Seascape photos and travel reportage: our tips for bringing home your best holiday memories

Smartphones and tablets are now part of everyone’s daily life, with the great advantage that we always have a camera in our pocket or bag. We take photos every day and share them on social media with our friends. But what is the downside? Often, when we go travelling, we settle for our smartphone to capture the best moments, at the risk of ending up with low-quality photos that all look the same.

In this new Pixtury guide, we will give you some useful tips for taking quality photos without the need for lots of equipment, so you can bring home beautiful memories of the places you have visited.

If you are looking for inspiration to decorate your walls, remember to take a look at our collection of pictures online to find the right image for you! With this in mind, throughout this guide we will also show you some examples of travel prints and posters, like the ones below.

Travel reportage: a few secrets

Every place we visit has its own character and atmosphere, and if we want our travel photos to bring back the scents and sensations we found there, we need to engage our minds and manage to capture the essence of a city, a landscape or a beach. Our photos should trigger memories and draw us in to relive every single moment. So our first tip is to focus on the things that struck you most, whether a mountain or a street: don’t just photograph the most famous monuments or the most visited spots, but explore and enrich your photos with your own personal point of view. Always carry your camera with you and seize every moment!

Here are some photos that have managed to freeze the action in an instant.

Holiday photos of the sea and landscapes: watch your composition

Composition techniques help you improve the quality of your photos and make them more striking. If a photograph is not visually interesting, it will not be emotionally engaging either, and it is unlikely to catch the viewer’s eye.

The first thing to remember for a good composition is that every element in an image matters. Everything counts. When framing a shot, it is good practice to look at every last detail of the scene in front of you and select the elements you want to include in your photo. If something distracts from the main subject, it is best to leave it out.

If you look closely at photographs and paintings, you will notice that they very often follow the so-called rule of thirds, whereby the subject is placed off-centre in the frame. To use this rule, imagine straight lines dividing the image into three equal parts, both horizontally and vertically. The points where these lines intersect are the “power points”, and that is where the subject should go. The image will be more dynamic, and the viewer’s gaze will not stop at the subject alone but will explore the rest of the photo too.

You can see how the rule of thirds has been used in the following photographs.

Seascape photos: how to shoot at sunrise and sunset

The best light for outdoor photography is in the early morning or late afternoon, when the sun is low and, lighting subjects from the side, casts long shadows that give depth to the image.

If you want to take a beautiful photo of the sea at dawn, when everything is calm and the water is crystal clear, get up early and scout the location to find the right framing and the best angle, and to study the atmosphere of the landscape. You will be able to capture the beauty of the place and the peace of the sea before it is full of people wandering into your shot. The start of a new day is a magical moment, and the awakening of every living creature in the scene will give your photos a unique flavour.

Here are some examples of artistic photographs taken at first light that you can use for your sea prints and pictures.

And what about sunsets? There are countless photos of the sea at sunset, and not all of them are interesting. They are often clichéd and predictable, but we at Pixtury want to give you a few tips to make your sunset shots more captivating.

At dusk, as the sun is about to sink below the horizon, the colours become intense and warm and the scene takes on bold hues. In a sunset photo, too, it is a good habit to apply the rule of thirds, placing the horizon on the lower or upper third. The first option is recommended if the sky is the most interesting element and the one that deserves attention, while the second is preferable if the sea is the most beautiful part to capture. Another tip is to use “frames”: people, trees, rocks or houses placed around the sunset can make the photo more interesting.

On Pixtury you will find lots of sunset photos that you can use for landscape prints or pictures; here are a few examples.

Did you find this new Pixtury guide useful? Share it with your friends!

We would also like to remind you that, in our collection, you will find canvas pictures for sale of all the images featured in this article.