What is travel photography?

Learning goal

On a journey, you will be able to go beyond the familiar frame everyone shoots from the same spot and build a series that tells a place's own face, its people and its culture together. You will accept the familiar frame as a starting point, but build the rest of the series from the place's small details, the everyday life of those who live there, and its rhythm that changes with the hours of the day. You will look for the details that introduce a place even without showing a famous building. By watching a town's morning, noon and evening, you will learn what happens at which hour and plan your shoot accordingly. You will show local people not as an ornament of a landscape or an object of curiosity but inside their own lives; in editing you will not turn their skin and faces into an exaggerated weatheredness. You will take the first step of the travel track.

The question

The club's summer tour is spending its first night in a stone-housed town in the inland Aegean. In the morning your friend gets up early and shoots the old plane tree in the town square and the mosque behind it. On the screen there is a familiar frame: the same tree, the same angle, the same blue sky. At breakfast the cyclist who organized the tour opens a search for the town on her phone and shows it to your friend. Hundreds of frames, all the same plane tree and the same mosque. "You can't get to know this town from these," she says, "people live here." How do you shoot more than a postcard?

Context

In the travel lesson you met telling a place's atmosphere, people and culture together, going beyond the proof photo shot in front of a famous building, and the sense of place that makes the viewer feel a photo is exactly there (Lesson 16.5). In street photography we talked about the danger of showing a person as an object of curiosity because of their skin, clothing or faith, that is, othering (Lesson 16.3). In editing you also saw that settings like contrast and clarity, when exaggerated, turn a photo into something that isn't real (Lesson 7.5).

That first travel lesson invited you to think about a trip's photos. Over seven lessons this track will teach planning it like a job: lightening the bag, preparing before you go, building a relationship with local people, avoiding clichés, building a trip's story and protecting the files on the road. Before all of these, there is the question of what travel photography should show.

Simple explanation

What is the familiar frame for?

A postcard shot is a frame showing a place's best-known image, usually from the best-known spot and at the best-known angle: the plane tree in a town's square, a coast's most photographed bay, a city's most famous bridge. This frame isn't wrong; it is the first image someone who knows a place looks for, and in a series it places the viewer in the location. But on its own it shows the face the place shares with everyone, not what you saw.

Shooting the postcard shot quickly and in good light and crossing it off the list opens the mind to the rest. Shooting the same building at another hour, from another spot or with a person passing in front of it can also make it your frame. The real series, though, is built around this frame: the place's small details, its people and the flow of the day.

How is a place recognized without its famous building?

A place cue is a detail that introduces a place without showing a well-known building or a sign, only because it is particular to it: a door's knocker, the shape of a house's bay window, the shape of the bread coming out of a bakery's stone oven, the color of peppers spread out on a wall, the pieces of the game played in a coffeehouse. A few place cues in a series tell the viewer what it is like to be in that place better than a postcard.

Finding place cues requires slowing down. Walking the same street twice, sitting in a coffeehouse and drinking a tea, or talking with a market seller shows details not seen at first glance. These cues are usually shot from close and middle distance, and set up a rhythm between the wide frames in a series.

At what hour of the day does a place live?

The rhythm of a place is the pattern of life a place repeats through the day: the hour the bakery opens, the day the market is set up, the moment the shepherd takes the flock out of the village, the late afternoon when the coffeehouse fills, the square that empties and fills with the call to prayer. The same square is empty and cool at six in the morning, quiet under the sun at noon, and full of children and the sound of backgammon in the late afternoon.

The way to learn the rhythm is to stay in a place for a few days, walk it at different hours and ask the people there. That way the moments when a place is most alive are known in advance and the shoot is planned around them. The people inside this rhythm are a place's strongest storytellers. Showing them inside their own work and lives, in their own light, says far more than figures placed in front of a landscape.

Here editing carries a responsibility too. Carving an old farmer's face with clarity and contrast and dulling its color shows him as more weathered and more "exotic" than he is. Turning sunburned light skin brick red, or dark skin coal black, creates the same effect. Leaving the skin as it was that day and in that light is respect for that person and that place.

Visual evidence

Your friend shoots the plane tree and the mosque once more, this time in the late afternoon light and with children coming home from school passing in front, and crosses them off the list. Then they walk the town at different hours for two days.

At six in the morning they notice there is a queue in front of the bakery. The nigella seeds on the round loaves coming out of the stone oven and the baker's floury arms tell the town without showing any famous building. At the Tuesday market they chat with an old olive grower and ask permission. The man's sunburned, wrinkled, light-skinned face is in the shadow of his straw hat; your friend shoots him at the head of the olives on his stall, inside his own work. In editing, adding clarity to his face crosses their mind, but they delete the first try, which carved the wrinkles and turned the sunburn brick red. The face is as they saw it: reddened by the sun but warm, his eyes smiling.

In the late afternoon in front of the coffeehouse, the tour's organizer, the cyclist with dark brown skin, is sitting on a doorstep with the town's women. Your friend shoots them from afar, in the street's low sun.

Common mistakes

Summary

Travel photography is a series that takes the postcard shot as a starting point and tells a place's own details, its everyday rhythm and its people together. Place cues introduce a place without its famous building, while the rhythm of a place says where to go at what hour. When local people are shown inside their own lives and with their skin in its real colors, the series becomes not an album of curiosities but a portrait of a place.

Mini assignment

In this assignment you will shoot the place you live in, or one near it, like a traveler.

1. Shoot the postcard shot of the place you live in once, then shoot it again from the same spot at another hour or with someone passing in front of it.
2. Find and shoot at least three place cues that introduce the place without showing its famous building.
3. To learn the rhythm of the place, walk the same street in the morning, at noon and in the late afternoon; at one of those hours, shoot someone at their work, with their permission, and in editing leave their skin without exaggerating it.

Check yourself

• When you take the postcard shot out of the series, is the place still recognizable?
• Do your place cues tell the viewer what it is like to be there?
• Does the person in the frame look like they are inside their own life, or like an ornament of a landscape?

Glossary

Mini quiz

1. What is a postcard shot for in a series?

• A) It makes up the whole series
• B) It is of no use and shouldn't be shot
• C) It places the viewer in the location, but on its own shows the place's shared face
• D) It is shot only at night

2. Which is a place cue?

• A) The bread coming out of a town's bakery, in a shape particular to it
• B) A sign with the town's name on it
• C) The town's most famous building
• D) A hotel room

3. How is the rhythm of a place learned?

• A) By going once, at noon
• B) Only by looking at photos on the internet
• C) By staying in a place for a few days, walking it at different hours and asking the people there
• D) Only by shooting the postcard shot

4. What does exaggerating an old farmer's face with clarity and contrast in editing lead to?

• A) It shows the face more naturally
• B) It shows him as more weathered and "exotic" than he is, and turns his skin a color it isn't
• C) It makes the colors more accurate
• D) It only changes the file size

Answers

1. C — The familiar image is a starting point; the place you saw is built around it.
2. A — The sign and the famous building say the place by name, while the bread introduces it by living.
3. C — Rhythm is seen only with time and at different hours, and those who live there know it.
4. B — Exaggerated editing forces a person into a mold and harms their dignity.

Summary card

• Shoot the postcard shot, cross it off the list; the series is built around it.
• Place cues: door, bread, market, game; details that introduce without the famous building.
• Learn the rhythm of the place: morning, noon, late afternoon, market day.
• Show people inside their own lives, ask their permission.
• Leave skin and faces as they are; don't exaggerate into "exotic".

Bridge to the next lesson

One morning in the middle of the tour, the cyclists climb a slope on the inland roads of the Aegean, and the bag on your friend's back feels heavier with every kilometer. Inside are two bodies, four lenses, a tripod and a flash; for two days they haven't taken half of them out. What should be in the bag? The next lesson takes up bringing the equipment for a journey down to a single body and two lenses.