How to properly organize a photo journey
Today it is difficult to imagine a tourist going on a trip without a camera. Canon, Nikon, Olympus have long been as necessary a piece of luggage as a swimsuit or first aid kit. And increasingly, people going on a trip, set the task not only to visit other countries and cities, but also to bring their memories from the trip - including in the form of good pictures. For some, this becomes the main goal.
And then travel has to reach a new level, because it is impossible to achieve good pictures in a bus tour through the glass of a dungeon on wheels racing through countries and scales. Of course, some of the pictures can turn out to be good and even remind tourists of their favorite places, but the percentage of really good and interesting pictures will be negligible.
And this is logical - after all, tourists going on bus tours spend the night most often outside the city, where there are not so many interesting objects for shooting, in the morning and evening they are busy settling in and leaving the hotel and collecting fellow travelers, as well as moving between cities. And in the afternoon, when the sun cuts the streets and faces with sharp shadows, tourists march by throwing an organized crowd past monuments and squares, literally flying for a minute into museums and hovering at the bus for a long time, waiting for comrades straggled in the jewelry store. To photograph a monument or scene in this mode is possible only by miracle and on the run.
A little better in this regard, the so-called “basic” tours, where you pay for travel, visa and hotel, and the rest of the excursions are bought on the spot. In such trips, you can already organize and morning shooting and run around the city, “shooting” and choosing places where you should hang with the camera longer, waiting for the right moment, or where you should visit in the evening. But it is best to use such tours for exploration.
The fact is that truly artistically valuable photographs can be made only by investing an idea, revealing its image in things and people, submitting them exactly as necessary, with the necessary technical means. And this requires the photographer not only to do a large amount of preparatory work, but also a good knowledge of the features of the city and the place where the shooting is made, as well as its geography. Therefore, for the first time, a photographer should go to the city just to get acquainted with him. Go around the streets and main squares, visit excursions, estimate what interesting can give the history of this place, what events are characteristic of it, where and how the light falls on local monuments, at what time the streets are lively and when deserted, as well as where local residents gather and whether they can be filmed or better not.
And only then go for pictures, having a lot of free time, which can be safely spent on shooting the right shot, waiting for all the main characters and removing everything superfluous from the frame. After all, sometimes, in order to achieve the right lighting, you need to wait not for a day, but longer, so that people enter the frame in the right sequence - stand at the arch for an hour or two. And to shoot from the very beginning to the end the longest parade or carrying out of the saints, to film the whole story of this event.
And to do this, when you breathe in the back of friends and family, for an hour longing for a beer “out there in that bar” or go for a couple of hours in the art gallery, physically impossible. Not to mention the fact that a rare partner will agree to get up at 5 a.m. for a morning shoot, and few husbands and wives will understand the need to jump out at night for a couple of hours, shoot bridges and deserted streets.
In a good way, to go on a journey for photos is either in the company of the same stubborn like-minded photographers, or alone. Or with a very understanding partner or friend. Imagine in advance what places you want to visit and how long it may take to shoot a particular idea or object. Leaving time for morning and evening shooting when the lights aren't too hard. Having the opportunity to sit in a cafe or in the square for a couple of hours, waiting for interesting scenes or standing on the tower, waiting for the sun to illuminate the face of the angel.
If you have a long way to go with moving from one unfamiliar city to another, it is worth stopping in each place for a few days. For example, come to the settlement in the afternoon, settle and go for exploration. Then use the early morning hours to film monuments and streets without people, the day to survey and film the interior of temples or estates, and evening and night for scenes with passers-by and atmospheric filming. The next day, repeat the cycle again or move on. Then the photo journey will not turn into a failure, and the pictures will be diverse and interesting.