- What's up, cuties?
In today's Mobile Photography Tutorial
sponsored by Joby,
I'm going to be showing you
how to take your own travel photos with just your phone.
You'll learn how to take Instagram travel photos alone.
That's right.
Move over, Instagram husbands.
Step one, have a tripod and a remote.
I'll be Joby's TelePod, the GripTight PRO
and the TelePod Mobile.
Telepods are both tripods and selfie sticks,
they're super compact, they're perfect for travel.
The Telepod comes with the remote,
so you can just connect it your phone through Bluetooth.
And if you have a regular tripod,
that would work as well.
If you don't have a remote,
here are some options.
Your phone should have a self-timer,
my iPhone can do three and 10 seconds.
If you turn on Live Photos,
it'll take a series of photos,
that you can then select the best ones from.
This is perfect if you're moving around in the shot.
Step two, location scouting.
When heading to a destination,
it's good to scout for photo spots.
What I like to do is search up city Instagram accounts
to see what types of architecture,
or monuments, or cafes I would love to visit.
Instagram has a Save to Collection function,
so you can easily sort through your photo inspirations.
Step three, color planning.
So, this is really an optional step,
but if you want level-up your travel photos,
or your photography in general,
you wanna think about the colors you're playing with.
For example, if I'm traveling to Taipei,
I wanna go to this memorial,
and this cute cafe.
I see from both places that there's hints of blue,
so that's me I'm thinking,
Okay I could wear blue outfits,
'cause it's a solid color that would really pop.
But wearing red or yellow would work as well.
If you are more of a minimalistic traveler,
and you have just neutral colors like black and white,
that's totally fine.
And if you guys really want to get advanced,
I would look at the color wheel and color theory,
which basically tells you what colors
work well with what.
You'll see a lot of photographers edit
in the orange and teal colors,
and that's because they're complementary.
Step four, knowing when to arrive.
So going to a location or a photo spot early
is always the best-case scenario.
When I went to Eltz Castle in Germany,
I arrived at 5:00 a.m. there was no one there,
I had the whole place to ourselves for two, three hours,
but that's not always the case for all destinations.
And if you're traveling on vacation,
you probably don't want to wake up at 3:00 to 5:00 a.m.
to take photos,
unless it's a beautiful sunrise,
but that's about it.
So what you can do,
is check the Google popular times
and see if there's alternative times
that some location is not so busy.
So here it says the memorial is not too busy
from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m.,
and also 10:00 a.m.,
so when I showed up it was right.
And the second option's actually arrive closer
to closing time, wow.
In some destinations where there are huge tour buses
bringing in huge groups of people,
at right when something opens,
you're going to be jam-packed.
So if you go towards closing times,
most of these buses already left,
and most people are already gone.
And one example of this,
my friends actually went to the amazing bridge
in Danang, Vietnam with the hands,
the hands are holding up the bridge.
They went super early thinking they wanna get clean shots,
but it turns out everyone had the same idea.
So everyone was there super early.
When it turned 1:00 to 2:00 p.m.,
people started leaving and there was almost nobody
on the bridge,
and so they took these amazing photos
that looked like they went super early.
This is just something to keep in mind,
it's alternative option.
Don't think you have to sacrifice sweet, sweet sleep
just to get this shot.
Step five, setting up the shot.
I set my Telepod with my iPhone already eyeing
where I'd want to stand and be in that photo.
The phone faces the front so I can see myself when posing,
and you'll see that I'm holding the remote in my hands.
And I just begin clicking and working it.
If you don't have a remote, you can use your timer.
It'll be a bit harder since you're running back and forth,
but it's totally doable as long as you have a mark
for where you want to stand.
Because I found that the quality of the back-camera
is better,
sometimes I record a video of how it'll look
when I stand in different spots.
I review the video,
and then I leave a mental mark of where I should stand.
That way, I don't really need to see myself,
and I can still get good shots.
If you are shooting at a beautiful villa or a cafe,
you can set your tripod and phone on surrounding items
to get different angles.
Here I'm setting it on a table nearby.
(shutter clicks)
Here I'm setting it on a chair.
And it looks like I'm lunching with bae (laughs).
Step six, play with composition.
Photography's all about playing with composition,
so I wanna give you guys three tips
to take better photos.
Tip number one, you wanna find frames.
So the frame of the gate here, frames of doorways,
nature frames,
anything that will kinda wrap you and highlight you.
Tip two, use props.
Hats, food, sunglasses,
whatever you already have on you while traveling
can be used as great props
that just adds more to the scenery.
Tip three, practice with rule of thirds.
Rule of thirds in photography
basically divides your photos with two horizontal lines
and two vertical lines.
You position the important subjects,
which in this case is you,
along the lines or at the points where they meet.
It's a great starting point for composition.
Step seven, editing.
For the editing, I wanna show you guys three tips as well
that would really level-up your photos.
Level-up, level-up, level-up.
Tip number one, you wanna use Retouch
to remove people and unwanted objects.
You just click here.
You erase and boom.
Ta da, they're gone!
This will also help ease some frustration
when people get in your shot while taking photos,
because you can always always remove them.
Tip number two, you can use Facetune
to smooth out your skin.
So I just click here,
and I start smoothening out my face.
And you can really get that professional studio quality.
And boom.
Oh my God, hey!
Swipe right on me (laughs) yes.
Tip number three, you wanna add a border vignette,
is that how you say it, vignette?
A darkish border around your photo
to zoom in on that photo.
It's a small edit, but it really draws the eyes in.
I especially love doing this on landscape photos,
it just adds a nice intensity.
And of course, the final step is to share it.
Thank you guys so much for tuning in to this video
on how to take solo travel photos.
You can follow me at Instagram.com/cupoftj
for more creative tidbits and behind the scenes.
And all of the gear that I've used in this tutorial
will be linked in the description.
Be sure to give this video a big thumbs,
comment below with something you learned,
and I'll see you guys next time.
Bye!
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Okay, alright I'm leavin'.
I'm starvin'.
Hungry, always so hungry.
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Bye!
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