All About Travel Photography

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Photography as a subject has two distinct aspects, i.e., the 'craft part' and the 'art part'. The craft part involves the technique of obtaining good and acceptable results. This used to be a significant handicap earlier, as one had to master the art of using cameras, which was acquired after much trial and error. There were no short cuts. Today, the craft part has been simplified immensely. All that is needed is to press the shutter, and the camera takes care of the intricacies of getting good images. If this were not so, many would have been deprived of photography.

It also needs to be mentioned here that the art part remains as difficult today as it was then. Getting a pleasing image that would delight the eyes and heart of the viewer is as difficult today as it was earlier. The author begins by offering some valuable tips for taking better travel photographs. In the second part, some images are shown, and he talks about his travel experiences and gives photographic advice about why he shot them.

Ashok Dilwali, author of over 35 pictorial books, is a professional photographer based in Delhi. National Book Trust, India has also published another book on photography titled All About Photography, written by him, which has gone into multiple reprints.

Buying an expensive camera to get better images is like purchasing a costly pen, hoping that the buyer's handwriting will improve! Sadly, it is not so. Cameras do not take pictures; it is the man behind the camera who matters. I have coined a sentence for this. "Technology improves your photos but not your photography." The quality of photos can be good with an expensive camera in terms of better colours, details, sharpness etc., but all these things do not go on to create a photo that shall delight the viewers' hearts. That comes from many other sources like good lighting, good composition etc. These are things no camera will do.

In my career spanning over fifty years, I have heard this sentence a million times, "Oh, I did not have a good camera!" The answer is simple. Your images are not good because you are not dedicated enough to take good images. There is nothing wrong or inferior about your camera. If people pay more attention and drop that casual attitude, it is possible to get good images. They are casual in approaching the subject of photography and blaming the poor camera! How unfair! One can get much better results by spending a little more time and thinking a bit before pressing the shutter. There can be no disputes about this observation. If you observe closely, you will see that people treat cameras as mere toys. They have become playthings; the seriousness has gone. It is so because, in the film era, there were costs to bear- the price of the films, development, and printing. Today, all you need is a digital camera. To shoot hundreds of images and then delete as many as you like. The 'thought process' to get better images has vanished. The whole attitude is casual and easy going because it costs almost nothing. In other words, we have 'quantity' but not 'quality'. We should strive for quality, but that demands care and concentration, which is lacking.

This little book aims to bring about some seriousness while using cameras, which are ninety percent our smartphones.