Plymouth

• Henry Kissinger.

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In line with the self-improvement theme, I wanted to talk a bit more about the last big element of travel photography that I learned from my photo trips. The thing which used to frustrate me the most about travel photography is how little control you have over the conditions. It takes us usually a lot of time to plan a ten-day trip, and I often hope for specific conditions when I include a location in our plan. The problem is nature rarely cooperates.

When I was going over my old images, I often see photos that don’t really serve a purpose and often wondered why they didn’t look good. It turns out, I had a photograph in mind when I planned the trip, and when the conditions didn’t work for that type of photography, I tried to force the shot — ending up with uninspiring images that I tried to liven up by over processing the images. Reading up on photography and about photographers, I admire helped immensely. Another move that helped was spending 30 mins every day just looking at images in Flickr explore and 500px. This practice helped me in identifying my options based on conditions.

This shot was taken in Vermont, while I was on a fall road trip. I was hoping for blue skies that will contrast well with the colorful foliage. What I ended up having was a wet, overcast day. Rather than adjust my plan, I persisted with my intended plan of a classical landscape shot that looked boring with a featureless white sky. I only had a handful of shots that eliminated the sky and had framing that suited the conditions, and those were the only images I ended up posting. An overcast day is better suited for tight frames with limited sky and frames that require even lighting like a waterfall or macro shots. This adjustment process was slow but the more I practice adjusting to the conditions, the better my keeper rate.

-Lord Byron.

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