Travel Tuesday - Travel Photos

A few years ago a colleague and her husband went to Argentina one summer on a ski trip.  We had a group lunch shortly after she returned and she was passing around her Ipad with the photos from the trip.  Every photo, was either her, or him, or the two of them.  There were no photos of the place they had been, all photos of the two of them.

Travel photos should document something about where you have been, what you have seen.  I love sweeping landscapes or close ups of wildlife, birds, bugs, critters, and flowers.  In urban areas streetscapes, grand buildings, details of buildings, shop windows, and people.  Museums offer a plethora of photo ops.  I have to remind myself to include the occasional selfie, photo of my sweet bear, and pictures of the two of us to document where we have been, what we have seen, what we have done.  Jay has a wonderful collection of photos of me walking away, I have longer legs and move faster, he slows to study the details and I don't realize he is behind until I hear the camera.  

There is a balance here.  

Travel photos can be taken with any camera. The only camera I took to Hawaii was a Samsung Galaxy phone (the night before leaving I discovered I had broken my Lumix camera with a Leica lens.) Today I take one DLSR, and at least two lenses, giving me a range from wide angle to moderate telephoto.  For grand landscapes I will add a super wide angle lens to the bag.  All of that weighs less than the 35mm SLRs I carried in the past.  

I have been watching YouTube videos from photographers. There is a wide array of young photographers who have rediscovered film cameras.  I do have one comment for them - well two. Clean your gear, in the photos of their cameras the cameras are of filthy, dusty, nasty.  Dust is the enemy of photographer, a grain of sand in the wrong place will dominate an image.  The only defense is to clean your gear.  Second, put a clear or UV filter on your lenses to protect them.  One of the YouTubers comments that a filter would somehow change the image quality of a lens, BS, a good filter is optically neutral.  What a filter does is protect the front element of your lens from dust, dirt, and spray. A filter gives you a smooth clean surface to clean, and if it gets messed up, you screw it off and replace it.  If the front element of your lenses gets scratched, you buy another lens.  This ties into keeping your gear clean, a filter makes it easier to clean.  And because you are dealing with $10 worth of glass on the front, you can be a lot more careless in cleaning.  

An old joke, Why did children's portrait photographers always carry a bottle of vodka their camera bags.  The Paul Lynde answer, "have you met the kids?" Real answer, alcohol makes a good lens cleaning solvent, and dries quickly.