Photography Tips
Planning your Europe travel involves so many different aspects that missing either one of them would probably ruin your whole trip. One of them is the weather. Though you can’t predict when it is going to rain or snow on each day, you could still plan your Europe travel to be in any season of the year you wish. Once you have picked your season of the year, either Spring, Summer, Autumn or winter, your next challenge would be planning the itinerary of your Europe tour. This is when travel photographers need to work extra hard for their hobby of taking photos: Plan for the best time of day to visit each of the travel destinations to capture the best desired lighting of the scenes!
First, you need to ask yourself what is your desired mood of the scene: A nostalgic feel, a high key photo or a miracle lighting effect, or others. Then do some research on the scene or travel sites on Google Maps on the orientation of the landmark and the best shooting angle. With these 2 simple steps, you can decide the best timing and best photo shooting angle of the day you need to be there.
For example, the above photo of Roman Forum was shot in the morning with the sun in front of me. I picked this best shooting angle and hour of day to capture the site to create a contrasty image with dramatic back-light from the morning sun. If I came here in the afternoon, the image would turn out not as attractive and will look like another snapshot!
Apart from playing around directions of sunlight, some of the landmarks is best to be photographed at night, like the Eiffel Tower in Paris. I had to planned it such a way that we visited Eiffel Tower in the evening so I could capture both daytime and night time scenes of the mega structure in few hours period!
After deciding the timing for visiting each travel sites of a city, you can gather them all up and fix your itinerary of your travel in any city of Europe easily and effectively.
I have recently written an article for Cherrye Moore of My Bella Vita sharing the best photo snapping hours in Italy. If you are a travel snapper who simply snaps photos at all landmarks, check it out for the best time of the day to take photos of travel destinations in Italy – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo blog
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Progressively, I will pick and put up 5 best photos taken in each city on my Europe travel here which I love most (though the process takes a bit long 
). Being first of the series, 5 photos were picked for my first Europe Travel city, London. It was challenging to decide which are the 5 as I took nearly 1000 photos in London. Final decision was interesting. All the following 5 photos were picked from bunch of photos taken on my 3rd day in London when we had the best sunlight of all. Another proof of how I love natural sunlight and blue sky… Here they are:
1) Tower Bridge, the iconic structure across River Thames of Great London. (Captured with Nikon D60 with Tamron SP10-24mm (same to all following photos) at 16mm focal distance, ISO100, Shutter speed at 1/320 with Aperture of F8.0). You can see the mixing weather conditions on that day from the dark cloud. We had a heavy rain and strong wind just 5 minutes before and bright sunlight 5 minutes after. This shot would be perfect without the dark cloud overhead. The best time to capture the best sunlight on Tower Bridge is in the afternoon at 5pm. The sun was directly on top of us when we were there at 2Pm.
2) The famous mosaic feature wall at Tottenham Court Road Underground station. (Lens’ focal length set at 10mm, ISO400, Shutter speed at 1/30 with Aperture of F3.5., handheld shot). Tottenham Court Road underground station is famous with its colourful mosaic decorations all around the tube. The lighting of the photo was uneven naturally due to the ambient setting.
3) St. Paul Cathedral, the famous West End facade. (Lens’ focal length set at 10mm, ISO100, Shutter speed at 1/250 with Aperture of F8.0). Another 1 minute precious moment of bright sun and deep blue sky in between overcasting dark clouds. Visit the St. Paul Cathedral in the afternoon if you want to capture the best natural sunlight falling on its West end facade.
4) Authentic street light post on both sides of Westminster Bridge. (Lens’ focal length set at 12mm, ISO100, Shutter speed at 1/200 with Aperture of F11.0., fill flash fired). There are more than 10 motorway bridges crossing the River Thames. Westminster Bridge is so significant as it is the connecting bridge from Greenwich to the the House of Parliament. Along this wide bridge there are this beautiful street lamp posts sitting at every 10m. Fill flash was fired to reduce the contrast from the harsh sunlight in the morning. We thought the weather was going to be good whole day but unfortunately, it rained 1o minutes later.
5) Priscilla, Queen of the desert Musical Theatre. (Lens’ focal length set at 11.5mm, ISO400, Shutter speed at 1/13 with Aperture of F3.8., handheld shot with -2/3EV compensation). London is famous for its many musical theatres at almost every corner of the city centre. This is only one of them. I love it because it was shot handheld without any supporting tripod. Thanks to the 10-24mm ultra wide angle lens and DX format camera, I was able to capture the scene without serious visible motion blur at slow shutter speed of 1/13s!
No special photographic creation as you can see here. All of them are merely travel snapshots I made during my travel to Central Europe. It was a rush tour around 7 cities mainly for only sightseeing. For first time visitors, it was a perfect itinerary of Europe travel to cover so many travel destinations in such a short period of only 14 days. Coming up next is my travel experience in central Europe. Stay subscribed! If you have not, subscribe my RSS feed or email feed now for free updates on my travel stories. – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo blog
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I don’t usually write reviews of those latest travel photo gear such as camera or lens when they are just released. I only write something on my experience on using some of those equipment that I own for some period of time. So, you can only read reviews on stuffs like the Panasonic Fz28, Nikon [...]
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Don’t waste your travel photos! Don’t undervalue your creation or arts! Share with the world and other travelers by either Flickr or on your own travel blog. It would be even better if you sell travel photos that captured during your travels and make some pennies for your next trip! I haven’t quite made enough [...]
You should know by now that I love high key photo especially portrait shot. As a stock photo contributor of istockphoto, I’m entitled for regular free download each week on some of the exciting stock photos featured in istockphoto. This week, I’ve got this high key portrait shot which I love it very much (not [...]
