Nomadic Vision

I often tell people that great travel photos can be captured in their own backyard. Following my own advice, I became a member at Kew Gardens in Richmond, United Kingdom.

This season is the first time I have ever witnessed autumn colours. I had been desperate to try and capture the colours, but incident after incident prevented me from doing so. In an effort to rectify the  situation, I took an evening stroll through Kew Gardens.

I had an hour before the gates closed, so this wasn’t a carefully planned, well executed operation. It was a hit-and-run, shoot as many subjects as I could find with very little thought procedure.

Following the advice of Darwin Wiggett, I used a polarizer and rotated it to give me the maximum colour saturation (brief summary – a polarizer cuts out glare, making colours on leaves and plants more colourful). I didn’t have a tripod with me, so I resorted to using a high ISO (400), a wide angle lens (easier to hand hold without shake and gives more depth of  field) and underexposing images by about half a stop.

I found this style of shooting to be quite freeing. I managed to get quite a variety of different compositions in a relatively short time – something that I wouldn’t have managed if I was using a tripod and graduated ND filters.

One last photo tip – choose one day a week to travel home using a different route and try to capture something you would normally overlook. Over time, you’ll notice potential subjects all around you that you had been overlooking.

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