11 Easy Travel Photography Tips to Enhance Your Instagram

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This post is about travel photography tips.

Everyone wants to know how to take those Instagram worthy pictures, so here I am giving you some of the best and easiest travel photography tips to help elevate your Instagram!

These travel photography tips are great for any level of photographer. Whether you’re taking photos on your phone or a fancy DSLR or mirrorless camera, there is something here for everyone to learn. 

So, grab your camera, and let’s get to it! Here are 11 easy travel photography tips to enhance your Instagram feed!

Basic Travel Photography Tips for Beginners

Get up early, stay up late

One of the worst things in photos is crowds. Everyone wants those clean empty pictures showing that they might’ve found a hidden gem or that no one knows about this place. Making it picture perfect.

The solution to this problem is to arrive earlier than everyone else and stay later than the usual crowd. Arrive as soon as a location opens or arrive an hour or so before sunrise or sunset. Look up the most popular time to visit a location and avoid those hours at all costs.

 For example, say there is a popular street that you really want to photograph, but you know the crowds start coming in at 8am and don’t leave until 10pm. Well looks like you’ve got to get there earlier than 8am for the perfect shot!

Research locations beforehand

Next, plan. Plan. Plan. If you know that you’re going somewhere and you are going to want to take photos in specific spots, research them ahead of time! 

The easiest way I’ve found is to go on Pinterest and search for popular photo spots. Then I’ll take that list I made and plan out my days accordingly. Say one spot is great at sunset, so you make sure to be there for sunset. Or one spot gets really crowded with tourists, so you want to get there early.

Another good idea is to make sure you aren’t traveling there on a holiday or festival where the crowds will make it impossible for you to get the perfect photo. Don’t get me wrong, some holidays and traditional festivals can be so much fun to experience, but it may stand in the way of you getting that photo you had envisioned.

Take your Time (when you can)

My biggest piece of advice I could give you is to take your time! There is no rush to get the perfect picture. You shouldn’t feel like you need to be running from destination to destination just snapping photos in every direction.

Walk a street once without taking photos. Just explore. Then walk it again and see what you want to capture. Travel photography isn’t just about the photo. It’s about the adventure you’re on.

The point of your travel photography is to capture moments in the present that will later become memories you wish to share with the world. You don’t want the only thing you remember from a trip is how stressed you were about taking photos.

Technical Travel Photography Tips!

Understand Shutter Speed, Aperture, and ISO

Going into more technical tips, if you are shooting on a camera, then I highly recommend learning the difference between Shutter Speed, Aperture, and ISO. These three functions will help you create stunning photos!

Shutter Speed is the speed the shutter closes. Basically, if you want to capture motion in your photo, you should lower your shutter speed to avoid blur. For example, cars, wildlife, runners etc. Of course, if you want to create a blurred effect, then you would increase the shutter speed. Shutter Speed can also be used to change the light in your photo.

Shutter speed is written as a fraction like 1/100 or 1/200.

Aperture is what control show much light goes into your camera. It also controls the depth of field. Say you want to capture a landscape in its entirety; you would set it higher. But if you wanted to capture a specific flower in a field of flowers, you would set it lower, blurring the background and putting only the flower in focus.

Aperture is written as a decimal like f2.8 or f11

Finally, ISO is a tool that brightens or darkens your image. Changing the ISO changes the camera’s sensitivity to light. Are you trying to shoot in low light? Increase ISO. 

ISO is written as a whole number like 400 or 3200.

Of course, there is so much more to learn about how these three tools operate and especially how they work together! So definitely don’t stop your learning here. Go check out some other resources like YouTube, or Nikon, Sony, and Cannon have great information pages to help guide you.

Transition from Automatic / Priority / Manual

Now that you have learned the important tools to creating a great picture, put it into practice. Start by trying to master one at a time. Switch off Automatic when you want to try testing out what you’ve learned. 

Most DSLRs and mirrorless cameras these days have aperture or shutter priority settings which allows you to only manually set either the aperture or shutter speed while the rest of the settings are still set automatically. This is a great way to start understanding how each tool affects an image. 

Then finally, when you feel like you’ve got the hang of each of the three tools, switch over to manual and start adjusting your own shots! Manual turns all the automatic functions off, and you’re in charge of setting each image’s shutter speed, aperture, and ISO.

Keep Composition Simple

I’m sure by now a lot of you have watched hours of YouTube videos or TikTok hacks to taking the perfect photo with crazy composition techniques. Honestly, it really all boils down to what you want to photograph.

Whether you like landscapes, portraits, busy photos, or empty photos, there is one important thing all of these need to have in order to be considered a photo with good composition—a subject.

Many beginner travel photographers will find themselves in a new place and just start snapping photos of everything they see without taking a second to actually look at what they’re trying to capture. My biggest advice is to focus on one thing you see. Maybe it’s a person in a crowd or a door on a building. Make the object the subject of your photo and follow my next tip below.

Rule of Thirds

So, you have your subject. Now we have to frame them in the photo to make them look pleasing to the eye. We do this by following the rule of thirds. Most cameras including iPhones have a setting where you can put lines on your display screen. 

These lines break up your image into thirds. You have your upper, middle, and lower thirds. The lines also create crosses where each line passes through one another. The basic rule of thumb is to place your subject in one of those crosses to create a nicely composited image.

Of course, there is also a beauty in centering your subject if that is what you like. And there are all sorts of ways to compos images when shooting on short and long lenses. But this is just the basics. I could go into a whole lesson on just composition, but we are trying to get you out on your adventure right now! 

Gear for Travel Photography Tips:

If you are interested in seeing all of the gear I use and travel with, click here to go to my recommendations page where I list out everything I use when traveling and photographing!

Bring a Tripod

These are kind of more simple recommendations more than tips, but nonetheless I think they definitely deserve to be on this list!

A tripod is a great idea for a couple of reasons. First, it’s a great way to get steady shots either of moving things for longer exposure shots or for long timelapses.

Second, it is great for when you want to get shots of you that aren’t a selfie. Whether you’re trying to get a group shot or just one of you, tripods come in handy more often than you think!

Self-Timer Photos

Going along the lines of taking pictures of people or yourself, setting the self-timer feature on your camera or phone can be an exhausting process. But I’ve found two ways I absolutely love that make taking these photos so much easier!

If you are working off of a phone, just set it up on your tripod and use your apple watch if you have one. The apple watch actually has a camera timer feature on it. So, not only can you hit the capture button from your watch, but you can also get a view from you watch to make sure you don’t cut anyone out or that you like you pose! I use this all of the time whenever I need to work fast and don’t feel like setting up my camera.

Next, is using an intervalometer! I’ve linked one here so you can get an idea of what they look like and how they work. But basically all you do is plug this into your camera and make sure the settings are where you want them to be. Then you hit start and you’re good to go. How it works is it will set up your camera to take photos at a certain interval, so you don’t have to keep hitting the self -timer button. Just hit play, run out and pose for however long you wish, and then hit stop. So easy! It’s also great for timelapses and different kinds of sequence shots.

Use Your Phone!!! Travel Photography Tips iPhone

I used to always hate when people said this to me when I wanted to buy camera gear, but honestly, it’s true. Phones these days are such great tools for travel photography. You can add the rule of thirds grid to your camera, adjust the exposure, even shoot in 4K!

So, if you haven’t invested in a camera, you can absolutely still capture stunning shots on your travels. In reality, a lot of what you see on Instagram is probably taken on a phone anyway! There is no shame in not lugging a ton of gear around while you travel. If anything, it makes you more flexible!

LEARN ALL THE TIME!

Lastly, never stop trying to learn. There are so many ways to enhance your photography that you’ll always come across new information. And that goes for everything — travel, budgeting, photography,

So, don’t just stop here. Research on YouTube, other blogs, anything! There are amazing people out there who have tested and failed hundreds of times and are willing to tell you how not to. Take advantage of everything you can get your hands on.

Quick Travel Photography Tips

Even if you don’t incorporate all of these tips right away, just choosing two or three will automatically heighten your photos! Starting out with small changes sets you on your way to high quality photography.

You are not going to get perfect photos right away, and that is okay! This is all a learning process, and you need to be patient and kind to yourself. If you take the time to really understand the basics, then you can figure out your own style of photography. You’ll figure out what you like and don’t like in an image, and that alone will increase the quality of your photos.

This post is about travel photography tips.