Travel Photography Tips: Available Light
Available light
It defines how most of our travel photography is taken.
Light is one of the fundamentals of great travel photography. Shooting with available light is something every aspiring photographer should strive to master, or at least understand.
Morning light at Banff National Park, Alberta.
That doesn’t meant that every situation is easy. Actually, shooting with available light can be very tricky. Low light levels, bad quality of light, its color and shape, all of these are challenges that we must face while shooting and traveling.
Shooting with available light allows for a natural connection with your subjects and allows you to capture something that is truly in the moment.
So today let’s take a look at some tips and tricks you can easily employ while shooting in available light.
Available light situations:
1. Use a Fast Lens: Available light photography usually involves shooting in low light situations and the best way to cope with this is to shoot with a fast lens. A fast lens means something with a low f-stop like an f1.4 to an f2.8. The bigger the aperture the more light you get. I would suggest steering away from zoom lenses, unless you can afford a lens that has a constant aperture, as they may start at an f2.8 at the wide end but end up around 4.5 or 5.6 at the long end. That just won’t cut it in most available light situations. A 2.8 Prime or fixed focal length lens is the perfect partner for available light photography. It gives you a great combination of sharpness and depth of field. Perfect for stunning available light shots.
2. Avoid too much Contrast: Balanced light offers the best lighting scenario. That doesn’t mean avoid the darkness, but try to avoid situations where the brights are too bright and the blacks are too black. Your eye may be able to adjust to any situation but the camera can only handle so much unless you are shooting HDR. So try to train your eye to search for balanced light scenes where color and darkness combine for a perfect balance. For example, if you are shooting inside a room and the light coming through the window is too bright, frame out the window so that the camera can balance the light and shadows in more easily. Try not to have the two extremes in one picture. In travel photography we find ourselves dealing with this on a regular basis especially indoors.
3. Patience: Patience in any type of photography is important. But maybe even more so in available light photography. Waiting for your subject to look up into the light can mean the difference between a great shot and an average one. When a subject looks up and catches the light, it creates a sparkle in the eye it brings life to the photo. When I worked in the film business, there was always an eye light for actors. When you watch a movie, you’ll always see the actors eyes dancing in the light. The reason for this is that it draws your focus to their eyes and brings life to the photograph.
The same way the right colour combination can bring a photograph to life, proper lighting can as well. So wait for that magic hour time of day, or watch the clouds and wait for the sun to come back out. If the scene isn’t right at noon, come back at 5:00. Patience is important.
4. Maximize your ISO: Having the ability to get great images at 3200 ISO is a real bonus. A lot has changed from the film era where shooting with ASA 1600 would maybe give you a grainy unusable image. Today, most consumer cameras will give you great images at 3200 ISO. Just remember a little bit of noise doesn’t make it a bad image, it can actually add an artistic flair so don’t be afraid of it.
5. Continuous Shooting: Most newer DSLR’s have this. It is usually described in Frames Per Second or fps. This denotes how many photos, or frames, it will take in a second. By using the “motor drive” you can capture a lot of photo’s fast and usually one of these will be more in focus than the others. The action of pushing the shutter can cause blur, so the first shot may be out of focus but the next ones have a better chance of being in focus. This is especially important with a moving subject.
6. Look for the light: This is one of the best tips I can give you. I always am on the look out for the best lighting in any scene. If you find that and wait for the photo to happen there you have already created the environment for a great available light shot.
So there you have it. Six travel photography tips to help you shoot better available light photos. If you put these to use you will find your travel photography in available light situations will improve drastically.
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Stunning photo as usually. Makes me want to go back to Banff. I used to take a lot of photos outside during midday, and I could never figure out why my photos looked so bad. It wasn’t until later when I started learning about lighting that things began to get better. I could always use more improvement though, and these are some great tips.
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Great tips. I think having a fast lens really helps in taking pics in low lighting, but those lenses are pricey
jill recently posted..Island Hopping in Belitung
I agree: high-quality, fast lenses are great to have but I think most hobbyist travel photographers would really hesitate to shell out the massive cash for one. I’ve found some cheaper f1.4 or f1.8 35mm and 50mm primes from Nikon but I’ve noticed, a least with a cropped sensor, that it’s difficult to capture really sharp pictures edge-to-edge while shooting wide-open. From my own experiences, most inexpensive “fast” lenses I’ve tried on my camera have a certain sweet spot and it’s never at the largest aperture (f8-f11 seems to have, almost always, better overall performance). I can’t really comment on whether this holds true with more expensive prime/zoom lenses and/or full-frame sensors. Perhaps debndave could weigh in on this?
Ryan @Treksplorer recently posted..The Perfect Pint For a Perfect View At the Guinness Storehouse Dublin, Ireland
I really appreciated the explanation related to fast lenses. The lens makes a difference when shooting in low light.
Claudine recently posted..Two Beautiful Luxury Hotels in Brittany, France – With Romance Of The Belle Epoque
Thanks so much for this post! It is a very timely one as this was a subject I was really thinking about last week. On Thursday, I posted my Yosemite in Winter photos. And while most of them turned out great, the sunset photo was the worst one. I loved the sky but the trees and the snow on the ground were way too dark. I had a contrasting light situation. I tried to fix it in the editing but now it looks too light. So scenario #2 was my issue. I hated it because I spent so much time on the photo with #3 – I waited 45 minutes and snapped numerous photos. However, I think I waited too long or chose the wrong shot.
Light can be tough to deal with. Too much or too little and a great shot can became an average photo. Thanks for the tip on the continuous shooting. I may try this one and see what kind of results I get.
Jeremy Branham recently posted..Winter Yosemite photos Part II: El Capitan, Bridalveil Falls, and sunset
Thanx for such an informative post..i appreciate your work..good one helped me a lot
Everyone should read and implement these tips because photo clicks are the only things that can keep your travel memories with safety.
What lens did you use for the shot Dave?! I’ve been seriously tempted by the Canon 24mm 1.4 recently purely for low light landscapes and astro-photography.
No mention of tripods?!
Stuart Edwards @ Am I Nearly There Yet? recently posted..Travel Photo of the Day: Rice Paddies in Luang Namtha, Laos
Hey Stuart,
thanks for stopping by. I used a Canon 16-35 2.8 for that shot. I love it for landscapes. Canon 24mm 1.4 is a great lens. What camera are you using? FF or Crop sensor? Yeah, no mention of tripods as I wanted this article to be more about quick tips you can use on the fly. But yes I would recommend a tripod. I carry mine everywhere.
Oohh the 16-35 2.8 does look like a winner! Was leaning towards the 17-40 f/4 purely on price, but that extra stop down is pretty sweet – but worth the extra grand?! I’m not sure.
I’m using a 5DM2 FF now, upgraded a few months ago, been the best thing I’ve ever done. Went lens and kit crazy in Bangkok, so now I’m lugging all this extra kit with me! It’s all good though
I carry a tripod too and have been getting into time-lapse stuff, with some mixed results!
What lenses do you use mainly?
Stuart Edwards @ Am I Nearly There Yet? recently posted..Travel Photo of the Day: Rice Paddies in Luang Namtha, Laos
great tips!
Thanks for the tips. What a beautiful photo of Alberta.
Great tips and great images!
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Great tips. I need to get better at paying attention to light instead of just shooting whenever I happen to be there, which is usually when lighting conditions are les than optimal.
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I really appreciated your post. lovely pictures. Great tips. I am looking forwarded your next informative post.
I have been starting to take my DSLR off of automatic and on to manual, with a lot of very blurry photos. Thanks for making these tips very clear, I keep a little book of notes in my camera bag with me.
Liz | Two Weeks to Travel recently posted..Put Away that Wallet: 10 Free Things to Do in Boston
Great tips! I always find patience is key. Waiting for the sun to poke out from the clouds can make all the difference. We also tend to do a lot of exploring in the middle of the day which almost always ends up with a super over-exposed, blown out sky. I try to keep places in mind that I might want to go back to in the evening or maybe even in the next morning when the light is more favorable. Thanks so much for sharing! That first photo of Alberta is absolutely stunning!
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Yeah, that always is the problem. When we take day tours or even simply need to travel somewhere, we end up getting to a destination at the worse time for light. You are right, patience is key to either come back or to wait it out.
Im in love with that bridge!!!!!
The view must have been incredible..
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Really very fantastic post and photography. Thanks for sharing.
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Very good information. Your article very useful for me as a beginner photographer. What is difficult thing to me is how to make a picture look “live” as your picture. Maybe need improvement of skills and technique. Thank you for info.
Some great tips on photography! And I completely agree, patience is the key to getting good captures!
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