In March 2024, I set out to travel for the first time. Okay, I’d been away for a week or two here and there before, but this time I was traveling with my camera for 4 months and shooting film every single day.
Starting with a 3-week journey around the west of the US and leading onto 3 months of camping around Europe, this trip was unlike anything I’d done before.
I didn’t know it then, but I’d learn some really important lessons about my photographic identity, making the most of being on the road, and how to get the best from any location, whether I’m home or away.
So with a 25-year-old Nikon F100, a few rolls of Portra 400, and a burning desire to take some absolute bangers, I began my journey of the West Coast, starting and finishing in San Francisco.
And here’s where I started to learn the first lesson.
Avoiding The Easy Shots
As we galavanted through San Francisco, I quickly started to realise that photography was too easy here compared to a small town in the middle of England. Beautiful houses, bridges, and tourist attractions around every corner, it was hard not to want to shoot everything all the time.
But the trap that every single one of us so easily falls into is taking the ‘easy shot’. You know, the postcard shot. You see a nice thing that you’ve never seen before, you take a picture of it, job done.
But the thing about photography is that those are rarely the photos that leave an impression on the viewer. They’re often nice shots, but rarely great ones.
So I continually tried to push myself to look past the easy shots and to think creatively about how to take something that was interesting. That means looking for new angles, framing, different shutter speeds, or even looking at what else is going on around these tourist spots.
This is one of those things that I keep in mind wherever I go, and it’ll give any photographer a fighting chance of taking exciting photographs.
Make It Easy
If you think you’re going to take the trip of a lifetime, then it’s likely you’ll want to take all of your gear. What if you need the 500mm lens? What about that filter you only used once before?
Well, after returning from the US leg of the trip, I realised that actually, I didn’t need half as much gear as I thought for the European tour.
I nearly always shot with a 35mm lens, rarely ever used my tripod, and never once used the weird bracket I bought for my long lens.
I think for most photographers in general, simplicity is key. Remove as many barriers as possible to shooting and thinking photographically. Make your camera easy to access in a sling bag or on a strap, and always be ready to shoot; it’ll lead to photos like the one below.
The Benefits Of Curiosity
As we put my little old Seat Ibiza through its paces and drove from the UK, into France, Spain, Portugal, and back into Spain again, something else started to become really important to me.
Usually, when I go on holiday, I’ll go and see the sights. The Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, The Colosseum, you know the drill.
But I noticed that if I kept doing that, I’d just get the same photos as everyone else. So I came up with a plan.
Rather than go and see everything that everyone else goes to see, we would explore as much as we could, even if the places seemed totally random. As it turns out, just going off the beaten path by a small amount tends to give you different photos than 99% of tourists.
And this is something I try to keep in mind even in my hometown. Explore, be curious, take a wrong turn, try to get to a location using only street signs, and find the unusual scenes.
My favourite demonstration of this is when we headed down to a quiet part of the harbour in Sorrento, far off from the blue and white parasols and sunburnt Brits, I found a couple overlooking Mount Vesuvius.
The Value Of Shooting Every Day
I’ve never shot as much as I did throughout this trip. I was always switched on and always thinking about compositions.
And throughout that time I had some really fruitful days and some days that really sucked. But it never got me down, because the next day I’d be out there shooting again, and I’d find something really fun.
But why I think that’s so important is that for most of the time, most of us shoot a lot less than that, maybe 4 times a month, maybe a bit more or less.
And those bad days can make you feel like you’re on a bad trajectory, or that you’re not a good photographer, when in reality, you’re just a couple of days from potentially finding some golden shots. It’s just that you’re shooting a lot less regularly.
And the other important part about shooting so often is that seeing things photographically is like a muscle that needs to be built up. The more you do it, the better you get.
After the first few weeks, it just felt like I was in a kind of photographic mindset all day, every day. As long as I had my camera with me, I was seeing things curiously.
Final Word
You don’t have to travel around the world for these lessons to be valuable to you. Looking at your hometown through the eyes of a tourist can give you a fresh perspective.
Being curious about where you live and what’s nearby can help you find new things to photograph.
Being thoughtful about the things you see can help you find new ways to photograph the things you take for granted every day.
Keeping your gear to the essentials can make it way easier for you to take photos that arise out of nothing, the kind of photos you can so easily miss.
And shooting as much as you can will help you in so many ways, it’ll help you ride out the hard times, it’ll build your creative muscles, and it’ll make you a better photographer.
So whether I’m heading out at 5 am for blue hour in my boring hometown or wandering the streets of Florence, these lessons are as important as ever.
