Put on Your Travelin' Shoes

If you'd like to know more about the lighthouse in this post (and the previous one), then visit Jeff Wignall's Travel Guide: Great Places to Photograph. I started that blog years ago, then like most bloggers, I spread myself too thin with too many blogs abandoned it. But with summer here, it's time to put on your travelin' shoes, so that blog is back--we'll see how much energy I can muster to keep it going. Check it out once in a while though, because traveling to new places is one of the reasons we're on this earth--yes? By the way, you'll notice that this shot is different but almost identical to the one in the previous post (different people on the beach, for one). What does that tell you I was using in the way of a photo accessory? Oh, those of you who yelled out TRIPOD! step to the front of the line! Another reason for using a tripod: You can set up a scene and then wait for things to change (for people or animals to walk into a scene, for instance) without losing your composition. You can buy a nice tripod for less than you think--check out this nice lightweight unit from Manfrotto: Manfrotto 7302YB M-Y Tripod with Ball - Replaces 725B.

Visualize Your Dream Vacation with Image Searches

I am one of those people that loves to plan trips. I actually enjoy all the time that I spend on airline sites, hotel sites and reading other people's travel experience on places like Trip Advisor. The problem for me though is that I'm very much a visual person--I need to see what a place looks like to get excited about going there. For years that meant that I spent Saturday afternoons sitting on the floor of the local bookstores but these days, of course, the Internet is awash in great photos of places--and finding them is very easy.

One of the best reasons for doing visual research if you're traveling largely to take photos is that it helps you to uncover lesser-known shooting treasures that are near your primary destination. If you're going to Tuscon primarily to shoot the saguaro cactus, for example, you'll be within minutes of the spectacular San Xavier del Bac mission church just south of the city. To visit Tucson and not devote a morning to photographing this incredible church would be a crime. You might also want to drive a bit south and west to visit the very touristy (but fun) OK Corral. Once you start doing visual research these places will pop up and then you can decide which ones look like they're worth a side trip.

Here are some of the places where I do visual research for a trip:

• Flickr  For me, Flickr.com is the mother load of photo research sites. There are something like four billion photos on Flickr and you can find pictures of almost any place on earth. What's really cool about this site is that you will often find photos by people who live in that are and they usually have far deeper coverage. Also, since there is contact information on the site for each photographer, you can easily write and ask for advice on exactly where they shot a particular photo or to see if they have any destination suggetions. That doesn't mean they'll answer you, but most people are glad to share their favorite places. I wrote to a Canadian photographer about what hotel he was in when he when he shot a night skyline of Chicago (the caption said it was shot from a hotel room window) and he not only gave me the answer, he told me what room to request!
• Google Image Search While this is a somewhat less personal place to search, doing a Google Images search will often lead you to great websites and blogs about a place. Also, be sure when you do a Google search to look under the "more" pulldown menu at the top of the page and then select "blogs" as a search criteria. This will let you search for incredibly current destination info and photos. When I'm trying to find out if the wildflowers are blooming in the Southwest, I always do a blog search and often find photos shot that very day. Amazing.
• State Tourism Sites  While these sometimes tend to be a bit static in their content, often official state tourism sites have videos of popular destinations and parks and links to private websites. You'll also usually find a list of all state and local parks and that can be a real catalyst for trip planning.
• YouTube There's nothing that brings a place down to reality like a video shot through someone's rental-car windshield and YouTube is just overflowing with this stuff.  Just type in the name of the place and the words "drive" or "driving video" and you'll find plenty. I've been planning a trip to Yellowstone and I  typed in "Yellowstone Drives" one night and spent the next two hours watching things like elk bashing into other peoples' cars and dusty drives from the Grand Tetons to Yellowstone all shot through car windows (if you're going to create one, do me a favor and bring a bottle of Windex along!). I love watching these vids because I like to know what the roads look like, what you can see from the road and the general lay of the land. 
• Old Fashion Books Finally, don't forget there are some very visual and useful books in print! The Insight Guides like the Insight Guide Bermuda (Insight Guides) are just packed with great, if somewhat outdated, photos and lots of good travel info. And there's nothing like being inspired to plan a trip while you're sitting on the couch flipping through the pages of a real book. They'll be extinct soon, so take advantage while you can.

Once you get started planning a trip by looking at photos of places you'll undoubtedly find lots of cool places you never heard of, so take the time to click a lot of links and explore a lot of blogs and picture sites--you may find yourself creating a whole new list of destinations based on your research.

Plan Spring & Summer Shooting Trips Now

 

 First, sorry that the postings have been spotty lately, I'm in the last few weeks of finishing up a new book and the last few weeks of a book are always the panic time when all of loose ends have to (miraculously, sometimes) come together--and everyone involved has to agree on what's left to be done. I'm also in the midst of doing the first major revision of the Joy of Digital Photography. Both of these books are due out in September, so the pressure is on! In the meantime, back to the tips...

As I write this it's 19-degrees outside and with the windchill factor it's easily in the single digits. That's another reason that I haven't been posting much--I'm not brave enough to go out there and shoot! Tomorrow, in fact, I'll be shooting some indoor pictures in my impromptu studio and can't wait to do that. (Almost any day shooting pictures is a great day compared to sitting at a computer all day.) The other thing I've been doing, of course, is daydreaming about traveling and taking pictures in the coming spring and summer months. One of the places I'd really like to get to this year is Yellowstone Park and based on my past experiences at trying to get reservations in the lodges there, the time to start making plans and reservations is now.

I think that is probably true of any popular summer destination--unless you start to make plans and hotel room reservations at least by early spring, you may find out that it's impossible to do. In my experience the best time to see any popular destination (like Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon, for example) is just prior to and soon after the peak summer season. Probably the best months to travel (in the United States or Europe) are May, June and September (and early October if you're willing to risk a few chilly days). The great thing about these months is that rooms tend to be cheaper and easier to get, the crowds are way down and flights are usually cheaper.

Also be careful in planning your vacation schedule to avoid any kind of holidays or school vacations. Again, by traveling before school is out for the summer you'll have far less competition for rooms, cars, flights, etc. Last week, in fact, I tried making reservations to go to Florida in February and the airline prices were just outrageous--largely because of school vacations no doubt. My mistake for choosing that week without doing more research.

Getting more info on destinations is pretty easy these days and tomorrow I'll talk about some clever ways to find and research interesting and lesser known places. In the meantime, start thinking about your spring trips now--you'll not only save money and have more fun, but the daydreaming will get you through these cold winter days!

Bring Home the Color Palette of Other Places

One of the first things that I notice when I travel someplace new is that each place seems to have its own unique palette of colors, sometimes natural, sometimes man made, that permeates almost every view. In Bermuda, for example, all of the houses are painted in soft pastel shades and the entire countryside seems to be awash in a rainbow of pastel hues--even the stores in the commercial district along Front Street in Hamilton are painted in delicate pastel colors. It's hard to walk around Bermuda and not feel like you're in a giant artist's studio. In the Loire Valley in France, I was taken by how many shades of green there are in the landscape, and in the American Southwest (particularly parts of Utah and Arizona) the landscape seems to ooze with deep reds and gold--the dust that you bring back to your motel room on your clothes spreads those colors over everything you touch. (When my girlfriend wanted to add some red to one of her sketches of Utah, she literally took some of the red dirt and mixed it with water and painted it into her sketch.)

Bringing home photos that capture the colors of a place goes a long way to making your photos more authentic and in conjuring what I call the "color spirit" of a place. While traveling near the Mexican border in Tubac, Arizona, for example, we walked among dozens of stores selling brilliantly-painted Mexican pottery and the entire town seemed to vibrate with intense reds, greens, yellows and blues. I tried for quite a while to compose a wider scene that reflected that festive palette but none of my shots seemed to capture it. Instead, I started taking close-up photos of individual pots and pieces of artwork and I ended up taking dozens of photos of hand-painted pots, pitchers, tin lizards, etc. The shot here is just a detail of one of those pots but for me it recalls all of the fun and cheerfulness of those colorful displays.

Wherever you travel, look for colors that represent the mood and the feel of the place and then look for ways to capture that palette in your photos. Look for a mix of wide views, shots of people in costumes or local clothing styles and close-ups of art work and crafts. The more different objects and settings that you shoot that show those colors the more your photos will capture the color spirit of that place.

Head to the Desert for Winter Wildflowers

By the time that January arrives in New England I've begun to forget what it's like to lay down on the ground to photograph a wildflower in the warm afternoon sun--and that is usually what starts me to start planning a wildflower trip to the desert Southwest. If you've never been to Arizona, Utah, Texas or California or other western states during the early-spring wildflower season, you've missed one of nature's most amazing and whimsical displays. Out of what seems totally barren land, if the conditions are just right, the desert floor turns into a virtual Garden of Eden. It's just incredible to see and it's worth a trip from almost anywhere.

Timing a trip to photograph desert wildflowers is a bit tricky because there is no way to know exactly when the flowers will bloom since it's all entirely dependent on how much rain there was in the fall, how cool or warm the nights were and how much snow has fallen in early winter (yes, there is a lot of snow in the desert!). Different flowers and different deserts come into bloom at different times of year, of course, but usually the displays begin in early February and can last until May. The giant saguaro in southern Arizona, for example, typically don't bloom until late April or early May. In parts of California, however, the bloom period can begin as early as mid January. Desert USA is a great site for tracking the wildflowers' progress and right now they're predicting a good year for 2010. The more flexible your travel dates are the better, but no matter when you go you'll surely find some flowers to photograph. So if you've ever wanted to see and photograph the desert in bloom, perhaps this is the year to give yourself a great travel gift. Who deserves it more than you?

And if you're looking for some inspiration to get you motivated (what, a desert full of wildflowers and vast open spaces isn't enough?) there is a DVD called Season of the Sand Blossoms: A Desert Wildflowers Journeythat takes you on a musical and cinematic journey of the desert Southwest.

Shoot What Interests You

When it comes to deciding if a subject is worth photographing or not, I think a lot of people (including most professionals) run the idea through a mental filter: Is this subject interesting or good enough to spend time photographing? Don't filter yourself. The one criteria you should use in deciding whether or not to photograph something is if it interests you. If something calls you and makes you want to photograph it, don't listen to the critics in your head, just listen to your imagination. These are, after all, your pictures and you get to decide what makes a good photograph. If you critique your ideas too much before you shoot them, you'll only stifle your imagination and give yourself another reason not to haul out the cameras and tripod and make the effort.

I grew up in a suburban part of Connecticut that wasn't far from a much more rural area. Because I didn't spend much time in the rural areas as a kid, I was always fascinated by them. I'm sure if I had grown up on a farm I might not find cows and tractors and old bars quite so fascinating--or maybe I still would, who knows. But farms and farm machinery have loomed large in my imagination since I was a kid and when I got to Iowa the first time a few years ago and saw huge grain elevators with their own private railroad sidings, I was totally intrigued. I spent several days just wandering down dirt roads (look at yesterday's posting for one of those shots) and photographing things like corn cribs, forgotten barns, ratty old farm fences and just about ever silo that I saw.

I shot the photo here in the picture-perfect town of Prairie City, Iowa. In fact, this tractor is sitting in front of a few huge grain silos just a short walk from the town center. By the time I got there the light was beginning to fade (you can see the last splash of daylight on one of the big silos) and a deep shadow had fallen across the tractor. I shot several photos anyway knowing that I could probably save the shot in Photoshop--which is exactly what I did. In fact, getting a decent image from the original file was kind of a challenge (I could write a entire article on the 30 or 40 steps I used to get a good finished file), but because I loved the subject so much, spending time with the image was fun. I just put on some Greg Brown music (he's an Iowa folk singer) and tweaked to my heart's content.

The most important audience you'll ever have for your photography is you. If your photos don't excite you, if the subjects don't stir your imagination, you'll have a hard time inspiring someone else with them. I think the love you have for your subjects and your fascination with them ultimately becomes part of their power. I can't imagine anyone putting "industrial tractor" at the list of their favorite photos subjects, but I think there is a quietness and an intimacy to this shot that others can appreciate. And any time I can document a piece of fading America, I feel that's a worthwhile ambition to serve.

These are the Greg Brown lyrics I was listening to as I edited this image. I'm sure I heard them in my head as I was shooting, too:

Now the railroad came generations ago
And the town grew up as the crops did grow
The crops grew well and the town did too
They say it's dyin now and there ain't a thing we can do
I don't have to read the news
Or hear it on the radio
I see it in the faces of everyone I know
The cost goes up
What we made comes down
What's gonna happen to our little town

"Our Little Town"
Lyric copyright Greg Brown

Keep a "Places" Journal (And Stop Losing Those Pretty Red Barns)

For a travel photographer, one of the most frustrating things in the world is to find a great photo location and then lose it. I know, because I've done it a lot. The problem is that I like to wander a lot, especially when I'm exploring someplace new, and since I'm concentrating more on things like finding interesting shots, waiting for great lighting and wondering where I'm going to stop and get a burger, I often forget to make notes about exactly where I was when I shot the pictures. A few weeks later I'm back home and editing photos and scratching my head looking at maps trying to piece the trip back together again.

A far better way, of course, is to just keep a notebook handy in your shooting vest or on the dash of your car and keep notes and directions for re-finding locations. I don't go back to the same places all that often, but there are certain pretty places, like this red barn in Iowa, that I would love to shoot again (perhaps in a different season) if I was back in that part of Iowa. I know roughly where I shot it and I can picture the road in my head, but I'm not at all sure I could find it on a map. Had I just written down the route number and the nearest cross street, finding it would be a breeze.

I'm sure that in the next few generations of digital cameras there will be geotagging/GPS included in the EXIF data and keeping a road journal will be a thing of the past, but for now, it's worth writing down where you were when you shot some of your favorite pictures. Besides, while GPS might be a cool techno thing to play with, it's not like you can stuff theme-park brochures or diner menus into it the way you can with a notebook or journal. And if you're going back to the same area to photograph you'll definitely want to remember where the best burgers in town were...though to be honest, I rarely have trouble remembering that.

Have Some Fun with Off-Beat Travel Portraits

It's fun to make travel photos more personal by including photos of the people you're traveling with in front of some of the landmarks that you're visiting together. Even if (like me) you prefer to rarely make an appearance in the photos yourself, you'll always be a part of the photos because you shot them. Taking pictures of your travel companions just standing there staring back at the camera can get old pretty fast, however, if you don't find some way to make the experience a bit more interesting for them and you.

One way to change things up a bit and get some interesting photos in the bargain is to use lenses, like ultra-wide-angle lenses, that were never really meant for portrait photography. To take this shot on the steps of Assateague Light in Virginia, for example, I used a Sigma 10-20mm ultra-wide-angle zoom (equivalent to 15 to 30mm on my Nikon D90 camera body) and a very low angle to stretch out both the doorway and my friend and make them both seem much taller than they are in reality. In order to get his very low angle, I had to literally lay down in the sand at the foot of the stairs and shoot nearly straight up. I also used the "live view" feature on the D90 that lets you compose on the LCD--a feature that I rarely use--to make composing the shot easier on my neck.

You can also get some interesting portraits by going the opposite way optically and using a very long telephoto lens to photograph someone in front of an unexpected background. You'll have to shoot from farther away, of course, but the compressed feeling that a long telephotos lens (any lens that is say, the 35mm equivalent of 300mm or longer) creates can be very eye catching. If you were to photograph someone standing on a street corner in Manhattan with a very long lens, for example, the compression would compact the spaces and press your subject into the traffic and crowds behind them. Your subjects will probably find the idea of posing a half block away more interesting too and they will no doubt feel more relaxed by not having to smile into a camera three feet away. (Just don't let them get so far away that they can escape on you.)

Whether you're shooting with a super-wide or super-long lens, take time to pause for a moment and show them the first few frames on the LCD. Once they see how off-beat the photos look they'll be more willing (hopefully) to pose a bit longer and be open to trying some of your extreme portrait ideas later in the trip.

Give Your Sunsets a Great Foreground

It's easy to look at a pretty sunset or sunrise and think that nature will do all of the work for you when it comes to photographing it. With all that color and drama, what's not to like? But you can improve any sunset/sunrise by simply finding a good foreground to place in front of it. Because you want the colors and cloud patterns (or sky reflections, if you're near the water) to dominate the shot, you want your foreground subject to be simple, yet interesting. Also, because it's likely that your foreground will end up entirely in silhouette, you also want a subject that's bold enough to be reduced to lines and shapes and still add interest to the photograph.

I took this shot of the rigging in a commercial fishing boat in Galilee, Rhode Island and I really like the way the complex web of stays and ropes creates such interesting patterns. It took me a while to find the shot though--even though I had been scouting around the harbor an hour or so before sunset. I was really hoping to get a shot of a boat pulling into or out of the harbor, but all the boats were tied up for the night. After walking around the marina in a slight state of panic for what seemed like an eternity (it was probably only about 10 minutes), afraid that I might miss this great sunset and not get a good shot, I looked up into the rigging of this boat and knew it would make a great shot. I planted my tripod on the dock and fired off a few dozen shots as the sky grew more intense and then started to fade, shifting my position slightly after each few frames.

Scouting ahead of time is the real key to finding a good sunset foreground. I've always found it's better to sacrifice an hour of late-afternoon shooting to do more scouting if I think there's going to be a great sunset, because I know that the combination of an interesting foreground and a great sunset make really pretty photos. Better yet, scout earlier in the day, at midday perhaps, and just be sure you get back to your sunset location in time to catch the sky show.

Stop & Look at Scenic Overlooks

I'd be the first to admit that I've never taken a very good picture from a scenic overlook and the reason is fairly simple: while overlooks provide a good wide view of the landscape around you, they're too broad and unfocused to become worthwhile landscape photos. But that doesn't mean that I don't stop and look at the view when I come across an overlook. In fact, I go out of my way to find them on maps or to ask locals where the best scenic views are found. Whatever they lack in terms of more intimate subject matter, these wide vistas are great at giving you the lay of the land and showing you just where you are traveling.

I shot this photo on my first road trip between Phoenix and Flagstaff and just seeing this view and the winding dirt road leading off into the mountains gave me a great sense of the scale of the landscape and a beautiful panoramic view of the surrounding mountains. The shot was taken just a few steps from an interstate highway, but it's not the kind of view you get to study at 60 mph (unless you want to end up a part of the view). There were also some nice historical and natural-history markers in the pull-off parking lot and some very detailed state maps on display, so all-in-all, a great place to get better acquainted with where I was and what Arizona looked like.

You may or may not get a good photo from an overlook, but they're certainly worth visiting. In fact, anything that gets you off the interstate for a few minutes is a great thing, photographically and otherwise.

Search for the Curious at Home

Sorry for the lack of postings for the past week, but I've been busy researching and preparing for several upcoming shooting trips and haven't had time to shoot as much as I'd like. One of the interesting things about traveling to take photos (and I'll blog about this shortly) is that you spend about three days doing research for every day that you're on the road. And among the things that I tend to look for when I research a place are its oddities--the strange and twisted places that the locals know about, but that may never make it to the tour books.

The funny thing is that regardless of where we live, we all have these fascinating and curious places right in our own midst. Chances are, in fact, that you drive by a couple of them every week without ever noticing or stopping to see if there is anything fun to photograph. I live about 20 minutes away from Yale University, for example, and unless you were familiar with the campus, you'd never know that there are some incredible gargoyles and relief sculptures decorating the faces of the buildings. Once you get out and start walking around they peak over your shoulder and surprise you as if to ask, "What took you so long to notice us?"

And then, of course, there are the places that are just totally off the wall--and they are the best places in the world to find strange and unique photo ops. This past weekend, for instance, I paid a visit to a legendary local antiques store called United House Wrecking that is billed as the largest antiques and decor store in Connecticut--and it surely must be that. In addition to an interior showroom that is probably several city blocks long (you need a 20' mantel for your fireplace perhaps?), there is a huge outdoor display area that features an eccentric and eclectic (you might even say bizarre) display of yard sculptures, urns, statues and metal work. This company started out largely as a salvage company that saved and sold interesting salvage materials from homes and commercial buildings and has now become a bit of an antique-shop version of the Twilight Zone. You have to see it to believe it.

So while I've been busy this past week searching for the strange and unusual in far off places around the country, it was good for me to take a trip to this familiar haunt to remind myself that there are cool places to shoot close to home. In fact, in the two hours or so that I wandered around the outside yard, I probably shot 150 photos--and I got lots of great keepers that will surely show up in future book projects. So before you pull out the maps and tour books for your next far-off trip, pull out your local phone book and see if there aren't some great shooting venues right in your own back yard.

Pack a Pocket Compass When Traveling

With the advent of GPS systems in cars and even in cell phones (and some cameras), you wouldn't think there would be much need for a compass when you're traveling. And I have to admit, if you already have an iPhone with the mapping & compass widget (lucky you), then you already have a good compass in your pocket. But for those of us who haven't advanced to that level yet, there are still many photographic uses for an inexpensive pocket compass--especially if you're traveling in an unfamiliar area.

The primary use of a compass, of course, is just to know which direction the rest of the world is relative to your direction of travel. And using a compass for this basic concept is extremely simple. Since the needle on a compass always points north, if you turn until the needle until it is overlaying the "N" (or turn the dial on an adjustable face compass) then north, south, east and west will all be very obvious to you.

This is pretty important information, for example, if you are leaving Paris and want to drive to the Loire Valley, which is (roughly) south of the city. It's even more important if you decide to get off the nicely marked French highways and take some scenic back roads. Unless your car does have GPS navigation, without a compass you'll be left to follow the sun or trust the directions of French signs--which, as you can see from the shot here, can be a bit intimidating even in a small town.

But an even more important reason for photographers to have a compass handy is to keep track of where the sun rises and sets. This may be pretty obvious at sunrise or sunset, but at midday, you won't have a clue. If you want to photograph a harbor at sunset, for example, it would be nice if you could scout locations during the day knowing approximately where the sun will set. You could ask a local, of course, but good luck finding one that actually knows where the sun sets or which direction is west! You, on the other hand, with your pocket compass, will know in an instant where the sun will hit the horizon; just locate north and then read west off of the compass face. Sunrise? Just find east.

There are lots of good websites and books on using a compass, just do a search on "orienteering" or "basic compass use" and you'll find one. This page has good basic instructions for using a compass. Remember, even if your car has GPS, unless it's portable and you can take it with you, a compass is still a great thing to have handy. And besides, there is no battery in a simple compass, so it will never go dead.

There are many more fun and practical uses for a compass and I think every photographer should know how to use one and always keep one in their bag. By the way, as a side note, I'm shocked by how many maps that are available online have no compass rose--the indicators of direction that should be on all maps. Be sure when you print out any map from an online source that you choose one that has compass directions included.

Recover Your Lost Cameras (and Cell Phones)

Knock-on-wood I've never lost a camera or a cell phone (although I lose my cell phone around the house almost daily), but I'm sure it happens to people everyday. Your odds of getting that camera or phone back are, I would imagine, pretty dismal even if you have a name label on it or have your name etched into it. I just discovered a service, however, called TrackItBack that claims to have an 85-percent success rate at returning their members' lost possessions to them.

This is how it works: For a small fee (ranging from $9.95 to register a single cell phone to $149.95 to register 20 different items) you register your valuables with the company and they send you stickers to place on the items. If you lose your camera or lens or cell phone and someone finds it (and sees the sticker) they call a toll-free number and are given instructions for returning the item at no charge. They can even drop it off at a "safe" location (a UPS store, for example) if they don't want to be bothered shipping it.

As a reward for their honesty they are given a quantity of TrackItBack stickers and a free membership to the service. You can also register to give the finder a specific cash award--but it's not required. Does the service work? Apparently it does. Not only do they claim to recover that 85-percent of lost registered valuables, but a television station in Chicago tested the labels by intentionally losing two cell phones in the city--and both were recovered within two hours. There is a news video of the experiment on the site.

By the way, the service works in many places around the world including the United States, Canada, Mexico, much of Europe, parts of South America and South Africa and Australia. And I'm sure the service will grow. It seems like $9.95 is a small price to pay to recover an expensive point-and-shoot camera that you've left in a restaurant or airport. I'm going to contact the company today to be sure the service works for DSLR and larger cameras and if it does I'll register a few of my cameras. They also sell registered tags for your luggage--and that could be a real trip saver!

If you end up using the service and have to put it to work, let me know and I'll publish your experiences.

Indulge Your Wanderlust

I love to travel. In fact, as much as I like hanging around the house and poking around my garden on a summer day, there is no single thing I'd rather do with my time than see other places. I think I can lay the blame for this on my mother who also loved to travel and who handed me a copy of John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley when I was about 15 and looking for something interesting to read. The book, which remains one of my all-time favorite reads, documents several months that Steinbeck spent wandering the back roads of America at age 58 to get back in touch with the country and the people that he had been writing about for so long.

In his travels, Steinbeck avoided interstates and major named routes and instead traveled the "blue highways," the roads that crisscrossed America before the major routes were built. While he had a general idea of where he was headed, he more or less made up the trip from day to day. Photographically, that is my favorite way to see a place--to just throw a cooler of food in the trunk, ignore the maps as much as possible and go where the road takes me. (Fortunately I have a girlfriend that is just as much of a back-road wanderer as I am.)

I'd never been to the Amish are of Pennsylvania before when I took the above photo. We'd spent a few days at Longwood Gardens south of Philadelphia and just decided to explore the Amish farms on the way back to New England. Most of the roads in that area didn't even show up on the maps, so we just drove until we hit a head end or we intersected another road (one of the main towns in the area is called Intercourse--named, I assume, after a joining of roads). We spent one very long day driving past the most beautiful farms I'd ever seen, buying fresh produce from farm stands and just relishing a landscape without commercialism. The area is so photogenic that I was finding great photos in all directions; I shot hundreds of pictures in one day. We never looked at a map until the late began to fade and we started looking for the highway north.

When you plan your summer vacation this year, work in a few days to indulge your wanderlust. Some of the best photo locales in the world are in the places you only discover by exploring.

Visit Maine During Lupine Season

One of the most spectacular wildflower displays anywhere in the world happens each June all over the state of Maine when the beautiful lupines come into bloom. If you've never seen the lupines in bloom, it's an amazing site: you come around a corner on a country road and suddenly dozens of acres are filled with purple, blue and pink stalks reaching upwards of five or six feet tall.

I have to confess to having spent a lot of frustrating hours over the years trying to get a good photo of the lupines and it's tougher than it looks. I was in a spectacular field in Rangeley, Maine one summer and got so frustrated at not being able to find a shot that I came close to tossing a camera into the woods. It can really make you nuts to have what looks like millions of flowers in front of you and not be able to find a single good shot.

Getting a good shot is actually a true test of your ability to see creatively. One of the first decisions you'll have to make is whether to shoot just a few blossoms or try to take in an entire meadow. Remember that you don't have to include every flower stalk that you see in order to impart the feeling of endless blossoms. Often it's better to find a small group of flowers and contrast them against a plain background (try to use a dark background like the pine trees in the shot here). Experiment with different lenses or zoom settings, too. I find that a medium telephoto setting is a good way to isolate a small grove of plants, but a wide-angle lens will let you exaggerate the depth of a long field full of flowers.

If you're really serious about getting a good shot of a broad field, consider bringing a small step ladder with you. Just getting an extra two or three feet of height above the field is enough to get a really unique and interesting perspective. The great landscape master Ansel Adams had special shooting platforms built on top of his vans for that very reason.

Lighting is also very important in shooting the lupines: early morning and later in the afternoon when the light is soft and less contrasty is ideal. I actually like working on cloudy days because the flower colors are more saturated and there are no glaring highlights. One other slight problem I run into when shooting lupines is wind--on windy days you either have to include some motion (intentionally using a show shutter speed) or just wait for a calmer part of the day.

All of these considerations will race through your mind when you spot your first big field of lupines, so I suggest that when you find one good field in full bloom, slow down and spend a few hours there looking for good shots and experimenting with different ideas. And boy, has writing this tip made me want to get out the Maine maps!

Say Goodbye to Times Square Traffic Shots

If you've always wanted to photograph streaks of traffic whirring through Times Square in New York, you've missed your chance: the city has announced that the stretch of Broadway from 42nd Street to 47th Street is now a pedestrians-only mall. Personally I'll miss the colorful and chaotic parade of traffic winding (sometimes whipping) through Times Square, but I'll feel much safer not having to dodge cabs and SUV's when I'm shooting.

So if you have any old photos of traffic in that area, they're historic now so take good care of them! Hopefully having the traffic gone will make it easier to photograph the ever-growing glitter of the Neon Canyon--and without breathing all of those emissions!

Return to Familiar Haunts

I was surprised a while back when I was talking to a travel photographer friend and he told me that he never returns to the same destination to shoot for a second time unless he's on a paid assignment. His feeling is that there are just too many new places to shoot--at home or on the road--to spend time returning to old haunts.

I have to confess that I both agree and disagree with his philosophy. On one hand I love to see new places and I always shoot more--and usually better--photos when I'm in a brand new locale. And returning to a place does sometimes feel like you're trying to recapture a past experience--not particularly conducive to creative ideas.

On the other hand though, the more you get to know a place the more you get in touch with its moods and its deeper rhythm. Also, the more you know the geographic/physical features of the locale, the more time you can spend thinking about lighting and weather and mood and less about finding the "good" vantage points. I live about 30 minutes from the harbor shown here, for example, and I've been there dozens and dozens of times. The boats may change places from visit to visit, but the islands and the shoreline remain the same. Knowing what I'm going to encounter physically means that I can find compositions faster and pay much more attention to what the light and weather and seasons are doing. I shot this photo about 30 minutes after sunset, for example, because I knew that once the sun set the harbor would smooth over and the mist would start to settle around the islands. Had I not know the place so well, I might have left after the colors of the sunset had faded and missed this pretty twilight shot.

I think the key to deciding if old haunts are worth revisiting or not is not so much that you've been there before (for better or worse) but does the place inspire you--do you enjoy being their and looking for photos. If you do like being there then the creative possibilities are continually reborn because you imagination is open. And then, of course, when you do find yourself getting bored, you'll know it's time to wander further on down the road.

Slow Down and Let the Shot Come to You

The best advice I ever got on travel photography was from the great travel shooter Catherine Karnow. Catherine has done dozens (probably hundreds) of wonderful travel-photo essays for magazines like Islands, National Geographic and National Geographic Traveler. I interviewed her years ago for a book I wrote on travel photography and essentially the advice she offered was to slow down and let the place and the moment come to you. She told me that often she'll plant herself in an interesting location (by a harbor, in a marketplace, etc.) and spend the day slowly exploring and watching as opportunities evolve. This doesn't mean she doesn't explore far and wide to find shots, just that once she finds a likely location, she slows down enough to let the moments happen. It's great advice.

I photographed the cow here on an Amish farm in Pennsylvania. I loved the background and the setting and the lightly overcast skies were creating a beautiful soft lighting. But the cows, thinking they were going to get a handout probably, crowded the fence whenever I got close. What I really wanted though was to do a portrait of one cow. I walked the perimeter of the pasture for an hour or more and while I was getting impatient and itching to move on, I considered Catherine's advice and just waited patiently. Eventually all the cows got bored except this one that seemed to take a particular interest in me and my camera and suddenly she was the only one in the frame and I had an almost panoramic view of the farm behind her. I later used this shot in my book The Joy of Digital Photography and in several online lessons.

It's tempting when you're traveling to see as much as you can--and that's definitely a worthwhile goal. But often the best shots happen when you give yourself time to know a place a bit better and when you wait for interesting moments to come to you.

Visit the Greatest American Landscape

If you're making travel plans for the coming summer and you'd like to see the American Southwest, there is one place that should be at the top of your list: Monument Valley in southern Utah (just over the Arizona border). There is no other place in America that symbolizes the beauty and mystery of the American West like this extraordinary place. Monument Valley is actually a Navajo Tribal Park and is administered (and lived in) by the Navajo. The Navajo name for the valley is: Tse'Bii'Ndzisgaii.

Monument Valley presents some of the best landscape photo opportunities in the world and features "monuments" or rock buttes that rise up between 400 and 1000' high. By the way, the photo here was shot from the rim of the valley, near the visitor's center--and while that's a beautiful viewpoint, you have to get down into the valley to see just how spectacular it really is.There is a 17-mile self-driving tour through the valley (entry is just $5/person) and the Navajos also offer guided tours. I've spent several days there at a time and there is always something new to see, always another view to photograph. It's mind boggling, to be honest.

Interestingly, quite a number of Navajo live in the Valley and so when you're there you're not just in a park, but in their living room, so you also get a sense of the history of the Navajo people. Considering the way that Native Americans have been abused in every conceivable way in this country, it's amazing that they even let us on their land, yet they are incredibly welcoming to strangers.

There is only one hotel (now) that is close to the park and that is Goulding's Lodge (a great place to stay, you can see the valley in the distance from virtually very room), but I'm told that the Navajo are building their own hotel where the visitor center is. I really hope this doesn't commercialize the park too much since its remote location has always kept it somewhat of a secret. Just getting to the valley is a challenge, by the way, it's a four-hour drive from Flagstaff and it's 25 miles from the nearest town (Kayenta, Arizona). Still, it's a beautiful drive and worth every effort it takes to see this extraodrinary landscape.

Break the Composition Rules

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, there are a lot of "rules" when it comes to composing images and often those rules are useful in creating strong photographs. But those rules are better described as guidelines and there's no need for slavish devotion to them. In fact, often breaking the rules and putting convention aside is the right thing to do. The tricky bit is knowing when to do it.

How do you know when it's right? When it feels right. In shooting this photograph of my girlfriend in Monument Valley, for example, I decided to break one of the cardinal rules of composition that says your main subject should never be dead center in the frame. The reasoning behind this is that centering a subject creates a very stagnant design. At the moment I shot this frame, however, she was engulfed by this incredible environment and it seemed putting her in the middle of the frame--both horizontally (the center of the frame runs right through her waist) and vertically (she divides the frame in half side-to-side)--was exactly the right thing to do. It felt not only natural but symbolic to have her in the center. This has always been one of my favorite shots of her and of Monument Valley.

If you've read a lot of composition rules in photo books (even mine!) and you're feeling restricted, feel free to toss the rules away. Soon enough you'll find out that the only design rules that matter are the ones that work.