Best Tools for Travel Photography
The post this replaces was a list of photo-editing apps for the iPhone 4. The lesson of the intervening years is that the phone stopped being the compromise option, so the advice worth giving is no longer about software.
The phone is the camera for most trips now, and that is not a concession. Computational processing handles the hard cases that used to need a big sensor: low light, wide dynamic range, and the panorama you would never have set up a tripod for. Shoot in the native camera app and leave the clever modes on.
What still argues for a real camera: long reach for wildlife, very shallow depth of field, and anything you intend to print large. If none of those apply to your trip, the weight is better spent elsewhere.
The four habits that improve travel photographs more than any gear:
- Be out at the edges of the day. The hour after sunrise and before sunset does more for a picture than any lens. It also empties the frame of other tourists.
- Get closer and include a person. The photograph of the market that works has someone in it. Ask; most people say yes.
- Shoot fewer, look longer. Walking the same street twice produces better pictures than walking two streets once.
- Back up the same day. This is the one that actually costs people their trip. Two copies in two places, one of them not in your bag.
On editing, pick one tool and learn it rather than collecting filters. Almost all of a good travel edit is straightening, cropping, and lifting the shadows a little.
One rule that has got more important, not less: put the camera down for some of it. Nobody has ever regretted the photographs they did not take of a place they actually watched.
Part of the guide to gadgets and power.