When you come home from a really amazing trip, it’s not enough to chronicle your trip through photos and show factual images that detail where you were. You want to move people. You want to create images that are so powerful that they make the person viewing them want to go there so badly that they’re willing to risk a series of white collar crimes (mostly embezzling) to pay for their trip to that very same place. Now, if you took good enough shots, it won’t be long before your friends are overcome with emotion (jealousy) and will have to go to the exact same location to experience that same amazing feeling once again. Now, if either of your two friends have dSLR cameras, it’s helpful to understand right up front that they’re not going to that spot because they trust your judgment on travel. They’re going there because they think they can get better photos from that spot than you did. Then, once they come back and show off their images, all your mutual friends will say something like, “Did you see Rick’s photos from Machu Picchu? Wow, his were much better than Sandy’s” and at that moment—you’ve been blinged.

Actually, this is what is known as an IB, or an “Intentional Bling,” and it gives you some insight into just how shallow your friends really are. But as shallow as they are, you can drain a little more water out of the pond by pulling this quick and easy stunt: when they see a really cool travel shot of yours, and they ask you where you took it (which means they don’t already recognize the landmark)—lie. They’ll never know. For example, if you shot the Portland Head lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, tell ‘em it’s the Nauset lighthouse in North Eastham, Massachusetts. By the time they catch on, they’ll already be back home, and you can feign a mysterious illness.

I’m a total gear freak, but the one time I definitely don’t want to lug around a lot of gear is when I’m doing travel photography. You’re going to be lugging your gear all day long, hopping on and off of all sorts of transportation, and as the day goes on, your gear seems to get heavier and bulkier, and by the end of the day, you’ve all but stopped digging around in your camera bag. To get around that, take as little with you as possible— one or two lenses, tops. For example, Nikon makes a reasonably priced 18–200mm lens with built-in VR (vibration reduction; as shown above) that lets you leave your camera bag back in the hotel because you’ve got everything covered from wide angle to long telephoto in just one lens. Canon makes an affordable 28–200mm lens that doesn’t go quite as wide as the Nikon, but is amazingly small and lightweight. Also, there are some incredibly lightweight travel tripods available today, ranging from the Slik Sprint Pro for around $80 to what is probably the best travel tripod on the planet, the Gitzo GT1550T Traveler carbon-fiber tripod (for around $650). When it comes to lugging around lots of gear in an unfamiliar city, travel photography is definitely a case of “less is more.” Do yourself a favor and travel light—you’ll find yourself taking more shots, because you’re changing lenses and messing with your equipment less.

If you want to improve your travel photos, here’s a simple trick: add more people to your shots. When you really want to capture the flavor of an area, don’t just shoot buildings, cathedrals, and monuments—show the people of that area. Nothing conveys the character and soul of a city more than its people, and that’s why so many of the top travel photo pros work people into the majority of their shots. The next time you’re feeling disappointed with your travel shots, it’s probably because you’re looking at cold buildings and empty streets. Add people and everything changes (for the better).

Candid shots of some of the locals make a nice addition to your travel shots, but if you have too many of them, they start to look less like travel photos and more like surveillance photos. To get those close-up, fascinating personal shots, you’ll need to get some of the locals to pose for you. One of the best tricks for getting people to stop what they’re doing and pose for you is to get them to let you take the first shot. When they see that I have a camera, I smile at them, hold up the camera with my finger on the shutter, and nod my head as if to say, “Is it okay if I take your picture?” Most of the time, they smile and nod back, and pause just long enough to let me snap one photo. Then I immediately turn the camera around and show them the photo on the camera’s LCD monitor. Once they see that photo on your LCD, it kind of breaks down a barrier, because everybody loves a photo (especially if they’re the subject), and they’re usually more than happy to pose for a few more.

A Surefire Way to Get Them to Pose (Buy Stuff)
If you’re uncomfortable with the “lift-and-nod” technique I outlined above, here’s one that can’t miss—find somebody selling something and buy one. If you’re in a market, and you buy something from a vendor, you can bet that they’ll pose for a quick picture or two, because now you’re not just some tourist with a camera, you’re one of their customers. This one works like a charm.

When the weather gets cloudy and overcast, don’t pack up your gear—this is the time to shoot people on the street, open-air markets, stained glass windows (which look great under cloudy skies), and close-ups of architecture (as long as you do your best to avoid including any of that gray, cloudy sky). Cobblestone streets are great to shoot right after it has rained, and flowers photograph great under the shade that comes from a cloudy sky. Plus, if the sky gets really nasty, it may be a great time to shoot the sky itself. If it’s just a flat gray, it’s boring. But if a storm is on the way, the dark clouds can make an interesting subject, or add to a boring subject just with the shadows and mystery they bring.

What to Do If Your Room Doesn't Have a View
If you can’t get a room with a view (see next tip), try these: (1) See if there’s a restaurant or lounge at the top of the hotel&mdashyou can bet it has plenty of great views, and they may let you shoot there at dusk, before they start serving dinner. (2) See if you can take a few shots from the rooftop. Strike up a rapport with the concierge (give him a big tip) and you’ll be amazed at the doors that will open.

Everybody wants to have a “room with a view,” and now you have even more motivation to ask for just that, because your hotel room can be a wonderful platform to shoot the city from. When you check in, ask for a room on the highest available floor and be prepared for some amazing opportunities to unfold right outside your window. If you don’t have a balcony, or a window you can open, you can shoot right through the window if you follow these three rules: (1) Turn off any lights in your hotel room—they’ll cause reflections in the glass that can show up in your photos—and (2) put your lens as close to the glass as possible (I keep a lens hood on my lenses, so I put the lens hood right on the glass itself. If you think you’ll be doing this a lot, you can buy a rubber lens hood, which runs from around $5 on up). And, (3) you can often use a polarizing filter to cut the reflections in the glass, but since you lose some light, you might need to shoot on a tripod, which makes getting right against the glass that much trickier. (I’m not even going to count this last one as a rule, because I hope it goes without saying, but... don’t use your flash.)

Great shots of cityscapes don’t happen at 2:00 in the afternoon. If you want that killer shot of the city skyline, wait until about 30 minutes after sunset and shoot at twilight. The sky will usually be a rich, dark blue and the lights of the city will all be on, creating that magical photographic combination that creates the type of cityscapes you’ve always dreamed of taking. Now that you know what time to shoot, there’s one more key to making this type of shot work, and that is you absolutely, positively must take this type of low-light shot with a tripod. Your shutter is going to have to stay open for a full second or more, and if you’re not on a tripod, you’re going to wind up with a blurry mess.

Taking the Cityscape Lights Shot Up a Notch
If the city you’re shooting is near water, try to position yourself so that water comes between you and the city (for example, try shooting from a bridge). That way, you see reflections of the city lights in the water, which can add a tremendous amount of visual interest. This is another one of those “can’t miss” travel shots, and what an impact it makes when friends, family, and even other photographers see your city-at-twilight-reflected-in-the-water shot.

If you travel to a famous city, your friends and family back home will be expecting shots of that city’s most famous landmarks. For example, if you go to Paris, you’d better come back with some Eiffel Tower shots (cliché as they may seem), because people expect it. If you don’t come back with some Eiffel tower shots, they’ll be so distracted by what you didn’t shoot that they won’t pay attention to what you did shoot. So, get those out of the way first—shoot those ones for the folks back home now and get them “in the bag.” That way, you can spend the rest of your time showing the city your way—shooting the people, the local flavor, the customs, and taking shots that speak to the photographer in you. One more thing: When you get back home, and friends and relatives tell you some of your shots look like postcards (and they will), just smile and thank them. Although photographers sometimes tend to look down on travel postcards, your average person doesn’t, so if they tell you your shots “look like postcards,” they’re actually paying you a huge compliment.

If you’re shooting a famous landmark, you can be sure it has already been shot a million times before, so it’s incredibly hard to come back with a photo that hasn’t been seen a million times (it’s not impossible, just really hard). Here are a couple of ideas that might help you bring a fresh look to a landmark that has been shot to death: (1) Don’t make the landmark the subject of your shot. For example, one of my favorite photos of Paris was taken by photographer Doug Merriam, and I love it because the subject is a French couple strolling along, holding hands, but the Eiffel Tower is clearly visible in the background. So, even though you can clearly see the landmark, it’s not the subject, and that really made an impact with me. (2) Try showing the landmark as a reflection in water, or in a store window (picture the window of a Paris bistro with the Eiffel Tower reflecting in it), or the Arc de Triomphe reflecting in the chrome bumper of a French car, or better yet—in its side or rear view mirror. (3) Show only a small part of the landmark—just enough that it suggests the whole. The photo that I’ve taken of the Eiffel Tower that I like the best was taken 20 years ago (on Ektachrome 64 slide film), and it’s of a nearby apartment building with one of the massive legs of the Eiffel Tower rising up behind it. You can’t see anything but that one leg in the background, but you know it’s the Eiffel Tower. It hung framed in my office for years.

Earlier, I mentioned that you want to travel with as little gear as possible, and here’s another reason&mdashyou absolutely, positively want to bring your gear on the plane as a carry-on. If your camera bag is too big and bulky, there’s a good chance it won’t fit in the overhead bin, especially if at some point in your trip you wind up in a smaller regional jet or turboprop with little, if any, overhead space. If you’re thinking of buying a hard case and checking your gear, I’d reconsider. A photographer I know recently got all his checked gear stolen—lenses, camera bodies, flashes, the works! When he arrived at his destination and opened his case, it was completely empty. Keep your gear down to a minimum, take a small camera bag, and take it with you on the plane as a carryon, and you’ll avoid a lot of stress and complications, and possibly having to replace all of your gear.

Bring Extra Batteries
When you’re in an unfamiliar city, the last thing you want to waste your time doing is searching for batteries (believe me, I learned this one the hard way), so make sure one thing you do bring with you is plenty of extra batteries for your flash unit and your camera (at the very least, recharge your camera battery every single night, because if your battery runs out, that’s the end of the shoot).

Take a look at any great travel magazine and in every feature about a charming city, you’ll always find a photo of its food. Trying new dishes is one of the most fun things about traveling to a new destination, so why wouldn’t you include it in your photographs? Watch the expressions of people who look at your album when they come across a photo of a great-looking dish—do that once, and you’ll always “shoot the food.” Your best opportunities will be during the day, especially if you ask to sit near a window (to catch some of that gorgeous natural window light) or outside (preferably under an umbrella or awning, so you can shoot in shade). If you’ve got a white tablecloth (which is likely), you’ve got a great background to shoot on—just remove distracting items from around the dish as much as possible. Also, the classic food shots you see in these magazines generally have two things in common: (1) They generally use a very shallow depth of field (where the front of the plate is in focus and the back is somewhat out of focus). To get this effect, use the lowest f-stop possible (f/4, f/2.8, or even lower if you can). And, (2) shoot plates that have great presentation (in other words, shoot food that’s beautifully arranged on the plate, which usually comes from higher-end restaurants). Desserts often are presented nicely, as are appetizers and sushi, and keep an eye out for anything served in a unique-looking dish.