Travel photography can be tricky, as when you arrive there are a number of things that can affect the types of shots that you want to take – portability of your gear, the weather, season and visit times, to name a few.

• Mornings and evenings are often considered the perfect time for good lighting when taking photos. However, when you’re on holiday often you will not have the choice of when the perfect photo arises. You can plan visits to beautiful locations to cover these times in your travel schedule. And don’t forget to position the sun at your back, unless you are going for backlit lighting or starbursts.
• If you are taking photos from a moving vehicle, you will need to consider motion blur – where images are blurred due to the relative speed of the vehicle you’re in, and the subject. Increasing shutter speed can assist in reducing this, if you wish to capture sharp photos. Also, wind down the window, if you can, or take the photo at an angle to the glass to reduce refection. Turn off your flash as well.
• When taking photos in museums or at sites, make sure that you take note of any policies and pay the appropriate fees or get suitable permits. In museums you will often be taking photos in low light, so open up your aperture and slow down the shutter. A tripod is a must for this type of setting, and try and wait until the crowd goes as they will interfere with your lighting, probably get in the shot and possibly bump your equipment. Respect the wishes of the museum or the site – they probably make money to maintain the site from visitors and promotional materials. If they don’t want you to photograph it, you probably shouldn’t.
• Consider the equipment you are going to take with you. You need to think about weight (and volume/space), as well as value. I mention this last point due to the fact that there is a chance that your equipment will be lost or stolen. A ‘good’ stock of lenses when travelling can be a 50mm lens (f1.4-2.8 min aperture), a zoom (f2.8-3.5 80-200mm), and perhaps a mid-range lens (eg. f2.8-3.5 14-45mm). A tripod is a must, and even a pocket tripod can be very useful. If you are staying in a hotel where the room or the safe is secure, you may have the option to take more equipment, and leave some in your room if you don’t need it for that day’s photography.
• Researching your destination is important as it allows you to get an idea of the kind of mood, lighting and types of subjects you will be photographing. This will also help you with deciding the type of equipment that you will need. Ignorance is not bliss on these occasions and I have been guilty of this – only to be told by a fellow tourist 12 hours before I am going to depart that I missed a key site at the location.

There are a lot of great resources on the internet about travel photography – on preparation as well as the types of photos to take. Three good links are listed below.

• 10 Travel Photography Quick Tips – good tips on what photos to take, how to make do without a tripod and zoom lens, framing and taking photos of people.
• About.com – Travel Photography 101 – how to deal with uninteresting sky, creating relationships between subjects in the frame, and other composition techniques. Basically this looks at telling a story with your photo, not just capturing the image of an object.
• National Geographic Travel Photography Tips – these guys are obviously the bees knees of travel photography, and they detail how research, a good notebook and recording the reasons that you visit a location can be key to the images that you capture. It advises that you go local, look around, spend extra time looking, feeling and using all your senses to capture the true experience of the location you’re in. Obviously they say it better than I can – check out the link above as well as the Quick Tips.

Now for some shots of one of my favourite locations – Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon, Vietnam).

Panning shot, Pham Ngu Lao. by * etoile

Saigon Street by Lucas Jans

Violet Smile by hudry (sur le départ....)

Ben Thanh market by Ultrapop Design

Soliloquy by Quinn Ryan Mattingly

Quan Am Pagoda,Cholon, Saigon by lecercle

This Guy Loves His Dog - Vietnam by Stephanie Krishnan