The Photographing Tourist : A Storyteller’s Guide

Myanmar

Tips from a top-notch, award-winning travel photographer on how to get great travel shotsThe Photographing Tourist

By Shannon Broderick

In The Photographing Tourist, author and photographer David Noyes explores the challenges of traveling on guided and escorted tours, while providing tips and tricks for travelers on how to get compelling travel photographs.

India
India

Noyes is a travel writer and photographer who has won numerous awards for his work, including the North American Travel Journalist Association Travel Photographer of the Year for three consecutive years, and two SATW Lowell Thomas Awards.

A former commercial photographer, Noyes also founded and edited two start-up magazine brands and founded a nonprofit called Innocent Eyes Project, Inc.

Excerpt from the book: Beware of the Cute Kid with the Baby Lamb

The natural curiosity of children makes them a great way to start shooting and find your comfort zone in an unfamiliar place. Groups of children at play in a safe environment surrounded by family in a town or village will not be afraid to approach a curious stranger.

If there are adults nearby, acknowledge them as you take your first shots of the kids. While they see that you are playful and not a threat, you will have more freedom to explore. Once you start showing the kids their images in the back of the camera, you will have new friends.

India

Children are often a wonderful bridge across a cultural divide, but one reality is that travelers must always be aware of is that in many places around the world, the tourist is their target. Not targets of violence, but targets for your money. When tourists are spotted, beggars, hawkers, and scammers seem to show up quickly and in many forms.

Kenya
Kenya
Myanmar
Myanmar

The adorable little girl dressed in traditional clothing wandering the streets of Cuzco in Peru carrying a baby lamb is working!

She is so cute it is hard not to take her picture, but she will expect to be paid, often aggressively, and her mother is most certainly watching nearby.

Paying for Portraits

Paying for portraits is a difficult topic for both professional and tourist photographers alike. I do on occasion discreetly offer a token of thanks to someone for letting me take his or her picture, but I never pay the cute kid with a lamb or her equivalent in different parts of the world. The shots are rarely cute, and authenticity is virtually impossible to achieve.

No doubt her family could use the money, but in this instance, both the tourist and the local community are being exploited. Most importantly, if young children become an important source of income for the family through begging from tourists or being paid for pictures, it is unlikely that they will ever attend school, condemning them to a life of poverty.

Kenya

If you do choose to offer a thank you token to an adult, discretion is the key word. Never pull out your wallet and openly hand over cash before or after a portrait, unless taking the picture was part of a negotiated event.

Kenya
Kenya

If I really want to photograph someone who clearly wants to be paid, I will often nod my head up and down (a universal form of agreement), take my pictures, then approach my subject to show them an image.

After showing them their portrait, I take or shake their hand, saying “Thank you” with a small token of appreciation tucked into my palm. Understand that overtly paying for portraits contributes to a culture that will create an expectation for the next group of tourists that come along.

Scenes of Daily Life

We often arrive at a destination with a vision in our head of what we want to photograph. We have consumed the brochures. We have researched several different itineraries and scoured the Internet comparing the itineraries to photographs of every destination.

We arrive with a “shot list” of those “must-have” photographs we hope to replicate. But everything we see on tour can make a wonderful travel photograph if we take the time to notice.

Myanmar

Even in very touristy places, some of the most memorable photographs can be of the people we see around the tourist even of the historic monument. Simple scenes of everyday life will help tell the story of your travel adventure. Walk slowly or stand-alone in a quiet corner and watch as life passes by.

Traveling is a wonderful chance to reconnect with the human spirit. When we are home, we rarely take the time to witness simple scenes of everyday life. Our cities and neighborhoods are so familiar we have stopped seeing the people whose paths we cross as we go about our business and live our lives.

David Noyes
David Noyes

The more exotic the destination, the more strange and interesting life will seem. Even little things that go unnoticed by locals will catch your eye and show a different side of the experience. Children running in a park, people laughing at a cafe, commuters passing by on their way to work, or a young couple holding hands while walking in the rain can make for wonderful destination photographs.

Cultural Etiquette

While cultural sensitivity is important wherever you travel, it is even more so when visiting religious sites. The details of proper global comportment and etiquette are infinite. It is impossible to know the complexities and nuances of every religion and culture, but some understanding of local customs and protocol will certainly enhance your experience and help you avoid a possibly offensive or embarrassing situation.

When we go on a tour in a foreign land, we often go with preconceptions and expectations.

We have often spend a lot of money and are determined to capture new and exciting wonders in our photographs. Every photographer wants to produce a beautiful shot that will reveal the spiritual significance of a place, but the worst thing you can do is to try to be surreptitious. You will be noticed. Tourists with cameras at religious events or holy places will often be viewed with mistrust. Spiritual sites magnify already significant cultural differences.

Kenya

There are certainly many things to be aware of when photographing culturally sensitive places, but, in famous tourist spots, the rules are often posted and easy to follow. The most important thing to remember is “No” means “No.”

You are visiting a spiritual place that is attempting to preserve its original purpose before it became a tourist attraction. At some places, photography is simply not allowed or a flash and tripod are restricted. Respect that the site you are visiting is very important to a lot of people and try to navigate through our increasingly accessible world with sensitivity.

More to the Story

There are some landmarks that are so recognizable that a single image can define a place. It is impossible to visit Paris and not shoot the Eiffel tower. Who wouldn’t recognize the Taj Mahal or the Great Wall of China? But don’t try to tell the entire story of a wonderful travel experience in a single picture. The story of a historic place is often complex, with both a past and present. It will take a series of images to illustrate both the historic significance that made it famous and its modern complexity.

Everest
Everest

When I enter a site, I almost always start by finding the iconic shots and then work back to add depth to my destination story as time permits.

The pictures published in guidebooks, magazine articles, and tourist postcards are often harder to find than you might think.

Climbing the Stairs in Santorini

I remember climbing up and down stairs in the winding small alleyways of the Greek island of Santorini thinking, “Where the heck did they get that shot?” I could see the picturesque church I was stalking, but I just couldn’t find the perfect spot. It was very frustrating!

Once you do find the perfect spot, don’t settle for an entirely literal interpretation. Changing your viewpoint even a little can result in a very different photograph.

Finding a new way to show a landmark can be as simple as framing through the branches of a tree, shooting into the sun, or including surrounding architecture. Look for a reflection in a window, shoot it as a silhouette, or crop it tight to show details.

Besides the obvious, I look for colors, textures, signs, people, and clothing. I look for subjects that tell a story about the place and culture I am visiting. Train yourself to look for those unconventional frames.

A young couple walking holding hands, a worker sweeping the floor, a beautiful child waiting in line in the arms of her father, or a monk tending to a garden all help complete the story. A human element will give the scene context that will captivate viewers more deeply than the simple shot of a landmark.

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