Better Travel Photos With the Light in the Morning and Late
Afternoon
You probably know the yellow "National Geographic" magazine. If
you browse through its colorful pages you can see that many of
the pictures are taken in the low, warm light of mornings and
late afternoons or evenings.
The photographers of National Geographic are among the best we
have. You can easily mimic this practice and create much more
interesting pictures than most people bring home from travels.
The low light will model the landscape you see for your eyes, so
for example the plough furrows or differences in topography and
texture are highlighted.
As a traveling photographer I know, that even on a photographic
mission time is limited and your circumstances are often less
that optimal.
I can recommend you to take the pictures you must take during
the day. And then take a walk around your hotel or campground
during the last two hrs. before sunset and shoot additional
pictures in this special light. Try to do the same next morning
before breakfast. In that way you will combine the best
possibilities.
With a digital camera you can easily delete the less successful
pictures later.
Low light gives long shadows, so be careful with these. Normally
you should not expect parts of a picture to show up properly in
both strong shadows and in full sunlight.
If your digital camera allows the raw format you will keep more
details in shadows to work with in Photoshop later if you choose
the raw format instead of the usual jpeg compression. But it
depends on how much you like to optimize your pictures at home
in a picture editor program.
In practice you should avoid the heavy shadows. When you shoot
your photos in cities the big buildings are among the difficult
objects. So take them from an angle without the big shadows, if
possible.
If you follow these instructions I am sure that the appeal of
your travel pictures will increase.
Have good travels and enjoy your travel photography during the
trip as well as afterwards.