Shooting photos to preserve the memories you make while on holiday is a great way to ensure you can relive those memories in future, but there are some tips and tricks to taking great holiday pics.

Get a PROPER Camera

Sure, your Smartphone may have “the best camera in a Smartphone,” but it’s still a Smartphone camera nonetheless and Smartphone cameras can only go so far in the quality they offer. Invest in a proper camera if you want to take holiday pictures to be proud of – a camera which was purpose built to take good pictures and so doesn’t waste battery power or suffer any of the other limitations mobile phone cameras inevitably have.

The Basics (focus)

Focus is perhaps the most important part of any photo you take, simply because it identifies the main subject of the picture. There are some technical explanations which go into great detail about the concept of focus in photography, but this is not a comprehensive photography course which you probably don’t have time to study in great detail anyway, especially if you just want to know how to take good holiday pics. So we’ll only cover two basic aspects of focus, that being the focus feature built into your camera as well as focus in terms of positioning.

If the subject of your photo is too far to appear clearly in the pic, then you can use the zoom feature to bring them into focus, but the best pics are those with a “natural” focus, when the subject appears clearly without you having to zoom in on them. So if possible, make sure you’re within good visible range of your subject so that you don’t have to resort to the zoom feature to bring them into better focus.

As far as the positioning goes, normally to get a great shot one would try to position the subject at the centre of the picture. Some pictures however, particularly holiday snaps, require a little bit of perspective so if you’re shooting a person for instance, it might make better sense to position them in one of the bottom corners if you’re trying to recreate their perspective of the view of the landscape you’re both looking out to. Fundamentally however, just make sure you don’t cut anything of importance out – a picture of your significant other with their head cut off from the neck upwards will never pass off as a decent holiday snap.

Developing Your Shooting Style

Beyond the technical stuff, this is perhaps what defines great holiday snaps. A well taken holiday pic tells a story, but doesn’t give everything away. It sort of serves as a visual synopsis for an experience which leaves the onlooker yearning for more, while at the same time clearly distinguishing the setting. It’s in a sense like a movie set, except the plot hasn’t yet played out and to achieve this, you simply have to try and tell your holiday story by capturing activities through pictures of motion and pictures of emotions as they’re expressed while doing those activities.

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