise, and unexpected items, all providing an element of visual interest.
When doing your travel show you obviously have to let people know where in the world you are—what country or city you’re visiting. This is essential to give context, and the aim is to do this without it being a big interruption to the show. Photographing signage is the easiest and most effective way of establishing location.
Just as one should do with all of our visual images, it’s important to include some indication of scale, otherwise, your viewer has no real idea of what is being shown.
People are your best indicators of size.
You really do need size indicators. Both the library at Ephesus and the Corinth Canal are huge.
Wherever you are in the world, the time of day can make all the difference to the images you capture, and you should factor this into your plans. For example, if you’re in Dubrovnik you can get delightful images of empty streets if you are out before breakfast.
If you wait until after breakfast you may find that the cruise ships have arrived and your images will be very different!
Or you can wait for the evening.
This applies to all cities and points of interest that attract crowds. You plan what you would like to have in your image and time it accordingly.
We all want some of our travel images to be slightly different from the usual images you see.
You can take the standard, perhaps obligatory, tourist type images, such as this one of Venice.
But what about some images of Venice at work?
Or images of other parts of the city that aren’t normally featured?
There are numerous other ingredients that you can use for your travel show. It’s really up to your imagination. In a future article, I will cover subjects such as details, reflections, time of day, and so on. My travel photography ebook covers a wide range.
About the Author:
Roger Lee is a Johannesburg based photographer who runs a one day course based on “we don’t want to drown in detail, we just want to know how to use our cameras and enjoy ourselves!” He also does an ebook version of his course.
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Do you have a recommendation for a slide show program? Is there one better than another?