Have you noticed travel images are starting to look all the same?  Beautiful blue skies and white clifftop houses on the Greek islands, a beautiful girl with her flowing skirt holding her hat wandering down the path?  Infinity pools, a gorgeous couple resting on the edge, someone standing on the side of a cliff showing they are fearless.  Those same images, replicated time and time again what ever the location may be.   If you’re a travel influencer, then that’s okay, I agree they are beautiful, colourful images, but as a travel photographer, I feel they lack a little creativity and personality.  So just because they appear to be popular on instagram, just because they seem to gain a lot of likes and following, that doesn’t mean as travel photographers we can’t also do something a little different.

Here’s a few tips on putting life and personality back in to your travel photos.

• Firstly, take the image for yourself not for likes on social media.  You want to stir something inside of you that says, hell yeah, I love this image, this is me.  We’ve all been there, where you start to change your style because you notice what people are responding to, commenting on, liking, then you start to lose your vision, you lose your creativity and you get stuck in a creative rut.  So think about what you love and go back to taking photos how you like them. Besides, what people like on social media can depend on what time of day you post your photo, so don’t get caught up in that because that’s for another blog post.

• Find what inspires you, be that a favourite director or music, movies or era.  With this in mind you may start to realise what your creative style is and be inspired all over again.  

• Shoot through something, like a tree or flowers or even shoot through a window to create depth and a different point of view it can also show reflections of something interesting both inside and outside.  

• Get out at different times of day.  Golden hour or blue hour, for the soft tones, or look for long shadows in the afternoon. 

• Look for shapes, light and shadow. 

• Create sparseness, use composition or leading lines to draw attention around the frame, you may want your subject to dominate your frame or you may just want it to compliment it.

• Create motion blur.  Not everything needs to be frozen and perfectly sharp.

• Use repetition.  For example repeating shapes or colour but then give your eyes a place to rest by having an odd break in repetition.  

• Most have heard of leading lines and think of straight lines i.e a train track, but think of leading lines also being an “S” like a river or curving road.

• Use Colour composition to help the subject stand out or blend in.  

• When framing your photo, always make sure to look around the whole frame, is there something in the frame that is going to automatically draw my eyes for example a bright colourful bin, I know here in Australia, we have bins with red lids, as red is a dominant colour, your eyes will automatically be drawn to it no matter how out of focus or small it may be in the background.  Also your eyes will automatically be drawn to the lightest part of the image

• Be camera ready.  Whatever your style of photography is, always make sure you have your camera ready.  You may be walking past something that draws your eyes and you think, geez that would be a great photo, but you don’t bother because your camera is tucked away in your backpack, so you just keep walking.  I often shoot out of the car window (as a passenger).  I love old muscle cars, actually I’m obsessed with them, so I always have my camera in arms reach just in case one drives by.

Depending on what you defining style is, you may not use all of the above,  but give it a go as you may find something sparks your creative side.  To me travel photography is about me.  Tourism photography is about showing the destination at its best to advertise to others and I do this also, but travel photography is about how “I” travel and what “I” see.  This comes back to the tip about who are you shooting for.   To me, when I’m not shooting for a client, I always shoot for me.  I am respectful to the environment and the locals when I’m shooting, but I’m shooting to cover my walls in my art.

Remember photography is art and art is subjective, so what you like might not be what everybody likes, so find you own creative style and you’ll be a happy travel photographer.