Trip photography.

I had a friend that hiked the Continental Divide Trail.
I followed his progress on an online journal.
Occasionally, there was an attempt at a scenic, but most of his photos were of things like the ice cream cone he had when he reached a town, or the disgusting water source he had to pump his water from, or the mud on his boots.
After thinking about it, I realized it was brilliant. His photos told the story of his trip far better than a bunch of scenics.
Having said that, I still plan on trying to get that one shot that's worthy of National Geographic.
I used to be a far better photographer than I am now. I was certainly better than average. I've been trying to figure out what I did then that I don't do now.
I needed a refresher course and I found a really good one.
It's THE LANDSCAPE BOOK by Scott Kelby.
He fancies himself a comedian but, if you can get past that, there is a lot of good, basic information that I'm betting will help you too.

Idiot Savant said:

Occasionally, there was an attempt at a scenic, but most of his photos were of things like the ice cream cone he had when he reached a town, or the disgusting water source he had to pump his water from, or the mud on his boots.
After thinking about it, I realized it was brilliant. His photos told the story of his trip far better than a bunch of scenics.

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Photography used to be a serious hobby for me. Since I liked being alone and liked the outdoors nearly all my photos were landscapes. It took me many years to realize there were nearly all pointless. Most of them didn't mean anything to me and they didn't mean anything to anyone else.

The photos that did mean something to me were photos that brought me back to that time and place. Sometimes these were landscapes but more often they were the type of photos your friend took.

I also discovered that my best shots came from my worst cameras because they were small and easy to carry. I always had them with me when the moment for a good picture popped up, unlike my large and heavy "nice" equipment.

I sold all my nice gear and started using decent P&S for everything. It was liberating and I've never regretted the decision.

I did enjoy the technical aspect of photography a lot and do miss tinkering with all those lenses and settings. I also miss the incredible sharpness and detail from larger and better sensors but that's really only noticeable when looking close. A good photo is a good photo no matter what it was taken with and you can't turn a bad photo into a good photo just because it was made with super nice equipment.

Alan

Alan Gage said:

I also discovered that my best shots came from my worst cameras because they were small and easy to carry. I always had them with me when the moment for a good picture popped up, unlike my large and heavy "nice" equipment.

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That's kinda like how much more I see with my tiny $80 monocular instead of high quality binoculars. The little monocular is always with me.

I'm no photographer, but I'm blown away by the picture quality and features available in modern phones. My philosophy is to take pictures of everything and delete most when I get home. But one thing I never do is miss a moment because I'm more focused on getting out my phone to photograph or video it instead of living in the moment and enjoying it.

I started trip photography due to this site and the fact that people seem to like trip reports. I sometimes take pictures of my boots, rarely take a selfie and take (literally) thousands of pictures a week when I'm out. I've been told that I need a selfie or two per trip as the readers like seeing the stroyteller but I highly doubt that I'll be taking pictures of supper or snacks (unless they're a blue-colored walleye... they remain on the bucket list)

I try hard to let the pictures tell the story in a way that the reader gets the sense that they were there and they now know what it looked and felt like. For me, taking the pictures and telling the story is a big part of the enjoyment.

I'm not a photographer but I've found that, by taking 1000+ pictures a week, I'll usually have enough to supplement the story and, once or twice a trip, I take what I feel is an exceptional picture. Always done with my phone or an inexpensive p&s (Nikon B500 in my case and I carry two of them... they really don't like water)

I'll have to check out the book... Always room for improvement and I'm certainly just leaning.

There is a saying that applies to a lot of things. The best one is the one that you have with you.
Long before camera phones and when I still considered photography an important part of my life, I realized how many fantastic shots I was missing because I didn't have my camera with me. I never came up with a good solution. Even compact cameras were too big to carry in a pocket and leaving them in the car, when it could be too hot or too cold, wasn't an option.
For most people the smartphone changed everything. It's change photography. That is, for everyone but me. Believe it or not I just got my first smartphone in 2024 and hardly ever use it. I made it 70 years without one so it's hard for me to get used to the idea that I can't live without it.
I had reached a point in my photography when I decided that I was spending my trips looking through a viewfinder rather than enjoying the moment. Lugging around all that gear was an issue too. I tried moving to compacts but I can never see the monitor on the back unless I'm indoors and I missed having the control of a full-size camera.
I just spent a small fortune on a new camera and lenses. Actually, for me, a large fortune. The camera I had was plenty good. This one is just ridiculous. Buying it is either the dumbest thing I've ever done or one the smartest. If my smartphone ends up replacing my camera, I'm going to shoot myself, and I don't mean a selfie .

Idiot Savant said:

I had reached a point in my photography when I decided that I was spending my trips looking through a viewfinder rather than enjoying the moment. Lugging around all that gear was an issue too.

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It sounds like our former photography careers had a lot in common.

While I also found photography to be a distraction in the end there were other times it made me see more. For a while I really enjoyed macro photography and what would have normally been a 20 minute walk through the woods could easily turn into a 2-3 hour photo session with my nose to the ground looking for interesting native plants, insects, or other odd little things. I saw all kinds of neat things that I now miss on my walks.

And sometimes photography was what drove me to get out. Where I would now be inclined to stay indoors a sudden cold snap would then send me outside to get photos of the frost and partially frozen stream. A spring snowfall would push me into the woods to try and get pictures of hepatica and snow trillium pushing through the snow.

A couple years ago I picked up a Panasonic Lumix glorified P&S. It has a bigger sensor, manual controls, and control knobs. At the time I was missing photography and thought it might be fun to have something closer to a real camera when I felt like shooting some photos. I took it on some walks, snapped a few pictures, and then put it away. The camera is fine but I guess I just don't have the desire to take random pictures.

About the only time I take photos now is when I'm on a trip to document what I see. I do enjoy doing that.

I'm curious what your new camera is.

Alan

Alan Gage said:

Photography used to be a serious hobby for me. Since I liked being alone and liked the outdoors nearly all my photos were landscapes. It took me many years to realize there were nearly all pointless. Most of them didn't mean anything to me and they didn't mean anything to anyone else.
Alan

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I agree that most landscape photos don't turn out as good as we hoped. When I go through old photos I enjoy the people, campsite and canoe pics more than the landscape ones. I used to trip with a professional photographer who called any of those type of pictures "snapshots" that weren't worthy of his time or money. Funny thing is that after a trip he never had any photos to show from it. A few years later he started his own guiding business and ironically he used one of my picture on the cover of his brochure, and it was a landscape shot.



This is the picture.

I think the second reason, I got out of photography, was I no longer had people to share my photos with.
My parents have passed, I became alienated from my brother, who was even more into photography than, me, lost friends, etc.
Truth is, I probably got way more out of sharing photos with them than they got out of seeing my photos.
I think my photos, now, will mostly go toward club trip reports and forums like this.
I'm retired and have a lot of time on my hands and find myself sitting at home watching TV or surfing the web when I could be, should be, outdoors. I'm hoping getting back into photography will inspire me to go outside more often.
That's a very nice shot, lowangle al. The canoe really shows how vast the landscape is.
My first digital was an EOS Rebel 450D. I've been using a Sony a7 II, which was a big upgrade. I also bought a little Kodak PIXPRO WPZ2, which I intended for my main in the canoe camera. The new camera is a Sony a7 IV. Another pretty big upgrade. I have an assortment of lens for the Sony's. One is a new manual macro lens, that I'm finding a lot of fun.

I started with an old 1948 Argus camera my Dad had in grad school. . It came with a light meter. Those were the days of real photography. I took tons of slides of landscapes with Kodachrome because of the great blue and green color saturation. Then I got some nice Japanese SLR cameras and enjoyed taking endless pictures of geomorphology and forests. Then digital cameras showed up and I lost interest. Now I hardly take any photos. I carry the images in my mind's eye.

Every once in a while I imagine going down to a big camera store and buying some old used Nikon SLR cameras and getting back to taking photos, but then the urge quickly passes.

I started out with a 35mm slr and had a small telephoto lens for it. It was heavy to take on trips and was usually stored in waterproof bag, so was not easily accessible. I switched over to digital with a small Lumix point and shoot. It was much lighter and easier to keep accessible. Although it didn't have the telephoto capabilities of the slr it had other features like video, auto focus and other features that balanced it out. I upgraded every few years as they got better until I bought my last version of the Lumix. It was too complicated for me and I missed a lot of pictures because for some reason the mode seemed to change on its own. It was frustrating, and at that time I got a phone that took good enough pictures so that's all I took.

I would like to get another P&S that is waterproof for trips and I would like to get another SLR that's digital and get a big lens for it but I wouldn't take on trips.

Looking back I wish I had gone digital earlier. One reason is you just take more pictures, another is when you look at the images you can see the exact time they were taken and even the place. I did a poor job organizing my photos and didn't record the details so some remain a mystery.

lowangle al said:

I started out with a 35mm slr and had a small telephoto lens for it. It was heavy to take on trips and was usually stored in waterproof bag, so was not easily accessible. I switched over to digital with a small Lumix point and shoot. It was much lighter and easier to keep accessible. Although it didn't have the telephoto capabilities of the slr it had other features like video, auto focus and other features that balanced it out. I upgraded every few years as they got better until I bought my last version of the Lumix. It was too complicated for me and I missed a lot of pictures because for some reason the mode seemed to change on its own. It was frustrating, and at that time I got a phone that took good enough pictures so that's all I took.

I would like to get another P&S that is waterproof for trips and I would like to get another SLR that's digital and get a big lens for it but I wouldn't take on trips.

Looking back I wish I had gone digital earlier. One reason is you just take more pictures, another is when you look at the images you can see the exact time they were taken and even the place. I did a poor job organizing my photos and didn't record the details so some remain a mystery.

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My first camera was an all manual Canon film camera with a 50mm prime lens. This would have been about 1976. I had several other film cameras after that. I know I had one Pentax and at least one Minolta.
At first I shot regular Kodak color print film, then I moved on to professional slide films. Velvia was really popular. Very saturated colors. At the very end of the film era, I was shooting professional print film, including wedding film. Super forgiving. I was very slow to move to digital and when I did, I was disappointed with the results. I think it was a long time before digital equaled professional film.

I regret ever using slides. For me they are the on images that never get looked at.

I try to do at least one "Big Trip" per year and it is not always with a canoe. This year it was a cross-country motorcycle trip from South Carolina to California and the Sierras, up to Oregon, around to Utah and Colorado, and then back to the East Coast. Last year it was hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc through France, Italy and Switzerland. The year before that it was paddling in the Adirondacks. The common thread in this is that I take a LOT of photos.

After my return from my trip the photos do not just stay digital. I do download them to my computer, I do label and store the SD cards, but I do print a selection (50-100 photos) as 4x6 prints. I then get an inexpensive photo album put in the prints and make a label for the print. It is not very expensive, in the greater scheme of things. One hundred prints ran $29 plus tax after this year's trip and the photo album run about $7.

I can search and view the photos on my computer, but I find it much more satisfying to hold a physical book and look at a real print than sit and look at an image on a screen. I I have them on a shelf within reach, and just looking at the chosen cover photo will often bring a smile and entice me to open the album for more recollections of enjoyable, or survivable, trips.

Give it a try after your next Big Trip.

Before digital, if you wanted to get your photos published, they needed to be slides. That's what the publishers wanted. Print film wasn't acceptable.
My brother was getting his photos in calendars and postcards and winning local awards so was an influence on me.
Then I got a PC and email became a big thing.
The main reason I went back to print is I could have a CD made with the prints. Made it super easy to share my photos online.
I still miss being able to do that, but an SD card is a lot cheaper than buying and developing film.

I have gone to mostly video on canoe trips. I then edit all the clips into a video for youtube. Canoe videos are not too popular but at least I can look back on them in the years ahead. The camp life is certainly the most enjoyable to revisit. I store a copy of the video in case of online issues down the road and delete about a hundred gig of the original files.

Marten said:

I have gone to mostly video on canoe trips. I then edit all the clips into a video for youtube. Canoe videos are not too popular but at least I can look back on them in the years ahead. The camp life is certainly the most enjoyable to revisit. I store a copy of the video in case of online issues down the road and delete about a hundred gig of the original files.

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I went to video, for a while, back when video cameras recorded on tape. Now, trying to watch the tapes is pretty inconvenient and wish I'd just taken still shots.
When I bought my Sony a7 II, it was supposed to be pretty good at recording video so I bought accessories thinking I'd get into the video part, but, so far haven't recorded a second of video. I think, partly, because I was having enough trouble learning how to use all the camera functions. Now I have an a7 IV, which is even better for recording video. I can't see recording only video, or mostly video but I would, at least, like to capture a few moments that are best seen on video, like canoes going through a rapid.

I was getting into photography as digital was just starting to take off and it was great! I liked old film cameras and there were a ton of them cheap on the used market. I bought used darkroom equipment on the cheap and set it up in my basement. I shot 35mm at first and then moved to MF and LF. I loved using old cameras.

When I moved to digital I went with Pentax because it would still accept my old lenses. Eventually I moved to Canon with a 5D. Even when I was shooting with a DSLR I tended to use an incident meter when possible and mostly shot in manual mode.

When I was using film I rarely went back through my old prints. I had a decent scanner and digitized a lot of negatives and slides. I much preferred viewing them on the computer. I could organize them into folders and create slide shows. I could embed keywords and it was easy to find almost anything I wanted.

About 15 years ago I started using Flickr to share my photos online. I don't upload to it much anymore but it's still full of albums I created and it's nice to relive memories of old trips any time I want. Much easier than rummaging through drawers of prints.

I can be pretty relentless with editing and deleting photos. I try to keep what's important and get rid of the rest. I've thrown away tons of prints/negatives and deleted hundreds if not thousands of pictures, sometimes years after they were taken.

Alan