Round Fishing Boats near Hoi An, Vietnam
This is the sixth and final article in a series about
Planning and Researching for photography on future travels. I have put links to the previous articles at
the bottom of this one.
Recently I heard from a friend of mine, who is an excellent
photographer, that her and her husband had been invited by some friends to
visit an exotic location in the Far East where their friends had a time share
condominium. She was of course excited
for the photo opportunities she was going to get in this far away country, but
when they got their after their friends had shown them a very few of some of
the nearby sites they just wanted to spend the rest of their time lounging around
the pool and relaxing. My poor friend
nearly went insane and was so disappointed.
Of course being the photographer she is she still managed to get a few
great shots, but she felt she missed out on so much of the potential that was
there. In case you ever get such an
opportunity, whether it’s to a far-away country or just an interesting part of
your country, use some of the tips and tricks I’ve talked about here to make
the most of your time and location.
For this series of articles I’m directing it more toward
those who have a preset itinerary and/or schedule whether it is set by a tour
company, travel agency, cruise line or friends or family.
I know how my mind works (or maybe I should say sometimes
doesn’t work) when I’m on a trip and especially in unfamiliar territory. I can look and plan all I want but if I don’t
have something to refer to it will mostly be for naught. I’ve mentioned my spreadsheet several times
before and promised I’d include an example in this article. This
only shows two days of the trip, but as you can see I start out with the date
and space to put photo ideas. Below that, crossing two columns, I put an overall description of that day’s events or
activities and then break it down by the part of the day. I’ve mentioned it before and I don’t think I
can over emphasize that an awful lot of your very best shots will come early in
the morning or in the evening, whether it’s because of the lighting or the level or kinds of activities or whatever it might be, be prepared to shoot early and late.
Now with that as a starting point I went to work to fill in
the activities and events for each part of the day. Of course the first thing was to go over the
schedule provided to determine whether there was a guided group tour/activity
or if there was free time to make my own plans.
Without exception I had the early A.M. before breakfast on my own. In this case I would be able to see if there
was a morning activity/tour planned, but I would never know what time that was
until a day or two before when we were on the ground and getting the final
detailed schedules.
As I mentioned in a
previous article; except for days when travel to the next location was involved,
I still had the option of going or not going with whatever was planned.
I started by going through the itinerary provided and also
the optional tours available and using my favorite search engines finding out
what I could about each of these locations and areas, and also looking at some
available alternatives if I wanted to venture out on my own, or for when there
was free time. I’ve talked about the
various ways of researching that in previous posts.
Another thing that really helped me out was that the tour
company told us exactly where we would be staying each night with the name of
the hotel. This allowed me to go to
Google Earth place it and then take a look at the surrounding attractions.
This really paid off.
In this image from Google earth I saw that there was a river right
across from the hotel, however, when we got to our hotel it wasn’t visible and
frankly, if I had not planned using the methods I’ve been talking about I would
have missed out on some great photos, like the one at the top of this
article. When I looked at my spreadsheet
after we got to the hotel I was reminded that there was a river nearby and found great access to it only a few hundred feet away.
As you can see here, there is quite a difference between the
spreadsheet with just the blank headings and the finished version with the
detail filled in. I also used the
spreadsheet to remind me to make sure my GPS was set (Which I had a real struggle
with getting to work for some reason and ended up being one of the biggest
frustrations of the trip. It finally
worked the last day or two. L ),
when I should be extra sure to bring along my tripod, notes like N&G People, which meant to get
both Native and Group member people, etc.
You may not need or want extra little notes like those, but I found for me that it was better to be reminded than to get so involved in some particular plan
that I missed something I wanted to get.
Even with those reminders that still happened more than I would have
liked. Notice that there was one
specific item I really wanted to get so I put it in a different color so I
wouldn’t forget. (I did get a photo of
it, but I was very disappointed in the photo.
Whatever photo I had seen of it that made me want to get it was taken
under much more favorable conditions than I was able to get.)
Whether you use a spreadsheet, a notebook, index cards,
voice notes on your phone, have a photographic memory of what you studied or
whatever method works for you the important take-away here is that you plan so
you get as much as possible of what you want.
I’ve found for myself that planning was a lot of fun and built up the
anticipation as well as helped me get so many more of the photos that I wanted
to get. I came back knowing I had done
the best I could do within the parameters I had to work under and I’m pretty
happy with that.
You can click on the descriptions below to go to the
previous articles in this series:
Quick summary of Posts:
Now that I’ve got these articles done I can start posting more of the photos from this trip and others both past and future. Subscribe to my blog below so you don’t miss any of the future photos and remember:
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