How to Take Better Vacation Photos

By Neil Donaldson | May 10, 2012 - 1:55 pm | Making Better Photos

Summer is almost here and many of us are making plans for a summer trip. Vacation photography presents some challenges. By planning in advance, your photos will beautifully capture your vacation memories. Get started with these tips.


Essential Equipment If all you want to carry is a compact point-and-shoot digital camera, find one with at least a 10x optical zoom. Never use the digital zoom on your camera: you will get a much better photo by using the highest optical zoom and crop it later in your computer. Also, select a camera that gives you some manual controls. At the very least you want to have exposure and flash compensation controls.
For DSLR cameras, zoom lenses are great. When you don’t want to lug around a lot of different lenses a good lens choice is either the 28-300mm zoom lens on a full-frame digital camera, or the 18-270mm lens on DSLR’s with smaller sensor sizes. These lenses provide a lot of versatility. If you can, also take a really wide-angle lens for shooting landscapes. A 16-35mm (full-frame sensor) or a 12-24mm (small sensor) lens will let you capture the full scene whether it be a city skyline or a Grand Canyon Vista. Be sure to bring lots of memory cards and batteries or a way to charge your camera’s batteries. Also think about bringing a small tripod. You’ll be rewarded with better and sharper images and a tripod makes it easier for you to get into the shot. Check out my post: Use a Tripod to Make Better Photos.

Use Aperture Priority Rather than using the program mode on your camera considered using Aperture priority. This will allow you to control the depth of field. Using a wider aperture (lower numbers such as f4) allows you to get your subject in focus with a blurry background. Using a smaller aperture (higher numbers such as f8 or f11) gives a sharper image from the foreground to the background. If your compact camera does not have an aperture priority mode, experiment with the different scene settings to see which give you the best results.

Use the Light Photography is all about the light. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that some of the best light for photography is the hours just after sunrise and before sunset. This is a good time to photograph open expanses such as mountains and beaches. If you’re in a city or small town with narrow streets, or deep in a canyon, midday is a good time for photography.

Photographing People You want to come back with interesting photos of friends and family, shots that are well composed and don’t look overly posed. Try shooting from an unusual angle – get low to the ground or stand on a bench or the hood of your car. When photographing people in front of buildings or monuments, compose the photo with the people off to the side. Try different approaches. Zoom in and get a tight head and shoulders shot of the person with the building in the background. Including the entire body of the person can help give a sense of the scale of the monument or landscape behind them. If your subject is in front of a bright background, use the fill flash on your camera. To get a well exposed shot with just the right amount of light on your subject, underexpose the flash using the flash compensation on your camera. A compensation factor of about -1.5 stops usually works best.


Landscapes – Don’t be a Drive-by Shooter Landscape photographs are often the ones that you want to print and hang on the wall. Don’t just take the first shot that you see as you get out of the car. Take a few minutes to get to know and appreciate the landscape and why you are drawn to photograph it in the first place. Changing your perspective can help create interesting and dynamic landscape photos. Get very low to the ground or as high as possible. Including a foreground element close to the camera adds depth and a sense of intimacy your photo.
Sunsets and sunrises can be challenging. To capture that great color in the sky, underexpose the photograph. You will often need to underexpose by 2 to 4 stops. If you’re photographing people in front of the sunrise or sunset, don’t forget to use fill flash.


Photographing food When you are at that little bistro, before you dig into the tasty morsels, don’t forget to make a photo. Be sure the plate is free of smudges and place it near a window. Food is best photographed with soft, natural light. Zoom in tight so you can see the colors and textures of the food.
We want to hear from you What tips do you have for great vacation photography?

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