Traveling Photograpy

What is Traveling Photography?

It is never easy to define exactly what the traveling photography is. Is it taking a few photographs as memories during holidays spent abroad? Is it leaving for some time to get lost in the depths of a country and document the inhabitants’ life which is radically different from ours ? Is it riding one’s bike and cycle a few miles far from home to discover and take photographs of new landscapes?

Between all these options, there are thousands of possibilities, all them included in the frame of the traveling photography. “L’aventure est-elle au coin de la rue ?” (Is adventure around the corner?) Jacques Dutronc sang. And he was not wrong because each trip always starts from the moment you walk out the door with your backpack to go to another place for a few days, months, or years. The first steps are always the scariest/most exciting ones and this unique sensation defines each travel departure.

As a photographer, it is essential to keep some important points in mind to enjoy one’s trip to the most and to take successful photographs. and that requires of course a good preparation before the trip.

Preparation Before The Trip

First of all, I invite you to use an equipment that you know and master. You will automatically feel more comfortable in the trip. Knowing your camera body, such as a Canon or Sony, and its lenses, anticipating the necessary batteries as well as the chargers, preparing your analogue films in zipped plastic bags, your lightmeter or memory cards and material to clean up the lenses. These are the basics and I’d rather remind you of that.

I also invite you to bring sometimes another camera (a smaller one) that you use less frequently and that you wish to manipulate for the first time. When you go out of your comfort zone and lifestyle, it allows you to also create with new tools. I often had beautiful surprises while testing cameras on traveling, only “to try it”.

For the film photographers, I invite you to test new films, to push a few ones or to expose them for the highlights for example. I often feel that we are more open to other tools or other techniques while traveling because we are quite forced to be more open-minded, deprived from our habits and our conceptions of every day’s life.

As far as I’m concerned, the first time that I took an film camera with me on a trip as a second body (with a few films), it radically changed my way to take photographs. From this day on, I have never taken digital bodies anymore, far preferring expressing myself through analogue grains while remaining more connected to my en- vironment (instead of always checking my photographs on a screen). My relationship to traveling, to the landscapes but mostly to people changed deeply after that. For anything in the world, I would leave again on a trip with a digital camera. From now on, a middle-sized analogue camera with two lenses follows me everywhere.

I also recommend you not to burden yourself too much. A mobile and free traveller is a happy traveller. That is naturally no easy task for a photographer but think carefully when packing. Each element of your luggage that you take out relieves you from a worry (or from a potential loss).

Think minimalism.

I know by experience that it is not easy. Don’t take too many clothes for example, keep only the necessary items according to your desti- nation. There are often laundries everywhere in the world and even in places that you would not have imagined, there will probably be people hand washing their laundry, so it is a great opportunity to go out and create contacts with inhabitants.

Choose backpacks over suitcases, you will be a lot more mobile and reactive, this can sometimes help you a lot in some cases (when getting off the train or the taxi on damaged roads or even when disembarking a small boat).

As far as I’m concerned, I have a 40L backpack with my clothes/ toilet case and a smaller backpack of 25-30L that I carry in front with my camera equipment. With all my stuff well separated, I have access to the essential material at any time and I can go shooting in a few seconds after putting my clothes bag on the floor.

Always keep your camera bag with you. On planes, buses and taxis. your camera bag and you are inseparable. Always keep it out of sight and out of reach. A simple rule to always respect.

Hand Check Your Camera

Never put your camera material in your checked baggage, never. X-rays of checked baggage are very powerful and can damage your films, besides you risk losing your material in case of baggage loss. However, no risk for your films below 800 speed during X-rays controls. For the films of more than 800 speed, I invite you to ask an agent to manually check. But know that most of modern X-ray machines are safe up to 800 speed film. I have already taken 800 speed film through multiple X-ray without any effect.

Keep in mind that with camera material, you will have to spend more time being controlled than common travelers. Anticipate a little bit so you are not late. If you are lucky enough, you will even be able to exchange a few jokes with the TSA staff.

Use Your Network And Social Media

I try more and more to use social networks to connect with a few people from the place I go to. These people know their city well or their country, but they know especially other people who know someone who could help you on a certain point.

A few years ago, I did not use social networks. But I guarantee you that after trying them, I’ve had very beautiful surprises. From contact to contact, encounter to encounter, I was able to strike up beautiful friendships with people from different countries whom I shared strong moments with.

Be Friendly, Curious And Adopt A Positive Attitude

If you have a positive attitude, if you are curious, you will meet a lot of people very easily during your trip. These exchange moments are privileges to have access to hitherto unseen places or to allow you to take photographs of beautiful portraits.

I cannot number the times when I got invited to share tea or a meal or even to spend the night in somebody’s home. These are often unique and very rich experiences that you can extract touristic photographs from.

Respect the local customs and people above all and take your cam- era out only after having a visual contact with your subject. This is a basic rule that allows you to exchange and to connect easily with the inhabitants, and you will get stunning photographs as a bonus.

By following this advice, you will no longer be a photographer who is shooting life moments or people, but you are simply a well- integrated person living amongst others. And this changes abso- lutely everything: for the inhabitants of the place, for you and your experience of this precise moment, but also it changes the result in photographs.

Keep in mind that the photograph is not compulsory. However, the human exchange is so you can enjoy those precious moments to the fullest, far from home.

Leave Place For the Unknown

Do not plan your trip too much. Or just less than previous trips. Let you be carried away by the encounters, the opportunities that appear throughout the trip. you will see that you will anticipate less, you will be living the moment more and new choices will appear spontaneously as you will have the possibility to choose on the spot which place to go to next or which direction to take.

This way of letting things go is not easy when you are not used to it but the choices that are offered to you become infinite and you will live unique experiences. (there will also be unpleasant moments, but you might keep them as nice memories on the long-term).

I have for example discovered magic and off the beaten track places only by changing direction at the last minute thanks to the advice of an inhabitant that I met in a back shop.

When you travel, I recommend you create your own experience and to follow your instinct. There will never be wrong choices because, worst case scenario, you will learn from your mistakes and, best case scenario, you will live a unique adventure that you would never have lived if you had prepared the trip.

I also like to remember that you should not focus on the destination. In the end, it is not the destination that matters but the journey to get there

Article From Belle Lumière Volume XVIII

Sylvain Bouzat is a french wedding photographer and a documentary traveling film photographer based in France. His film work is based on the Human Connection. Sylvain grants a lot of importance to giving meaning to his photographs by properly encountering inhabitants of a country. His totally naive but benevolent look on the world allows him to feel comfortable in many places and with different people.

At this very moment, he is probably already thinking of his next travel destination from which he will bring back powerful and meaningful photographs.

sylvain-bouzat-photographe-mariage.com
@sylvainbouzat.film