Balliol College, Oxford, UK
Balliol College, Oxford, UK
The challenge of travel photography is always how many people do you want in your photos. Planning for sunrise or sunset locations, the direction of light or simply whether a place is open is rather easy compared to dealing with tourists! Patience is the number one photographer’s tool! Sure, knowing your camera, photography techniques and post-processing help make you a better photographer, but the sheer amount of patience needed for dealing with the public….
So, if you’re someone who likes minimal people to be in your shots, there are a few tips I can share:
- Simply wait it out. This is the easiest technique if you have the time on location.
- Visit on off-peak times. Generally, this requires visiting first thing in the morning or staying almost to closing time. The photo above was taken 30 minutes before closing. This method will take some research! I use tools like TripAdvisor to look for suggestions in the reviews. You can keyword search reviews and narrow by the time of year. Words like “crowds” or “busy” would be a good start. Even though this is time consuming, it is a technique that can be utilized before you leave. I’ve learned a few good things about a location using this method. For instance, I learned that most tour bus companies will arrive and leave around set times (usually all companies follow similar schedules) so avoiding those blocks of time if possible will be a good start.
- Learn how to use the cloning, healing, layers and blending tools in Photoshop or similar progam. These techniques require time both in the field and during post-processing. In my opinion, it takes the longest time and if possible, I try to not rely on this technique and revert to patience. (There are a great many step-by-step tutorials available online for the methods of removing people from photos in Photoshop.)