Inside: Learn tips on how to take great family travel photos all while taking great vacation photos while you are traveling with your family. These family travel photography tips will be helpful for better vacation pictures when it comes to how to pose for for vacation pictures all the way to displaying travel photos!
Family vacations are packed full of precious moments, and it’s perhaps one of the only times in a year that all the family can have fun together without work and everyday stress getting in the way.
Why not capture those special times together in some photographs? They will give you lasting memories to look back and smile over. This article will hopefully provide you with some helpful tips and advice on how to get the best out of your family vacation photos.
Table of Contents
How to Take Great Family Travel Photos
How to Take Good Holiday Photos
A great holiday is one where each family member gets a chance to do something they love or have always wanted to try. It’s great if you can all sit down as a family and plan for each person to choose something that’s special to them. You’ll get a better variety of family photos that way, and you’ll capture your family doing something that makes them happy.
Don’t Plan Too Far Ahead
You may have a head full of ideas about where you and your family are going to visit, and exactly what photos you’ll take when you get there. It’s good to have a plan, but don’t make it so rigid and inflexible that there’s no leeway for sudden changes, such as if a family member gets sick, or if the weather changes for the worst. Don’t spoil the holiday by becoming a drill sergeant who orders everyone else around just to get a good family vacation photo.
Remember, you’re meant to be on vacation, and that means relaxing and letting things happen as they will.
Make it About the People, Not the Place
You can capture a good sense of the place you’re visiting, and still have your family as the main attraction in the image. Choose your background carefully, such as shooting at a street café or in a local market, and you’ll have a sense of place, but it won’t be the sole focus of the image.
Remember to try and avoid shooting in the harsh, midday sun. The hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset give the most golden, soft light. If you want to shoot during the hours of high sun, try and get yourself and family into a shadow to shoot, such as one cast by a building.
If you have a camera-mounted flashgun or a handheld one, you can also shoot in hard sun. You would get your subject to stand or sit with their back to the sun, and shoot with flash to fill in the shadows over the front of them.
How to Pose For Vacation Pictures
Try Candid Shots as Well as Posed Pictures
Posed family photos are ok, but to really capture the moment and the personality of your family, try shooting candid images. Candid shots are where your subject doesn’t know that you are shooting them, and that means that they act far more naturally and spontaneously than if they knew you were taking a photo of them.
Get better vacation pictures of your kids while they are playing or swimming, and the same goes for older family members! Family mealtimes when everyone is talking and laughing together are often great places to get some good candid shots in the bag.
See the World Through Your Family’s Eyes
Give your camera to your kids or another family member for a while, and concentrate on relaxing and enjoying yourself. You’ll get different styles and perspectives of the action, and you get to be in the shots as well.
Try not to tell them what to do or take over when other people are taking the pictures. If it’s not how you would do it, so what? Let them enjoy their own experiences. You never know, they might discover a hidden talent for photography!
Capture the Quiet Moments
Try and shoot some images of your family relaxing as well as the action-packed moments too. Get some shots of them relaxing on the beach, reading a book or enjoying an ice cream.
You can get some great shots at sunset, with them sitting quietly and watching the sun go down.
Ditch the Camera
You don’t always want to be planning and taking pictures – it’s your vacation too! Take some days to leave your camera behind and just have fun as a family without looking for the next photo opportunity. Your family will also enjoy spending time with you without your camera.
Learn to Display Travel Photos
Don’t Over Edit
There’s a temptation to go all-out on the photo editing and special effects once you get your images in Photoshop, Luminar or other photo editing software, but often less is more. When it comes to adding effects and presets, think subtle. If you find Photoshop too daunting to edit in, try using a simple platform like BeFunky.
Print the Best Photos
When you were a kid, do you remember getting the old family albums out and looking through all the old shots of you and your family?
These days, very few people seem to print their images, preferring to keep them on their computer, tablet or smartphone. That’s fine, but I often think that today’s families are missing out on that simple pleasure of physically looking through a family photo album either by themselves of with other family members.
Why not start a tradition of printing the best shots from your vacation, getting a nice-looking photo album and keeping your memories in there for future generations to look at?
Terri says
My husband and I have a bad habit of not taking enough pictures. Sometimes I wish we would just hire a photographer to follow us around for a day and get good shots. But this is great information. I love the tip about what to do if you must take photos in the harsh sun. For some reason we definitely tend to be out and about more often at that time.