When planning your trip to Australia, remember that travel photography in this country can be truly exciting and inspiring. It is easy for you to get carried away with the wonderful sights. Here are a few travel photography tips for you to keep in mind to get the best memories of a wonderful adventure in Australia.

Proper Perspective/Lens Selection

It’s all about perspective. Anyone can take pictures standing in front of a landscape or a monument. You need to get a unique perspective. You could do this by avoiding the usual way of taking pictures. You could probably get on to a bicycle or a camel and take pictures from different angles.

Use of angles can make for a unique and exciting image – Courtesy of https://www.lonelyplanet.com/

While attempting unique perspectives, you might want to equip yourself with different types of lenses, such as wide angle ones, telephoto lenses and portrait ones. It is going to be your story of the Australian landscape, so use the lens according to the story that you wish to tell. Every lens has its specific aperture that it works best with. Find out the sweet spot of the lens and shoot with it. After mounting the camera and fixing the focus, you can shoot images for all the f-stops and then make a comparison of the results. Then, focus at the aperture’s hyperfocal distance for maximizing the DoF that can be obtained.

Composition and Lines

To take truly amazing pictures of your trip to Australia, include some foreground aspects, such as a puddle, rocks, a tree stump and any such thing available on hand. The foreground elements help balance the background ones. In addition, use elements available for creating a leading line, allowing the observer to move his eye around the picture. For instance, the lines created by a breaking wave or a curving beach, a stream and so on.

The curved line of the Sydney Harbour Bridge makes for an exquisite photo – Image courtesy of http://smartraveller.gov.au/

Use of Polarized Filters

Polarized filters can enhance pictures by darkening a blue sky and they add more richness to the color. However, each picture requires different intensities of polarization, so apply it sensibly. Sometimes, the blue sky looks best without making it any darker.

In addition, polarizers are useful for doubling the exposure time during maximum polarization, with almost 2 stop increased durations in the exposure. This will help in capturing extra movement in the images. It is a good idea to invest in a graduated filter to put over the lens. A neutral density one can offer motion blur and also extended exposure duration, which will be useful in capturing the stunning landscapes and wildlife of Australia.

Use of extended exposure brings out the glorious beauty of the Field of Light in Uluru – Image with courtesy from https://www.thecanvasfactory.com.au/

Use of RAW Format

It is a must to use the RAW format for your images to get the best possible shots. It is like a negative, whereas JPEG images are RAW data converted using adjustments like contrast, sharpening and so on. In case of JPEG images, a lot of the original data can be lost, on account of conversions. Of course, you will need to process the images in case of the RAW format, so an option would be to take pictures in RAW and JPEG, thereby getting the best of both the worlds. You can have the JPEGs for the present and use the RAW version at some point later when you learn to appreciate the quality benefits of that format.

Another reason to opt for the RAW format is that the technology for conversion is continuing to evolve and getting better, offering improved quality of images.

After the Trip

When your Australian adventure is over and you are back home, you have to consider what you would like to do with your pictures. There are many options here. For instance, if you have some excellent frames, you can enter the pictures in a photography competition. You can also upload the images in relevant image sites and earn revenue, approach magazines or tourism sites, or offer them as promotional photos to the hotel where you stayed. On the other hand, you can use it for personal pleasure and get it printed for display in your home or in your office.

These simple travel photography tips and tricks will help you click great pictures on your Australian adventure. Sometimes, photographs must be taken whenever the opportunity arises and they are not something that can be pre planned. That being said, it is also possible to time the images and combine them with interesting lights that can improve the results to a great extent.