Nomadic Vision

Posts Tagged ‘Travel Photography’

Over the last four years, Tina and I have written photography related articles for Pix magazine – South Africa’s most successful photography magazine. In doing so, we’ve collected over 20 articles related to travel photography. I’ve converted some of the articles into blog posts, but I’ve realized that a blog post is not the ideal vehicle for articles. Blog posts generally work best when they are short. As such, I am creating a section in this blog for articles. These will be the full Pix articles published here a few months after they are published in the magazine.

A have to apologise to friends and family in the design business – I’m responsible for the layout of these aticles (it is not how they appear in Pix) and I am a complete novice when it comes to magazine design and layout.

The articles section will be posted once I have a few articles ready, but for now, here is a taster (click on the show to view the full screen version)…

In August  2010 we opted to do a road trip through Croatia instead of the popular Sail Croatia option. We got to see most of the locations the sail trip stops at, but we also got to see Plitvice Lakes, deep in the interior of Croatia. Just for that reason, I would recommend a self drive trip over the sail trip. Plitvice Lakes is that good.

Pix magazine, a South African, award winning photography magazine has just published their February/March edition with our image on the cover. The picture comes with a story which I thought would be worth telling in this space.

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A padestrain bridge leads to the Salzburg old town, revealing the Salzburg castle in the distant left.

Over the holidays we went for a skiing trip to Austria. Whilst there, we took the opportunity to explore Salzburg. The city has the most beautiful setting I have ever seen. It is surrounded on three sides by mountains. These mountains are no ordinary mountains either. They seem to rise up from nowhere and tower dramatically over the city.

With this picture perfect setting, it should come as no surprise that the city of Salzburg is a remarkably beautiful city. The prominent architecture of the city centre is baroque with a few Gothic styled buildings to break up the uniformity. The centre is one of the best preserved centers north of the Alps and is listed as a UNESCO world heritage site.

A gothic styled church towers over the baroque architecture of the Salzberg old town.

From almost anywhere in the city, the most notable feature is a large castle overlooking the city. This castle is known as the Hohensalzburg Castle and is one of the largest medieval castles in Europe. The castle has never been conquered in battle, only changing hands when it was surrendered without a fight to Napoleon.

As photographers, the best photo opportunities we found were from the top of the castle overlooking the Salzburg old town. The combination of mountain scenery, classic architecture, snow and atmospheric conditions was one of the most visually inspiring scenes I have ever witnessed.

Mountains, sun-rays and snow combine to create a magical scene over Salzburg.

Another great view for photographers is from the pedestrian bridge leading to the old town centre. When the blue hour descends, the old town is lit up and is reflected by the Salzach River (the opening photograph).

The city has two high seasons – predictability, over July and August for the European summer months and also in January/February as a base for skiing. I highly recommend a visit to Salzburg – reserving at least 3 days to experience the city in the best possible lighting conditions.

A scene just outside of Belalp

Nestled in the Swiss Alps, 2100 meters above sea level is a village called Belalp. Belalp is predominantly a ski resort with a peak season in winter. During the summer months, most of Belalp is empty, making it an ideal spot to relax and enjoy the spectacular scenery of the dramatic Swiss Alps.

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If you’ve never ventured into travel photography, you may not have realized that travel photography is one of the most difficult photography genres in which to make a living. We’ve been traveling for two years but what you probably haven’t realized is that all of our trips are self funded. Even though we sell some of our work to magazines and occasionally companies, the income we receive is a fraction of our total expense.

So why do I do it?

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Tina exploring the Greek island of Kefalonia in the best way possible.

I’ve figured that there are two types of people interested in this blog. The first type is friends and family interested in us and where we’ve traveled to. The second is other photographers/travelers, using our images and stories to help plan their own trips.

Up until now, our portfolio has been the best place to see our travel photography but it is limiting. Our travel photography portfolio represents the best of our images but you may have noticed that it does not get updated very often and it is not very comprehensive – we’ve limited the portfolio to a maximum of 15 images per category (the maximum amount most people look at before losing concentration).

I’ve been trying to work out how I can keep our portfolio current and comprehensive. The solution came to me with the help of a friend and amazing web designer, Shane Rielly. He showed me how to incorporate a flickr gallery into a wordpress blog. I went about setting up different galleries, using the flickr engine and now every time I upload pictures to flickr, it will automatically be added to our portfolio, including the photo information.

So here is an up to date, comprehensive portfolio of places that we’ve visited. You may notice that Kefalonia and Croatia are quite sparse. This will change as I get to process the images and upload them to flickr. In time, we will be adding video content and related travel posts.

So if you ever need help planning a trip or you’re interested in our travels, bookmark this page.

Both Tina and I love traveling, but we don’t always share the same tastes. I tend to go for the colder, wilder spots (Iceland being my ideal) whilst Tina wants to visit hotter, busier spots (the Greek islands being her ideal). To solve this potential problem, we have turns picking our destinations.

I’ve learned to travel to Tina destinations with an open mind. I’ve always been pleasantly surprised by her choices.

Her latest choice proved to be a bit more of a challenge. Paris. Why would anyone living in London want to visit Paris. What is so special about Paris that so many people are mesmerized by it. I had seven days to find out.

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