Travel

Photographer Jimmy Nelson has spent over 30 years traveling around the globe taking pictures, mostly photographing indigenous cultures by using his camera as a tool to make contact and build relationships with unknown communities around the planet. In this video, Nelson shares seven life lessons that he has personally learned through his photography experiences during his worldwide adventures.

Recently, I took a trip to Wichita, Kansas to see my sister get married. I packed up my camera, a few flashes, and my tripod for this trip with hopes of doing some photoshoots while in town. My two kids came out with me for this journey, and we ventured around the city.

Traveling as a photographer can be difficult. The issue we always seem to encounter is a lot like G.A.S.; we want to have the right lens for every shot, and we don't want to miss out. The key to circumventing this issue is planning. While some of the best shots can be unexpected, you have to have an idea of what you're looking for. When planning my recent trip to New York City, I had to find a way to pack the camera gear I wanted for a variety of work in a small, comfortable bag. Enter the ThinkTank Photo Turnstyle 20, the best small travel bag I've ever seen.

I recently funded the printing of my first book via Kickstarter. It was the wonderful culmination of a year of hard work on the project itself and almost six months of preparation and promotion for the funding campaign. In the end, it was funded well beyond my goal. The whole process of creating, funding, and then realizing the project was quite surreal. I am still pinching myself from time to time as I pack the books ready for shipping to my backers and the recipients of the project. I wrote a while back about changing your mindset, knuckling down, and just doing things. Today, I'd like to talk a little about another thing that makes work happen: the word "yes."

Back in July of 2016, Adobe released a major update to Lightroom Mobile for iOS that allows it to work directly with any and all raw files supported by the desktop version and to also sync them seamlessly with the desktop. But what does this actually mean for real-world use? What problem are we actually solving? Let's go on a trip with epic travel photographer Elia Locardi and find out.

A photograph that does not tell a story, is a lifeless picture – it’s a failure to capture the viewer and therefore, his heart. One single photograph can inspire a person if a photographer knows how to tell a good story. Because photographer Paul Choy wanted to find out the truth for himself behind media headlines, and because he wanted to tell the individual stories of each refugee, he set out for the refugees’ camps in Calais and Greece with his camera. The result is the ‘Faceless, Forgotten’ – a photo essay and a documentary about the struggles of refugees.

David Guttenfelder shot for the Associated Press for 20 years, based in Nairobi, Abidjan, New Delhi, and Tokyo, but it wasn't until he helped open the AP's North Korean bureau in 2011 that he became truly famous. His Instagram account has nearly a million followers and is filled with stunning iPhone photos from around the world. He was one of the first photographers to publish images shot on his phone, which caused a bit of a stir at the time.

During a two-day trip to the magnificent city that is Rome, photographer Milán Rácmolnár came up with the brilliant idea of photographing Rome in infrared. The result is a different and pink perspective on the cityscapes.

Imagine a spectacular, rugged landscape. Pine forests that stretch for hundreds of miles, vivid lakes and countless waterfalls. This is central Norway; bear country. While I am packing my camera bag for a two week photography trip honeymoon to Iceland, I relive a memory that answered the question if we really need to travel for better photographs.

Something that happened last week really hit home for me. Everyone probably already has heard, as it has been reported by almost every single news agency in the world; Australian photographer Brett Costello was robbed of $40,000 of camera gear in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil last week while in town to cover the Olympics. However, this article isn't about him specifically.

Photographer Greg Florent has made images that capture Budapest in a new light. The images are made by taking them at the transition of daylight into sunset and then nighttime until the lights come on and the city's evening starts. He spends around four hours at a location taking one shot, making sure he gets the whole transition and changes of light to produce the images in post.

The filmmakers of “The Muir Project,” known for their first documentary, “Mile… Mile and a Half,” have just released their latest film, “Noatak: Return to the Arctic.” I interviewed Director Ric Serena who told me about the production challenges his team faced when working on a remote river deep in Alaska and why they chose to go with the Canon 1DC as their camera of choice.

Being involved with online photography forums on a regular basis, I constantly see people asking that very question. I also get asked personally from time to time. It's usually something like: ''I'm taking a trip to Italy next month. What lenses do you recommend I bring?'' Or: ''I'm going to McDonalds tomorrow for brunch, should I bring my Canon 800mm or my Canon 11-24mm lens?'' So, being I was faced with this very decision myself recently, I wanted to share with you what lens I brought with me and my thoughts.

Sam Zeller is giving it all away. It began with releasing 184 photos for creative commons use on stock photo site Unsplash. From there the Swiss photographer and FujiFilm ambassador has decided to unload an entire archive of his images taken across Europe for free use to anyone with the aptitude to find them.

Foster Visuals, known for the nationally-awarded "Legacy Project," recently teamed up with DJI to tell the story of Heraldo Riel, a gaucho in Patagonia, Chile. Like his father before him, Riel became a Gaucho at the age of nine. To be a Gaucho means to be kind and caring for all living things. Using a combination of equipment, including the DJI Osmo, Ronin, and Inspire 1, Brent Foster and his team tell Riel's story and captures the intense beauty and solitude of the remote section of Patagonia in which Riel lives.

Rich McCor sprung to 175k followers on Instagram, with his creative approach to landscapes. Adding his own paper cutouts to the frame, we’re treated to a cartoon view on famous landmarks. They’re playful, well made, and definitely a creative way to travel the world.

Pelican cases have long been an industry standard for top-of-the-line protection of cameras, lenses, lights, hard drives, and all other forms of fragile video or photo gear. Their new “Air” line of cases bring that same protection, but at a lower weight. I got to try the Pelican 1535 Air out and see how it performed on a travel video job.

After finally taking my first flight with all my gear, Vin and I made it to where we needed to go. Having the gear and keeping your eye on it is probably the biggest concern when it comes to traveling. I want to give some fellow travelers some advice on gear and transporting it when needed.

Mark Wallace is a great friend of ours, and also one of the leading photography educators on the planet (subscribe to his series on AdoramaTV). Mark has been traveling the world for over two years now, but in the beginning of 2016 he traded the trains, planes, and automobiles for a single BMW R1200 motorcycle. His latest journey will possibly take him 2-5 years as he trades the studio gear for a simple GoPro to document his travels across six continents. If you need a break from photography education, Mark on a Bike might be the perfect cultural experience to follow.

Earlier this year, commercial photographer Lars Schneider was followed by a camera on a trip to the Faroe Islands to document his “other life” as a landscape photographer. The resulting video gives us insight into what his professional lifestyle entails and the change of pace enjoyed when shooting landscapes for personal fulfillment rather than clientele.

I’m going to be traveling soon. I’m going to Paris for a project documenting the city, its people and exploring its intangible nuances that emit emotion. Travel photography. I enjoy traveling, and I love photography. Can we put these two together? Yes. There is no other reason but the enjoyment of moving though the city that's got me excited.

I love going out to shoot landscapes and finding new places that I think will look really cool at night. However, sometimes it’s hard to get to these places because of how far you actually have to go to get there. Here is my story from the night of May 25.

The ultimate movement; adventure, experience, and escape rolled into one single word. Travel. The word itself, a title to encompass all of life's passion and emotion in transit. Life is frustrating, funny, and challenging; an endless series of events in random order, asking us to interpret meaning and understanding. Travel allows us to put the randomness into perspective, the daily events elaborated as just blessings from the road that eventually tally up to what amounts to be a life fully lived. Travel Photographer Christian Sorensen Hansen does an amazing job capturing highlights from six years on the road, with the camera he always has with him: his phone. His short movie, "Know This," will stir the fire of escape from deep inside and have you planning your next trip in no time.

When traveling (flying, to be specific) for a photo or video job, there’s a lot more planning and logistics that go into being prepared for not only the job, but living out of a suitcase, sometimes without the support of people available to help you. I’ve put together a checklist of things that I often need to consider when traveling for a gig.

We've seen many documentaries giving a close up look to the rigors of climbing the world's highest summit. Professional climbers Adrian Ballinger and Cory Richards are showing us a behind the scenes look like we've never seen before.

I always watch aerial videos; there's just something about them that really stands out to me, so my bad for another aerial video. In this video, "Perspective," we see nature in a very different way. Drones are tools that give us the freedom to film and photograph from the air. These tools allow us to change our perspective and create imagery that is new to our eye. In this video, Jay really captured some content that we don't get the opportunity to see. He does a great job controlling the camera, panning, flying and shooting in a unique way.

For those of you may not know, we recently created a 20 hour photography tutorial with the incredible Joey Wright on all things swimsuit photography and retouching. We've been posting a weekly behind the scenes series of the creation of this tutorial. This is Episode 5.

I fell into a canal in Venice with the ThinkTank StreetWalker HardDrive Bag on my back. I was walking too close to the edge while looking at the bridges and architecture, and how the water brushes up against them, when I stepped on a moss-covered section of the canal ledge. I slipped, hit my bum on the ledge, and gently slid into the canal. There was no splash, and my head didn't go below water, but the ledge was so slippery that I couldn’t get out by myself. I was floating in the canal for what was the longest 30 seconds of my life.

I’m sure most of us have been there before: standing on a street corner, your “camera bag that doesn’t look like a camera bag” slung casually over your shoulder. Your camera is in hand, its strap hanging loose, dancing in the summer breeze. You raise the rangefinder window to your eye and snap: the perfect shot of a homeless man! He looks really sad; this will finally change everyone's mind — straight to Instagram. But there’s a fine line between biting social commentary and “Poverty Porn,” and sometimes, it's hard to see which side you’re on.

I just attended a talk by the renowned Travel Photographer Jon Reid. He has been delivering work to Getty Images on a regular basis for over 10 years, but most of his work is commissioned by the largest travel agencies in the world. He shoots stills and video, and his work gets used online to provide information on a specific city or country.

Fripito is a new mobile application made for photographers, by photographers. With many travel guides catering to the casual tourist, the creators of Fripito wanted to have a resource where professional photographers could research and plan their shoots for a specific destination, while also offering information on transportation, food, lodging, and so on.

Think for a moment about the Tolkien-inspired visions flashing though the mind of Robert Plant as he penned the mystical lyrics to “Ramble On.” Vast landscapes with wandering figures, uncertain of their destination, but driven by their journey. Now get ready to scroll down and get the same feeling.

Swimwear Photography with Joey Wright Behind The Scenes continues today with Episode 3. In last week's episode we started filmed the first lesson of the entire tutorial but in this episode we cover 3 full days of filming.

I'm not a landscape photographer, but I am a photographer. At the heart of all us 'togs is a deep-seated yearning to capture the rare and the beautiful. Another concept I find overly enticing about photography is that of being a nomad; a wandering explorer with only a camera as a companion. Or, in the case of this video, three cameras, a DJI Inspire 1, and presumably a helicopter. Whatever, stop watering down my poetic vision.

Swimwear Photography with Joey Wright Behind The Scenes continues today with Episode 2. In last weeks episode you were able to see our journey from the US down to Curacao. In this episode we finally begin filming lessons with Joey for this swimwear photography tutorial.

When a commercial photographer, Sasha Leahovcenco, decides to document the touching experience and life of people he has never met before, the result is quite astonishing. You would think pre-production played a huge part and that he had to have had exceptional gear, carried by a huge team, but the truth is far from that. The experience was the heart of this series, and the pictures show it well. Combining both journalistic and commercial genres with a very personal approach yields pictures we only wish we could see more often.

Time-lapse Photographer Rufus Blackwell put together an interesting video for DJI, featuring their Osmo stabilizer/camera system, but using it in a way that might not be the most obvious: for hyperlapses. Check out the video, then read on to see what improvements DJI has made in their latest firmware update to the Osmo.

Paris is one of the most historic cities in the world. Rich with culture and a visual feast, the city is full of stunning imagery that begs to be captured. Tyler Fairbank set out to do just that, creating a spectacular hyperlapse tour of the city that's well worth two minutes of your time.

Helped by great design, marketing, and a superb product to boot, Syrp’s motorized time-lapse aid, the Genie, became incredibly popular with photographers. As the product that launched the company on Kickstarter three years ago, it was a premium offering, though. And sometimes, it’s useful to have something fantastic in a “light” version. Enter the Genie Mini.

Let me tell you: there’s nothing quite like a new camera and a change of scenery to recharge the old creative batteries, especially after a long British winter. I just came back last Sunday from a fantastic three-week trip to Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand and therefore, had plenty of time to intensively test the new Pen-F by Olympus, which I've had since mid-February.

The smaller size, lighter weight, and ability to get a high angle shot has made the monopod a useful tool for many photographers and videographers, especially for subjects like sports, wildlife, and run and gun situations. I got to review the new 3Pod Orbit Monopod to test its features on a couple of different projects to see how it holds up to real world shooting scenarios.

Don’t you just love the fact that nowadays, you can watch only the good shows? UK Landscape Photographer Thomas Heaton has his own "show" on YouTube, and in the latest episode, he takes us with him on a photography journey in Arctic Tromsø, Norwegian home of spectacular landscapes. Join him on his journey to the edge of the Arctic!

Photographing The World Behind The Scenes continues today with Episode 17. This is the second to last episode in our series. In this video, we head back to New Zealand to photograph astrophotography with Elia Locardi.

"Undisturbed Places" is a time-lapse film by Maciej Tomkow. This breathtaking four-minute film transports you to some of the most beautiful uninhabited places in the world. Tomkow presents them in a way that creates a sense of awe that I didn’t think possible. I had previously seen another award-winning film created by Tomkow, "Treasures of Zakynthos." This film covered a relatively small area, focusing on the Greek island of Zakynthos. Tomkow has taken that same masterful vision and technique and applied it to a vast array of locations around Namibia and Botswana.

Photographing The World Behind The Scenes continues today with Episode 15. In this episode, we are finally able to leave Hong Kong (after our disaster with Vietnam Air in last weeks episode) and we arrive in Cambodia. We captured some amazing images and lessons in Cambodia and Elia almost gets his face bit off by a monkey.

Our second tutorial with Elia Locardi: Photographing the World: Cityscape, Astrophotography, and Advanced Post-Processing was all about different types of cities. We started in Cinque Terre, a region of Italy where cities are basically built into the side of a natural landscape. We then moved on to Rome to shoot ancient architecture. Next we moved on to Singapore and Hong Kong for something a little bit more modern.

Right-o! Let's jump in our "wayback machine" to London, England in the late 19th century to witness some of the oldest known video footage, not only just of the city, but in all of human history. I'm a sucker for finding the earliest cinema and photography have to offer, and if you are too, then click on.

I took a two-week trip to Hawaii last month with the intentions of not bringing along a bunch of camera gear. That was a fine thought in and of itself, but now I’m wondering if I could have mustered the courage to take an extended trip to a picturesque location without bringing a real camera at all?