- Hey guys, what is going on?
In this video, we're talking about
how you can take awesome photos
and get those epic shots while you're out traveling.
(upbeat music)
Okay, so today's gonna be a little bit
different than my normal tutorials.
I am actually on Royal Caribbean's Symphony of the Seas,
its inaugural voyage, and I'm here with
a few other Instagramers, so we're gonna go out,
we're gonna go check out the Amalfi coast.
I'm gonna get some tips from them for you guys
as well as show you some cool things
that you can do while you're traveling.
This has been a place I've always wanted to travel to.
Before this we were in Cinque Terre,
we were in Rome yesterday, we were in France
and we started up on Barcelona.
Okay. So the first thing's first,
we gotta get off the ship, so let's go
meet up with the other Instagramers I'm here with
and start this adventure.
(upbeat music)
Alright so I just met up with the other people
and there's a giant parade going on.
Let me introduce everyone that's on this journey.
So we got Madeline and we got Meghan,
they're gonna hang out, I'll put their links
down below so you can check out their Instagrams as well.
Then we have this guy, drinking the giant coffee.
Say hello. This is Jordan
- Hey (laughs) What's up?
- What's up? So make sure you go down,
I put all their links in the description below.
Go check out all of our Instagrams
so you can see the different styles
of photography that each of us do.
Alright, we've got a private car for the day.
Check it out, Mercedes. Nice. I like that.
(upbeat music)
Alright so we're on the Amalfi Coast here,
we're driving up and down the coast.
One of the key things about doing travel photography
is just researching your location before you go there.
So you need to have an idea of where you're going.
Maybe get some photo ideas,
look at what other people have shot,
because you don't want to get somewhere
and not have any idea of what you're shooting
and not have the gear you need
and not be prepared right, so just do a
quick research and that will give you some idea
of what it is that you're gonna be shooting
and what you're gonna encounter when you get to a location.
(upbeat music)
Alright, so we just got to Positano
which is in the Almalfi Coast,
it's a cool, little city that's kinda like
nestled on the hills. It's pretty insane.
(upbeat music)
So one of the questions we all get
is what camera we use, what camera should
you be using. The thing is, no one camera
is the perfect camera to shoot travel photos
and all those awesome photos you see on Instagram.
They're shot by a bunch of different cameras.
I'm shooting on the Panasonic GH5,
Doren's on the 5D Mark IV
- I'm on my iPhone
- Meghan and Madeline are both shooting with Sony.
We cross the whole range of cameras you can shoot with.
A lot of stuff you'll even see shot on things like GoPros,
so you just gotta find the camera that works for you,
take into consideration some of the other things
I'm gonna talk about in this video
and because space is a big thing
so you don't necessarily wanna be carrying
a massive camera with you.
Sometimes just like a GoPro is all you're gonna wanna take.
But if you have the room, definitely having a bigger camera,
more lenses and all that stuff
is gonna give you more options to shoot some cooler photos.
(calm music)
Okay. The food just showed up,
Madeline's running up, she's got a tip for us
on shooting food photography because one of the things
you wanna capture when you're traveling is food,
because you are always finding
delicious food wherever you travel
and it's unique and people like seeing food.
(slow music)
- Okay. So. To take food photography
always shoot food in natural light
because that makes the colors really pop,
and use the element of three.
So have three major pieces on the table
and that will be the focus point
and I put a small element around for composition.
(upbeat music)
- Alright let's talk about lenses for a second.
So we talked camera, but what about lenses?
I'm sure a lot of you have questions about lenses.
So one of the things you gotta think about
is how much gear you wanna take with you.
So are you gonna take a lot of gear
or are you just gonna take just a little bit of gear.
Lenses, to me, is broken into two things:
are you gonna take zooms or are you gonna take primes?
Now there's advantages to taking primes,
I know it seems crazy sometimes
to bring a bunch of lenses with you
but prime lenses give you the ability
to get that really shallow depth of field
also allow you to do some cool night photography.
You know things that you can't do
with some of these zooms because your aperture
is gonna be fluctuating all over the place
if you have like "travel zoom".
So one of my favorite lenses on the GH5
is the 12 to 60. I can put that on my camera,
it's actually what I'm shooting on right now,
and basically that is my lens that
I keep on for the entire trip.
Now the issue is, it's a 2.8 to 4,
so you don't have a consistent aperture all the way through,
that 2.8 isn't as wide open as,
say, my 85 that I brought with me which is a 1.2.
so you have to think, how much gear do you wanna bring.
For my Mexico climb, when I did that trip
I literally brought this lens
because I had to reserve weight.
On this trip here, with Royal Caribbean
we're going, you know, all over Italy,
I mean, we'll bring a lot more gear,
so I have this lens but I also have
my 8 to 18, my 42.5, my 12, and my 25,
which is equivalent to 24 58 85.
But basically, if you can carry more gear,
the primes give you more ability
to get some cooler shots, something a little different.
They're also a lot sharper than say, like a travel zoom.
Something to keep in mind, when you're planning
out your trip and what gear you're bringing.
(upbeat music)
Okay. Another tip is get away from the tourist-y spots.
So when you're traveling there's gonna be
specific spots that a lot of people go
and take the same photo from.
To get good photos, you really got to think
outside of the box. So I'm in the Amalfi Coast,
like I was saying, and wandered down the road a little bit,
there's no real walking path, but there's
an awesome little, like private beach down here.
I'm getting some cool photos of it.
It's something definitely off the beaten path.
I'm gonna start working my way back
because I only have so much time
an that's an issue when you're traveling
is that you gotta make sure that you
have enough time to do everything that
you wanna do and not let taking photos
become the only thing that you do.
It is amazing here. This is definitely
a spot you should travel to.
(calm music)
Let's talk about some other things about in composition.
So number one is using Rule of Thirds,
that's like a basic rule of photography,
which is you've gotta put your subject matter
in one of the thirds. Whether vertically or horizontally.
And using the Rule of Thirds will help you make
more interesting photos. Now from there
you can start breaking the Rule of Thirds
and start playing around with it
but that's like your basic default go to,
just put something in the thirds
and that's how you can make just anything look good.
Okay. One more note about composition
is you wanna out things in your photos.
Jordan uses this technique a lot so let me go find him
and he can give you some more tips about that.
(calm music)
Alright we just got back on to the ship
(calm music)
I think Jordan is somewhere down here, carousel.
There's a show going on so let me find him,
I think he's like right over here.
- One tip I would give for landscape photography
would be to use a person in your landscape.
I find that using a small figure
in a landscape really brings it to life.
Say you've got big, giant, cast mountains,
to really emphasize those things,
you need to have a little person in the corner
or a little person on top of the hills
just to show how grand that place is.
- And another tip for photography,
this one is all about drones.
I love flying drones and I love
using them in my photography.
So when you're flying a drone,
make sure that you get unique perspectives from the sky
that you can't get with a typical camera.
Instead of just getting that traditional shot
of buildings in the same direction that you can get
from standing on the cliff, fly the drone out,
get a unique view, a higher view,
maybe a straight, top-down view.
Something that is different and that
you can only get on an object flying in the sky.
If you want more tips on drone photography,
I'll put a link in the description to a video on that.
Alright, I have one more tip about perspective for you guys.
You always gotta find a unique perspective,
and what I mean by that is most people hold
their phone or their camera and eye level right here,
just like this, so when you're trying to take photos
try to get your camera away from this position,
so put it low on the ground so
you can see the ground in your shot.
Put it like over in a tree, put it over a railing.
Put it somewhere where that takes a little more effort
than just holding the camera at eye level.
So you gotta think outside of just doing the basic
right here taking a photo. You gotta find
angles, perspectives. Get down low,
get up high, get to the side, find all those perspectives.
(upbeat music)
I just made it out to the wings of the ship,
you have like, glass bottom, it pretty,
I'm just standing on the glass,
but look behind me, check out that sunset.
And this comes up to my next point,
which is, time of day makes a huge difference
in your photography so if you are
shooting at sunrise or sunset,
your photos are gonna look way better
than if you're shooting mid-day or like noon.
So try to get up early, try to stay out late,
get those sunrise and sunsets because that's important.
(calm music)
Alright guys, it is now the next day,
I decided to put down the camera
and enjoy and that's one of those things,
I know I said it yesterday, but I'm gonna
hone in this fact, when you're traveling
and your taking photos, one of the things
you hafta remember is that you need to put
the camera down once a while and just enjoy the experience.
So I've got a few more tips, today I'm gonna go find Meghan.
She's got some stuff about filters I wanna show you.
But I just wanna hone in that point of
put the camera down, enjoy your experience
because it is awesome, the ability we have to travel
and to experience all these awesome places out in the world
and you don't wanna just do it behind the lens of a camera.
You wanna actually experience it.
Okay. Let's go find Meghan,
I think she's up there on the 16th floor
and then we'll go from there.
- When traveling, I really recommend the use of filters.
You don't have to bring a lot,
but I few ones would really help.
One of the things I use a lot is a circular polarizer.
It's really helpful when you've got water in your shots,
for reducing reflections, it enhances the blue,
and also, if you time it right,
you can get the sky looking lovely and blue
so it always makes the shot look awesome.
Another filter I use a lot of is
the gradient neutral density.
They come in different strengths,
I usually use a .9 to a 1.2,
and what that does is when you've got a really bright sky
and a darker bottom half of your photo,
it will even out the shot for you,
so you don't have to do as much post-processing
and it will just make the whole shot look really even
and then it would probably be on other that I use a lot
because I often travel to places with waterfalls,
I really like using a neutral density,
again they come in different points.
A 1.8 or a 3 are probably the two most common ones
so they're sometimes call a little stopper or a big stopper
and what that's great for is even on a day like today,
where it's pretty bright, you can probably
set yourself up with a tripod and a neutral density,
probably the 3 would be the strong one
and you could actually get some
lovely cloud movement in the sky
which always makes an image look really appealing.
(calm music)
- Alright guys I hope these tips were helpful.
I've got one more special tip for you
from the head of social media, here on the Royal Caribbean.
A really cool way to do a lot of different
and unique travel photography is to take
a cruise like the Symphony of the Seas.
It gives you the opportunity to shoot
in a bunch of different locations.
I highly suggest taking a Royal Caribbean cruise
if that is something you're interested in.
Alright, one last tip, let's go find Natalie,
I think she's down by the laser tag.
Yes. There is a laser tag and there's
also an ice skating rink here on the Symphony of the Seas.
Alright lets go
- My name is Nat. I am the social media manager
at Royal Caribbean and my biggest tip
is to just enjoy what you do.
Go out there, see the world, and capture it.
- Alright so what should we do now?
- Enjoy - Enjoy?
- Enjoy - Enjoy wings?
- Yes! - Great
Last night here and we're gonna enjoy it!
That is it. I hope these tips were helpful
in giving you some ideas when you're out traveling.
That is the biggest tip. Enjoy the experience.
Enjoy all of it. We've had such
a blast here on Royal Caribbean.
Now it's time to go upstairs and enjoy.