Top 3 Types of Travel Photography

As a travel club that’s proud to call travel photography its favorite core value it makes sense to talk about the 3 types of snapshots we love the most on our adventures. Many photographers and world travelers tend to focus on 1 or 2 of these categories but the best have mastered all 3.

People & Culture

Taking pictures on your world explorations wouldn’t be complete without capturing the lives & faces of the locals and their culture. This is arguably, National Geographic’s favorite type of photography. There are countless, unforgettable images of shocking, heart warming, sad, and happy moments of a land’s people and their culture throughout this legendary magazine. Over the years our photography travel club has been blessed to take many exciting shots of the people we visit. Check out this little girl we ran into in a church in Peru. “Church Girl” is one of our favorites.

Landscapes

For those who are just starting out taking pictures abroad the first type of photography most often practiced is landscape. Indeed some of the most famous pictures of all time fall under this category of picture taking. Ansel Adams revolutionized landscape photography in the early 20^th century with his phenomenal images of national parks around theUSA (Yosemite &Yellowstone to name a couple). Landscape photography is wonderful but often overdone. Digital cameras and the technology improvements in the photograph industry have allowed everyone and their mother to take great pictures! Because of this, some of the most famous images around the world have now been taken millions of times (sometimes good images and sometimes bad). This may take away from the uniqueness of the originals but the improvements of digital cameras and better technology is well worth it. The picture of us hiking in the Canadian Rockies is one of my favorites. Check out those mountains!  Landscapes are ever changing and provide an infinite stage for photographer’s creations.

Wildlife & Animals

Travel photography wouldn’t be complete without capturing the worlds beautiful and unique creatures. In addition to animals and other types of fauna, even plants, trees, forests and other flora make for great pictures. Some photographers specialize in wildlife photography and there’s no question why. It’s exciting, gratifying, and to a degree, a lot like hunting! (of course with a much higher moral & ethical edge to it). Capturing animals on safari in Africa, wolves in Alaska, & sharks under the sea never cease to awe the human eye. Great wildlife photographers capture beautiful landscapes and the animals within them at the same time. The momma lion above was taken on our safari in Kenya (she must have had a long day at work).

Thanks to technology and the invention of the digital camera everyone can pursue their interests in travel photography. If you’re having trouble deciding between a point and shoot camera and DSLR (Digital Single-Lens Reflex) check out our article on the pros and cons. Whichever you go with, try and capture images abroad in all three categories above. The results will be worthwhile.