When PMDA asked for a series of articles on Travel Photography, I thought, that’s easy; “Go somewhere, shoot pictures.”  Of course it’s both that simple and more complicated than that.

In workshops I teach, a Most Frequently Asked Question is, “When you go out to shoot, how do you start?”  What the student usually wants to know is about setting up the camera—f stop, metering, focus controls, etc.

Competency with the camera is important and necessary, but photography is about so much more than that.

Where you start is at home, right in your own backyard. Shoot photos of your own neighborhood, over and over again, where you can keep going back to the same subject and reshooting it to develop your technical and aesthetic skills, and to become more aware of how things change in different light, different times of day, different weather, different seasons.  Doing this is like the musician rehearsing; it is our visual exercising and it makes us stronger.

I live a couple of blocks from the riverfront in Savannah (GA) and have been photographing sunrise along one small stretch of the water for about 15 years.  The one consistent thing, in several hundreds of mornings, is change—it has never been the same as any other morning.  Some days the options, and results, are pretty limited (or maybe it’s the photographer’s mood), but some days magic happens if you are there and paying attention.  This shot was from one of those mornings where everything just came together at the right moment.

©Bill Durrence

On a recent visit to Angkor Wat I had pretty much given up on getting the sunset photo we went for.  We had been having bald skies (hazy bright, flat, near white) for days.  There’s only two things to do with that—don’t include any sky in the photo, or, if you absolutely must, only the barest minimum.  It looked like the light was going to continue that way, so I started just wandering around inside the main temple instead of trying to photograph it.  When I wandered back out, this sunset was happening and the part I liked, the reflection of the sun and cast silhouette shadow of the arches, was going away fast.  Because of years of practice I was able to quickly set up my tripod and frame the shot, while checking exposure and white balance settings.  I quickly got a few shots to cover myself before slowing down and checking everything more carefully.  My favorite from the series turned out to be one of the first frames.

©Bill Durrence

Of course the original file does not look like this edited version.  Part of knowing the craft of photography is to understand all the tools you have in camera and computer and having some sense of how to use those tools to complement each other.  I had to expose the original file to hang onto highlight detail which made the mid tones a little darker than I wanted them.  I knew I could bring them up a little in editing, using Nikon Capture NX2. 

  Before Editing     After Editing    

©Bill Durrence

Working close to home you quickly tire of the local well known sites and start looking for something different, the little quiet moments in between—details, textures, patterns.  Walking to my bank at home, with a Coolpix on my shoulder, I noticed this pattern of “fall foliage” against the bank building.  Just a quick photo “sketch,” a visual note taking, but the image has stuck with me for years, elegant in its simplicity.  

©Bill Durrence

Years of looking for that sort of thing at home makes me more likely to see it when traveling.  Sunrise on the main temple at Angkor Wat was fizzling with flat light so I quickly shot a silhouette, using negative exposure compensation, with the reflection and using incandescent white balanced to create the cool blue color.

©Bill Durrence

Leaving the area I noticed the hazy light looked a bit like mist on the water behind the worker, and the simplicity of the worker and the soft, rich color in her clothes; another moment in between, and a personal photograph that will be mine, not just my version of the same shot everyone else is trying to make.

©Bill Durrence

While you are developing your eye and a feel for qualities of light, you’re also getting comfortable with your camera.  To work well in a strange place you need to not have to think about your camera; handling it should be second nature so you can respond quickly to the unexpected.  And you should be able to find anything you need in your camera bag in total darkness, although you won’t have to be in total darkness if you make sure to have a flashlight in the bag.