A Day In The Life Of A Super Creative Travel Photographer
The life of a travel photographer means missing dinner to make photos.
The life of a travel photographer can be exciting, exhausting and, at times, dangerous. As in all things, the choices you make determine your reality and, with that, the success of your photos.
The life of a travel photographer can include commercial shoots of models or assignments featuring local people, culture, food, landscapes, architecture or tourist attractions. Travel photography bloggers document the beauty and diversity of our world and aim to share it with an ever wider audience.
I hadn’t eaten all day when I made this photo, from a bridge across a fast flowing creek on the road into Milford Sound. With the light fading and the restaurant about to close it looked like I was going to, once again, miss dinner.
But Milford Sound is such an incredible place that I didn’t care about going hungry. After all, I knew I’d be able to eat tomorrow.
Of course that kind of certainty doesn’t exist for millions of people in our world, which makes it easier to put one’s own difficulties into perspective. But I do think it’s good to be reminded of such things, particularly when you’re fortunate to live in a relatively affluent society.
Wind and rain come frequently at Milford Sound and there would be no guarantee of great light at sunrise or sunset. I knew I’d need to maximize whatever opportunities presented themselves during my short stay.
I made the image at dusk prior to heading back to Milford Sound for a prolonged night photography session.
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Travel Photographer Photographs Flowing Water
I made the photo of the fast flowing creek near Milford Sound with my Sony a7Rii camera and Sony/Zeiss 16-36mm f/4 lens. I love working with that lens. It produces extremely sharp results, from edge to edge, right across the frame.
In the fading light the exposure time was 72 seconds at f/11 with the camera set to ISO 100.
I attached the camera to my sturdy Really Right Stuff tripod and waited for the gentle breeze to ease so that the surrounding leaves and ferns remained still during the long exposure.
This isn’t always easy to achieve as fast flowing rivers and waterfalls create their own micro climates. Moving water can generate a breeze sufficient to rustle nearby leaves and, as a result, cause blur in the surrounding landscape.
Sometimes an image benefits from this kind of localized movement, other times not. In this case I wanted the water to show significant blur and the rest of the scene to be rendered tac sharp. I’m really happy with the result I achieved.
Of course I could have achieved an exposure time much shorter than 72 seconds by dramatically raising the camera’s ISO and, in doing so, effectively increasing its sensitivity to light.
However, I was interested in recording the movement of the water and I’m very happy with the ethereal quality in the image that resulted from the long exposure time.
Speak To Me Of Black And White
There was a reasonable amount of color in the trees, rocks and water. However, the shapes and textures in the scene were the dominant elements of composition and made this image a great candidate for a black and white photo.
I also knew that a black and white rendering would remove the scene from its reality and help me produce a more evocative image than would have been the case with a simple color documentation.
It’s important to remember that, if color isn’t all that helpful to your image, it’s probably best to remove it. In doing so you’ll often amplify the other elements of composition within the scene to the benefit of the final photo.
Remains of an old ship at low tide at Bluff, New Zealand.
Travel Photographer Standing on Sharp Rocks in the Rain
Have you ever been to Bluff? It’s a small, industrial town on the very bottom of the South Island of New Zealand.
I made this photo under pretty trying conditions after a hoped for sunrise failed to eventuate.
It was a rainy, dreary and dank morning on a grimy beach with a view of an industrial port in the distant background.
Frankly, it wasn’t at all pretty.
I vividly remember standing for hours on very sharp and slippery rocks, trying to make a handful of photos during persistent rain.
I’m short and I needed to stand on the rocks to get some extra elevation so that I could photograph over the top of that dirty old beach.
What’s more the tide was coming in and I didn’t want to be standing in water for a prolonged period of time.
What made things particularly difficult was that the surface of the water wasn’t particularly attractive. I was going to need a very long exposure to create the silky smooth appearance I wanted.
I had to stack several Neutral Density filters together, in front of my lens, to achieve the 6 minute 11 second exposure time required to produce the lovely, silky effect you see in the water in the above photo.
Even though I had an umbrella perched over the lens to protect it from the rain, raindrops inevitably kept finding their way onto the surface of the ND filter in front of the lens.
I was constantly wiping it clean, which is difficult to do without pushing the lens out of focus. Normally refocussing a lens is easy, but not with visually opaque ND filters in place.
It’s impossible for the lens to see under those conditions which means you have to undergo the following procedure:
Remove the ND filter
Recheck your composition
Refocus the lens
Switch it back to manual focus to stop the lens from trying to refocus, which it won’t be able to do successfully, through the visually opaque ND filter
Gently place the ND filter back into position on the front of the lens
Make the long exposure while trying to prevent raindrops from falling on the front of the ND filter
It’s a nightmare!
I only photographed a few different scenes during that prolonged early morning session on the beach.
More often than not my attempts were spoiled by raindrops which caused me to accidentally move the zoom on my lens, changing the focal length and messing up the composition, or by accidentally pushing the lens out of focus while trying to clean the front ND filter.
I returned back to my accommodation tired but happy in that I’d weathered the storm and made at least one good image.
I washed off my oil stained boots and waterproof pants, showered, packed the car and headed off for the next adventure. I left town, as is so often the case, just as the sun burst through the clouds.
Travel Photographer: Mystery Existing In A World Of Suggestion
By employing an extremely long exposure and removing all the color from these images, I’ve been able to move them to a place that seems to exist, somewhere, between reality and abstraction.
It’s a very interesting place which I like to refer to as suggestion.
Actually I wrote an extensive post on the topic which I’ve titled Abstraction Photography: The Guide.
Trees in snow showcases the stillness of the moment on Huangshan, China.
Photographing Trees in Snow on Huangshan Mountain
You can see how well suited this image, made on the slopes of Huangshan, a mountain region in Anhui province in Eastern China, is to a black and white rendering.
It fits well into the fine print tradition with a full range of tones from jet black to near white.
Can you see that most of the tonality is distributed through the mid tone areas of the image? That makes it particularly easy on the eye and it also allowed me to enhance the enormous amount of detail in those areas of the image.
Strong composition really underpins this image. As well as the textural qualities I mentioned you'll notice that the image is framed around the three dark tree trunks, which are organized into a triangular shape.
Those tree trunks help concentrate attention into the highly textured areas between the trees.
I love the image because it speaks to me of the stillness of the moment and very much documents the height of my experience after making this photo on the incredibly beautiful Huangshan Mountain in China.
But it wasn’t an easy image to create. I was knee deep in snow, having walked a very long way on a relatively minor track chasing a feeling that a great photo awaited.
Best Way To Make A Black And White Photo
Rather than setting my camera to Monochrome (i.e., black and white) I prefer to work with my camera set to RAW and then convert the original color file to black and white on the desktop.
Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop are my preferred applications for post processing my images, although Skylum Luminar, Topaz, ON1 and Affinity Photo also produce excellent products.
Photographing in color produces a larger file, with more information to play with on the desktop than would be the case with the camera set to Monochrome.
However, the Monochrome or Monotone setting on most cameras is the best option for those photographing in JPEG mode who do not want to spend time processing images on the desktop.
Deep snow and mist almost hide a path on Huangshan in winter.
Travel Photographers Pleasure And Pain on Huangshan
The three days I spent hiking and photographing across the top of Huangshan were three of the best days of my life.
But it wasn’t easy. It was the middle of winter and each day saw me climbing up and down many, many steps in search of beauty and wonderful photo opportunities.
I’d be off, trudging into the gloom, well before dawn hoping to find a location and weather suitable for great sunrise photos. I’d then trudge back to my hotel for breakfast, a shower and a quick rest prior to heading out again into the snow and mist covered landscape.
My travels that afternoon would take me onto my next hotel where, after dropping my bags off, I’d head out looking for a sunset. After a sunset session I’d make my way back to the hotel for a meal and shower, prior to collapsing into bed.
In fact I didn’t always get back in time for meals and, as it was very much the off season, the cooks kept their kitchens open only for the minimum amount of time they were required to do so.
After that they were off quicker than you could say, “tools down lads“.
But what does it matter? A meal is a small thing to forgo when experiences like you see in the above photo await.
Mind you, when I did manage to make the evening buffet, I made the most of the opportunity and filled my tummy with hot soups, rice and hearty Chinese dishes.
Entrance to a hotel on Huangshan Mountain in China during winter.
Travel Teaches Us The Difference Between Inconvenience And Hardship
How good is life? Travel teaches us the difference between inconvenience and hardship, does it not?
While disappointing, a missed meal is a small sacrifice to make. What’s more missing a meal makes me even more grateful for that night’s hot shower and warm bed.
I don’t travel for a holiday and my trips aren’t based around fine dinning experiences.
I’m a photographer and, at the end of the day, I travel to photograph the beauty of our world and its people and to share my experiences here with you.
I think that’s a very important mission, which is why I’m doing all I can to continue to live that dream.
Being able to identify why it is that you travel really helps diminish any negativity that might follow on from those less than ideal experiences you’ll face along your own journey.
Unless, of course, you’d prefer to spend your life going on about what makes you unhappy. I choose to celebrate the good memories and I’m usually able to find a way to laugh about the rest.
It’s all a matter of perspective and sometimes I find it necessary to ask myself why I feel the way I do, rather than concerning myself with what’s happening to and around me.
The fact of the matter is that we can’t always control what’s happening to us, but we can control our response to negative events and, in doing so, dismiss negative emotions.
No matter how difficult life can get I never want to consider myself a victim. That’s particularly important given the country I was born in and how difficult I’ve witnessed life can be for so many others during my travels around our world.
I consider it both an education and a privilege to have seen how hard life is for so many good people born into less fortunate circumstances than my own.
I have my parents to thank for that most essential insight and I’m sure it’s central to the philosophy that underpins the photos I make and the way I go about making those photos.
At the end of the day it’s the people I’ve met along the road that have made my journeys so unique and so rewarding. I hope to continue to travel for many years to come and I wish you well as you explore your own travel photography adventures.
