Summer time and some of us will be travelling and at the same time doing either enthusiast or professional photography while enjoying a holiday. Certainly, if you are with your family, enthusiast or professional, you have more limitations than if you are travelling alone.

The type of photography tends to be mostly scenic and landscape with some street, building, and architecture, a few close-ups and some indoor shots at pioneer villages, museums etc.

For all of these composition is important. S curves, balance, rule of thirds, paths leading toward the centre of interest, line, shape, texture, colour, perspective,...in short all aspects of composition contributing to the overall quality and impact of the photo.

The starting point for technique is lighting. Sunrise and sunset are the best times for landscape because you get warm lighting, good colour and cross lighting to emphasize detail and texture. A graduated neutral density filter can help to tone down the brightness from the sky but still retain colour, while displaying more detail and brightness in the foreground. The downside is that a little work and effort is required to keep the effect appearing to be totally natural.

If because of family, you are stuck shooting at less than ideal times of the day, then after a storm, or when the sun breaks through the clouds or is burning off fog or mist can be perfect. A polarizing filter is great for reducing glare, reflections, providing less contrast and better colour in certain situations and particularly reducing the brightness coming from the sky. It makes the sky bluer and the clouds whiter when shooting at right angles to the sun. An enhancing filter can give more punch and contrast to reds, browns, yellows and greens. An enhanced polarizer combines both effects.

HDR which is high dynamic range is an approach to blending two or more shots usually from a tripod. In simplest terms you shoot for details in the highlights in one shot...underexposed, and details from the shadows in the second shot...overexposed, and then combine the two shots for the supposed perfect shot with details in both the bright and dark areas of the photo and great tonal range of colours. This feature is present in Photoshop CS2, but it is not nearly as good as the results provided by separate HDR programs. Using a tripod and super careful shooting for proper allignment of multiple shots is not always possible in all situations, but it can be worth the effort.

Colour is extremely important and complex to the extent that a book entitled: Colour Correction for Digital Photographers contains almost 400 pages of advanced techniques for getting the best colour from digital photos. Probably the most important value of the book beyond the techniques is looking at the photos and recognizing the difference between excellent and poor colour rendition in digital photos. Until you recognize that you do not have the best colour, you cannot work toward correcting it.

If you end up with a great shot of a lighthouse on a point for example with a blah grey sky, you can consider creating a sky for it later. Using a polarizer, shoot a sky with some clouds and then adjust brightness, contrast and gamma in Micosoft Photo Editor to give you a deep blue sky with puffy white clouds. Use it as the background in Photoshop and then put the lighthouse and rock point on top of it to create a composite.

Histograms allow you to, among other things ensure that your highlights are not clipped or blown out. If they are, then reduce exposure, contrast, saturation etc.to compensate.

To keep noise under control try and shoot at a low ISO and recognize noise when you see it in your photos. For inside shots a powerful auxiliary flash is necessary that will give as natural a look as possible. Some designs reduce shadows and provide a less flat more modelled look. ISO 100 or 200 often provides a very even spread effect by the flash use.

For lenses, 28 mm is good for shots in narrow streets with minimum distortion or shots where you can get in front of other tourists and still get what you want in the photo. They are also good for covering a whole room of pioneer furniture for example as well as the general location. At f 2.8 balanced on a pew, I have covered a complete interior cathedral shot in Montreal.

A 200 mm is great for moose, deer or other animals that are likely to scamper away if you get close or for a distant candid portrait of a "native" of wherever you are travelling to. Stain glass, sculptures and other high up items often require a 200mm lens. A 200mm also has the advantage of not being too slow or too heavy to handle without a tripod.

Just a few pointers to get travellers started in considering their approach to photography.

Ronnoco