Travel Photography - The Challenge of Camera Movement

It's time for a new classic tip from Ossian!  These short tips always have the same goal - to help remind you of techniques to create stronger images and build your skill set. When you put them together, you've got a pretty solid set of ideas to help you raise the bar on the quality of your images, regardless of your specialty.

Ossian Lindholm is an outstanding artist, educator and also one of Argentina's leading environmentalists. He wears a lot of different hats, including teaching while being a guide on some of Travel Vision Journey's most impressive trips. He's part of the team responsible for receiving National Geographic Traveler's 50 Tours of Lifetime for 2015, with Vision and Vine coming up next month.

Imagine how much you could raise your skill set after spending a week shooting with Ossian! To follow the schedule for upcoming trips, just click on the image below!

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1/640 f 5.6 ISO 100 55 mm Lens

​by Ossian Lindholm

In travel photography you’re often caught in situations that you just didn't plan. You don’t have the control of a studio or a planned shooting session. You have to work with whatever you have in your skill set and hopefully camera bag.

For example, we all know when shooting landscapes, ideally you want a tripod to avoid any camera movement. But, what happens if you’re in a boat? Added to the challenge, the boat is sailing and the waves are moving the boat all over the place. Using a tripod would only make things worse, because you’d convey all the boat’s movements to the camera.

So what would you do in front of this magnificent glacier in Patagonia?

First: Select a high shutter speed. If you can go up to 1/1000 great! If you’re using a telephoto lens try to shoot at an even faster shutter speed.

Second: Use your body as a steady camera system with your legs a little bit flexed to avoid the vertical movement of the boat.

Third: Shoot fast and get a lot of images. Because the boat is sailing, your framing will be constantly changing. You don’t have time to think through composing each image. So, shoot a lot and edit later to find the best image.

This photo was taken in Lake Gray in front of Glacier Grey in Parque Nacional Torres del Paine in Patagonia, Chile during our “Myth Mountains and Mammals Photo Trip”

Image copyright Ossian Lindholm. All rights reserved.