Travel photographer Bob Holmes recently put together this quick-tips video for Advancing Your Photography in which he shares nine useful photography tips; or, as Holmes puts it in the video, nine 'crutches' for when you feel like the muse has deserted you.
They're basic tips, but this is what Holmes looks for when he goes out to shoot—lines, punctuation, and energy—and they're the reason he has managed to continue producing award-winning work year after year after year.
For those of you who prefer reading to watching, here's a quick summary of all nine tips:
Look for leading lines – they can lead your viewer through the composition
Look for diagonals – they give a dynamic feel to your photos
Look for horizontal lines – they will give a calm feel to your photos
Capture gestures – they can really help your photo pop
Try to find 'punctuation' – like a splash of color or a solitary person in a larger landscape
Put energy into your photos – you can do this by capturing movement in the frame
Be receptive – let the picture 'impress itself' upon you
Look at art for inspiration – famous paintings are often examples of fantastic composition and great lighting at work.
Look at photography books for inspiration – there's a reason the Irving Penn's and Henri Cartier-Bresson's of the world are still remembered today.
The tips might seem overly simplistic, but simple isn't always a bad thing when you're trying to get out of a rut. And it's not like Bob Holmes doesn't know what he's talking about: he's the only photographer to ever win the Travel Photographer of the Year Award 5 times, most recently in 2017.
Check out the video above for photo to go with each of the tips, and then let us know if you have your own "get out of a rut" routine in the comments.
Make your own photo - mostly, there are reasons why people are grouped in one place trying to get 'the shot' of whatever it is but there are sometimes other good vantage points to explore; the group isn't always right.
Architecture isn't always a building - I like to take pictures of elements of a structure (church or whatever) but without people or dogs in the photo, the element has to be interesting enough on its own..
These are Really good, and very useful tips, particularly using diagonals. It always important to have a great camera with you, as last time once travelled to Valencia, it was not working properly and the SD card was not recognised, so could not take any good pictures, therefore my advice, check the camera, before your trip, and then use the suggested advices.
I went through a collector phase early on in my photography. Ended up with a bunch of dust collectors, cool stuff, but oddly enough, some literature from almost 100 years ago as well. One of the very early "how to take great photo's" books gives very similar advice that is still true today, as this video shows.
Cynicism and crass comments aside, I think the main point of this video that a lot of us are missing is about the emotional tie to a scene, and how if a scene doesn't motivate you to push the shutter, how you might find some aspect that will make it worthy of doing so. Every so often, it's a good reminder, and I give the author credit for his long career and sharing his insights.
Pro tip #1: Obsess for months online before the trip asking millions of people what to get then what to take considering many scenarios (packing lite, heavy, portrait walk).
Pro tip #2: Spend an absurd amount of time (at least 2-3 time longer than the trip) deciding on the backpack.
Pro top #3: watch more than a hundred videos about travel photography ignoring anyone who says it's not about the gear and expecting similar results on your first outing.
Bonus achievement: don't have time for a few weeks after you come back to look at the photos.
Bonus achievement: get a drone and crash it within a week
Bonus achievement: be too tired to ever get up for a sunrise
1. ENJOY your trip. Even greatest artists in this world can't produce award winning artwork with their talent. Why could you?!? However, being novice or veteran, one can enjoy his/her own trip everytimes.
2. Do not forget your life. Photographing is not everything. Your travel companion (also your breakfast, your hotel, etc, etc) is more important.
3. Do not forget to share your happiness to your friends and relatives. Award judge is no one.
a good video ... learning what was achieved in great cave painting . to modern ,expressionism the russian constructivists .. cubism the still life by chardin the light of Rembrandt... the emotion of Edvard Munch .. ..the solemnity of walter murch... the playfulness of a magrette
the point of silence between note as well as the notes themselves the arms of a dancer and the space between the arms and body
attuning yourself to all art .. and especially visual art from great painting printmaking ... even cinemaphotography is a most essential ingredient of being able to possess the eye of a photographer
Heh, I have Salgado, Penn, and HCB on my living room table. My conclusion is that some people are born with a gift of seeing that no amount of learning can replace. It is easy to spot the diagonals and hot spots on somebody else's pictures but totally another thing to try and see them while you are in the situation yourself. Then again (or "having said that") photography has taught me to see in a way that gives me great pleasure. Like fumbling with a bass guitar has taught me to listen to the bass lines. Doing is the best way to learn. BTW a great set of pictures. </joke>I wonder what settings he is using. </end joke>
some people are naturals and some must work hard ... but near everyone can learn to read .. if one tries ... as long as the learner actually can grasp what they are trying to master .. then trying ... and succeeding and failing and succeeding again is possible ... it takes thick skin and a thin ego
setting realistic goals and remembering that not every shot can be a work of genius is important to remember
it takes work ... and curation . i would even say learning to curate your own work and leave your ego at the door is one of the most important conditions of developing as an artist
And might I add that failure is the quickest way to learn. I’m sure there are plenty of DPReview critics that can help speed up your learning curve to a PhD simply by offering your photos up for their spite....err I meant “critique.”
failure could mean learning.... it depends on the person failing and whether they choose to learn something from the failure or wallow in pity and nurse a bruised ego
Super! i haven't seen photos like that before. Will bear in mind his comments when I go out shortly to take pictures of some temporary traffic lights that have been installed for construction of a new roundabout that is the start of building a new housing estate on what used to be prime arable land.
Incidentally I find one of the best ways to take photos that look like art is to take photos of art.
@brightncheerful, "one of the best ways to take photos that look like art is to take photos of art". I think that the best way to take photos that look like art is to take photos of subjects that are important to you, move you, speak to your current condition, record an important stimulus to your practice.
I always think that the cynical response is somehow a defence mechanism - but then I'm probably wrong.
He quotes from a few memorable people there, including Dorothea Lange, "the camera is an instrument that teaches people to see without a camera", much I was saying of myself immediately below.
Excellent video, many more great shots than one usually sees together in one place.
But I do not think much at all about any rules in particular when making a picture. With a trained eye over many years, it has become an instinct with me. Besides what works does not have to follow any rules, so I all but ignore them.
After sixty five years doing photography as a hobby, alert seeing helps me enjoy places beautiful to the eye, even when they will not make a picture at all. That does happen. At other times,when out without a camera but because of my photography, I have learned to see properly and enjoy because it is there, regardless.
I have noticed that unless a scene is still, people often miss it. Sometimes I spot a great still shot in a visual sequence or streaming and can freeze it in my mind, enjoy it for a couple of seconds before it fades from memory. It gives me a lot of pleasure being able to do that.
I definitely agree that the key is seeing, not just looking.
Very good video for those learning the craft of photography. Seems a bit out of place here on a gearist site that worships measurebatism. The forums are filled with fanboys whose interest in photography is more towards owning the 'best' equipment rather than better using the gear they have. THAT said I must add the author's photos of Myanmar are magical. Much like India, it's pretty hard to take bad photos in Myanmar...even I took good photos there: https://flic.kr/s/aHskwYffNg
Thank you for sharing your beautiful photos. Great composition and subjects! One day I will get there. Art Wolf often said in his series of "Travel to the Edge" that he sees the pictures in his head before he composes it in the camera. His background training was art, not photography. Thus lines, shapes, patterns are key elements that make up good photographs that convey messages.
Isn't this the guy who eschewed full-frame for a long time and made gorgeous travel pictures using a pair of APS-C sized Nikon D300s? That's inexcusable. I think his best tip is to look at art. The great painters figured it all out centuries ago, and to take advantage of their wisdom all it takes is a trip to a local art museum or a visit to www.metmuseum.org.
kodachromeguy - I think he was a bit tongue-in-cheek with the 'inexcusable' point. (I might be wrong)
Smiler - "The great painters figured it all out centuries ago". But they were living in a different world. Photography is the only art form in which the present moment in our world is the canvass on which we work. The "great painters" weren't photographers; they started with a blank white canvass, and proceeded to invent the work. Photography isn't analogous to painting, though I do agree that we can learn a lot by looking at contemporary art in whatever medium.
Of course tongue in cheek; the D300 was an amazing camera. But not kidding about artists of the past being relevant to today. Part of developing as a photographer is building up a library in your head of strategies for dealing with difficult subjects If you are stumped about how to light something, or how to arrange people or objects in your frame, or how to pose people, or the best way to capture different types of landscape, or how to use certain colors together, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. One artist or another has already worked out an elegant solution long before you were born—usually Rembrandt. The information is out there waiting for you to take advantage of it. .
Start with talent and passion. Work, study, work and more work. take a million photos, get feedback. Find a teacher or mentor. Repeat for many, many years.
Or, watch a short video with some nice “tips”, graphics and terrible, lame background music to help it along!
sometimes the book is better ... sometimes the movie ... but ill tell ya, if its something i care about i will always do both and sort out my feelings later...
I find it slightly odd that so many landscape and travel photographers try as hard as possible to get shots devoid of humanity in it's natural unposed form.
That’s just the genre for you. Nothing against Bob Holmes in particular, but it’s part of why travel photography doesn’t appeal to me—the picture that travel photographers usually paint of the things they do and the places they go tends to feel very glossy and slick and staged, like a brochure from a luxury resort. There’s a lack of authenticity or at least self-awareness that I find off-putting.
Also it feels like a little bit of a pyramid scheme. The message that travel photographers promote—sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly—is “become a travel photographer like me, and spend all your time taking pictures in beautiful places surrounded by beautiful people!” Which is a great dream to have, but it’s only ever going to work for a small number of people and I doubt if it really matches the true experience of what being a full-time working travel photographer entails.
If you have the 'eye' then you don't need the glamour of travel and exotic places, you can find interesting photographs walking to the grocery store. Oh? What? You drive? Well keep you eye on the road then! No wonder you can't see all those wonderul 'local' shots if you're stuck in the car.
Ha! Travel photographers spend almost none of their time actually shooting in the field. It's mostly soliciting assignments from editors and agents, selling stock photos, meeting with their accountant, processing photos, having dinner with potential clients, sitting around airports, doing more research, and spending endless sessions in marriage counseling because they're gone from home so much.
Yup Smiler, because it’s a job. But that’s not the dream that travel photography sells. There’s far too much “Read my blog to find out how I learned how to quit my day job and travel the world!” out there.
"Ha! Travel photographers spend almost none of their time actually shooting in the field. It's mostly soliciting assignments from editors and agents, selling stock photos, meeting with their accountant, processing photos, having dinner with potential clients, sitting around airports, doing more research, and spending endless sessions in marriage counseling because they're gone from home so much."
You just described every hobby that turns into a job. After I went pro photography was 10% of my time, and out of that ten percent 99% of it was shooting what other people wanted, not what I wanted, so I was left with about 1% of my photography was emotionally rewarding rather than financial.
AntonJA is right. Travel photography is completely relative. One guy's exotic travel destination is another guy's neighborhood. There will always be interesting photographic opportunities around.
@mfinley, I always wanted to be a professional photographer but was persuaded off it. My mother even wrote when I was teenager to Allan Cash, a famous British photographer at the time. He replied he did not make a living out of the super pictures the public saw, but made his living taking shots for industry!
So perhaps with that and what you said, I was better off keeping to photography as a hobby and focusing on what I wanted to take 100% of the time. Still the impact of Eugene Smith and others whose use of a camera as a means of communicating what is going on in the world was magnificent, his pictures of Minimata in particular. I would have liked to have emulated achievements like that, would not have had his ability.
Incidentally, I had a boss in Toronto, also very keen on photography. He was quite a character, sometimes an impossible man. But when he told me to go see and hear Eugene Smith give a talk, something told me to do so. I will never forget that, a great great man.
@keepreal - I had a similar experience when I had to photograph Alfred Eisenstaedt (what a lopsided event that was talent wise, however he was extremely gracious with dealing what I would label just a boob in myself when compared to the talents of that man), the greats are simply on a different ethereal plane...
By-the-way, no longer a professional now, my photography now is purely for my own whims and fancies and I serve few masters other than myself which is infinitely the more satisfying experience and a true luxury to me now.
Strange that my comment about travel and landscape photographers making every effort to edit out humanity from their work promoted a discussion on the pros and cons of professional work. However I concur; when I turned amateur about five years ago it was a thoroughly liberating experience.:)
I'm no pro, not even close, but I get your point. As a graphic designer, I pick photos of a location without people in the image - even for travel. Like real estate photography you want the viewer to imagine themselves in the scene - usually this means images devoid of people. If you are a travel photographer selling your images, I can imagine having someones likeness in a photo can be problematic. (for a wedding/fashion photographer the opposite is true) For my personal travel photography I followed this philosophy, but there are places where its impossible or too time consuming to avoid having people in the image. Observing friends and family viewing my travel photos I noticed that they most often paused on the images that contain people in the image. Therefore I no longer wait until people are out of the scene because they frequently add to the image. It really depends on what you expect / want your photo to be used for.
Yeah, it's curious. Perhaps that's why Martin Parr from Magnum made such a splash. Closeups of sunburnt Brits eating ice creams and chips, but somehow it was all very familiar, to me at least. I know the the senior goons at Magnum scoffed at the vulgarity of his brash colour emulsion work. Haha. They soon changed their minds. But your observations about friends and family is interesting. A picture of Brighton beach is a picture of Brighton beach but if there're hundreds on Mods and Rockers on the beach fighting each other it suddenly becomes a way more interesting snap.
If you are a keen reader of DPR, you all know what takes to take a good photo: Number 1: ISO invariance Number 2: Dynamic range (i.e. recover shadows by +5EV) Number 3: Performance at ISO25600+ All others come after these key points
All that is secondry to having a good eye for a photograph, yes they help in the overall production, anyone who thinks that the latest greatest camera will get them better pics are lying to themselves, features/ bells & whistles will aid you but will never help in going out and learning the craft of photography, composition composition composition. Is by far the most important thing, and like most other general rules of photography there are exceptions and rules can be broken
If a person visiting dpr for gear review and using it for the purpose site is designed i take it that he is sane enough to take good photos. Now those who can't understand that this is not art photography site i doubt they can take good photos.
You missed: No. 4. Massive equivalence so that you capture sufficient photons. No. 5. Stabilized lenses. It has been proven that non- stabilized lenses are not able to take sharp pictures of moving objects. No. 6. A moving mirror behind the lens. Any other camera is just a play toy.
This is really good advice for people who are learning to 'see'. People who already know how to do this don't really need this information. They are doing it automatically - subconsciously.
Personally, I tend not to analyse when I'm shooting, but I do keep the 'rules' in my mind when I'm framing my shot - and re-compose when I can - with landscapes in particular. Sometimes I force myself to re-compose a shot, just to make sure I am not missing the 'essence' of the subject. Often I see the composition long before I even pick up the camera.
In the end, it's all about reviewing your work and understanding and refining the vision you want to share with your audience. It's called 'style' - and if you don't have a style then you need to develop one, otherwise your work will never really satisfy you or anyone else.
"This is really good advice for people who are learning to 'see'. People who already know how to do this don't really need this information. They are doing it automatically - subconsciously."
I've been learning for 30 years of taking photographs, the day I don't need to learn anymore will be the day they lay me to rest, those who think they have learned everything are already dead
I'm not suggesting that you should stop learning. Whatever made you think that? I learn from every shot, every visualisation, every post processing.
What I'm suggesting is that you get to a point where you no longer (or never had to) say to yourself, "these horizontal lines are calming, or these diagonals represent drama or movement." That's analysis - and for me that comes later - if at all. For me, being in the moment is more important.
"I began making pictures because I wanted to record what supports hope: the untranslatable mystery and beauty of the world. Along the way the camera also caught evidence against, and I eventually concluded that this too belonged in pictures if they were to be truthful and useful." - Robert Adams
“Look for diagonals”, “Look for horizontal lines”, “Look for leading lines”. Damn, are we learning to tie our shoelaces?
I’d say look for the meaning of the photograph. Why am I taking it, how does it articulate my voice, and what am I trying to say with that shutter release? For me photography can be an exploration of the way I see and understand the world. It’s what makes looking at the work of photographers exiting – a different (and interesting) world view.
I believe in reality it works in reverse - first you take a photo, doesens to be exact, and then in post processing you look for all those individual elements. Those shots that contain one or more of these elements become keepers. Discard the rest.
I am not being sarcastic. I just don’t believe one can spot all these elements right on the scene, when often there are only seconds for a shot. To get a hint of what scene might yield more keepers? Yes. This comes with experience. But the key, in my opinion, is to get more that just one shot of every scene, if time permits. Always try different angles, distances, shutter speed, etc. This alone will make you a much better photographer. And I think this tip should be on the list.
You can look for things that will work though, and try to incorporate them into your pictures. You can look for things that will break your photos, and try to avoid them. Right now one of my personal photography goals is improving my hit rate, not by taking more keepers but by taking fewer wasted shots. It’s easy to just blast away at things and try a lot of possibilities—and I do some of that—but part of being a good photographer, I think, is being able to envision what something will look like when photographed.
Not everything that looks good in real life looks good in a photo, and vice versa. It’s important to be able to find the photograph in a scene, which often involves taking a moment to look and think critically before choosing your shot.
But then sometimes I like to just take burst shots of a running dog and pick out the ones with the funniest faces.
Also, I find culling really boring. When I know I have a huge number of wasted shots I often dread the culling process. There have been times when the prospect of culling a group of mostly-worthless photos has seemed annoying enough that I just never did it, and ended up with no photos at all. If you are more considered and take fewer pictures but of higher average quality, culling a batch is much less of a chore.
You know, I just realized that I entirely misread the title. I thought the article is addressed more to beginners, but that is not the case. For those who are looking for inspiration, I think the advice is spot on. I too often make a goal of looking specifically for such elements, almost abstracting my mind from the actual scene. Just look for a gesture, or lines, or colour pallet. Hmm, no way to delete my comment now :(
I disagree... I'm trained in design (studied fine art a bit as well as graphic design) and so I really think "design" as I'm shooting. It doesn't mean that I don't often notice things that work that were unintended when I took the shot (and often crop accordingly) but to say that I don't think about those compositional elements (at lot!) while I'm shooting would be false... Not that I put myself in any kind of category of great photographers, but I'm convinced that among the folks who are recognized as great, they think about composition as well as they're shooting...
Yes, Aaron, I agree. I was drawing from my experience, where often my keeper shot is almost the opposite of the first shot of the scene. So I still think that it is a good “rule of thumb” to try different frames and settings with the same subject.
Like I mentioned above, I now realize that the article was specifically about inspirational techniques for those who feel like the lost the drive in shooting. And I do use similar techniques myself. Like I can decide to go out with the camera and look for circles. Or lines. Or isolated subjects. This gives very different perspective and results.
"But the key, in my opinion, is to get more that just one shot of every scene, if time permits. Always try different angles, distances, shutter speed, etc. This alone will make you a much better photographer. And I think this tip should be on the list."
That's one way, but think about using an 8x10 view camera and glass plates, would that slow you down to look before just shooting and shooting a scene, would it help you to look and think more? With unlimited card space comes the danger of thinking and seeing. Instead of shooting 100 versions of something try an experiment and look 100 times at something through the view finder without pressing the shutter button to capture it, then after looking and looking finally take 3 pictures of your subject, I'll bet they will be strong images and probably better than anything you would have captured by shooting 100 versions and culling to the best 3. There is a very useful exercise in slowing down and looking...
oh, what a waste of time! who needs that tips? everybody knows that to take a great photo one just need only a latest top camera and the most expensive F1.2 or at least F1.4 lens. keep upgrading your gear constantly and you will be a super pro, rich and famous
Thank god for the MFT Voigtlande f/0.95 then, I thought becoming a super rich famous pro was going to be above me. Apart from price of the Voigtlande, it's way to cheap. I'll just add a price tag label on it with a made up price. Any ideas?
Well, showing people something they haven’t seen is one of the best ways to have a powerful photo. That can mean going somewhere that your viewers haven’t been, or it can mean showing something familiar in a way that your viewers haven’t seen before. Both require effort on the part of the photographer.
We’re talking travel photography here though, which is all about going to interesting places and taking pictures that make your viewers want to go there too. That’s sort of the point of the genre.
Hey now, the photography advice pieces on PetaPixel are one of my favorite parts of that site. They’re usually 90% stuff I’ve heard before, but that remaining 10% is pure gold sometimes. Nothing wrong with DPR doing some educational articles; I didn’t personally gain anything new from this particular one, but there was a time when I certainly would have found these tips valuable. I’d be happy to see more of these.
I think that they’re actually cross-posting a lot of stuff from PetaPixel recently, like, on purpose? That’s what I took Scott’s mention of “co-branded articles” to mean in his recent open letter. Which is all well and fine, obviously. I don’t think this one is from Peta though.
Nice list of basics and great information for everyone but I cringe when I see all the photos taken from head high while standing. It places most subjects in a submissive POV. Even when he bends over it isn't enough. Photographing them from center of mass or an even lower POV will change so much how a photograph is read. It is the equipment directing the camera vs. the photographer choosing the correct POV.
When I read tips lists like this, I’m always struck by how basic they are. I mean, it’s solid advice but it’s nothing you won’t get from leafing through a book or two plus scrolling through Instagram for a couple of days. It’s always hard for artists to explain their art though, and what makes it great. You tend to get concrete-but-very-basic stuff like the above (“diagonal lines make your photos look more dynamic”) or abstract, difficult-to-apply stuff (“find the decisive moment that speaks to your vision, and capture it”). I haven’t seen a lot of middle ground, but maybe I’m not looking in the right places.
I do really like when a photographer or photography editor dissects a really good photo and talks about the decisions they made at the time and why they think the photo works. I’ve gained a lot of useful insight from reading those kinds of pieces.
I dunno, I’ve seen some deeper advice and been able to put it to use before. Stuff like how to decide where to put the horizon in a landscape photo, using a telephoto lens to make a mountain loom large over a building at its base, how shadow placement can make or break a shot, the power of catch lights, the way that color and texture can affect the feel of a piece, figure and ground theory; that sort of stuff.
None of that is exactly Secrets of the Mystic Masters, but it’s more than leading lines and the rule of thirds, and you can try it for yourself to see how it works in your own photos. Most of it really works, just like diagonal lines. It helps me find good photos, and figure out what’s wrong with the ones that don’t work so well. Instead of wondering why my photos are boring or disappointing, I can see that the light was flat, or the balance was off, or that I needed to get lower to have a better angle or what have you. Then I can go out and try to do better next time.
@anticipation_of, I think you're right. Personally I found that visiting galleries showing photographic art, and reading some books about photography, did help me understand the nature of the beast.
Stephen Shore, "The Nature of Photographs" - check it out.
That's what happens when a website caters to many people. Serve some up for the beginners, serve something up for the pros. We'll probably be seeing more beginner articles than usual for the next couple of months as many are probably trying out their new Christmas presents.
It's like beautiful women. Take a 1000 very beautiful women's photo's and somehow average them out. The result wil be objectively very beautiful, but humanly just dull.
It's sad but some people i know are stuck up about having the leading edge equipment and technologies, but still can't follow these basics and produce interesting photographs.
DPReview has had, recently, a few articles on people using older, obsolete P&S cameras with less than 10 megapixels and few effects, low ISO, low dynamic range. The results say a lot about the skills of the photographers. It motivated me to find a Canon G5 at a thrift store.
While I've pointed out those principles - 'rule of thirds', leading lines' and more, to my friend about his works, he seems to take this as an incentive to NOT follow these principles. I've pointed him at books by The Master of the art, but he seems obdurate, seems tuck with the idea that more and better technology will make him a better photographer.
"Humility is Endless" said Elliott, and I thin the humility to make use of these basic principles is important.
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The Nikon Z6 may not offer the incredible resolution of its sibling, the Z7, but its 24MP resolution is more than enough for most people, and the money saved can buy a lot of glass. Find out what's new and notable about the Z6 in our First Impressions Review.
The Sigma 56mm F1.4 combines a sensible sub-$500 price tag and excellent performance, providing a portrait-friendly 85mm equiv. view on Sony's APS-C mirrorless cameras.
The 250mm F4 is Fujifilm's longest lens for its medium-format system. It's equivalent to about 200mm on a GFX camera, and we put it to work on some portraits as well as some scenes around Seattle's waterfront – take a look.
A new patent from Canon lays out the schematics for a speedbooster-style adapter for mounting Canon EF lenses onto EOS M cameras, but with a variable baffle to reduce the risk of flare.
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