To celebrate the launch of my new PDF ebook ‘101 Tips for Travel Photography’ and because July and August are top travel months worldwide, I’ll post 10 tips from the book over the month of July. In this fourth tip, I talk about how you can approach people to make their portrait.
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How to approach people… can’t buy you happiness
“No” you have, “Yes” you can get…
This is tip #28 from the book ‘101 Tips for Travel Photography’: How to approach people. “No you have”, “Yes you can get”.
One of the most frequently asked questions about travel photography is how you approach people to portray them. It helps to imagine that you have nothing to lose, except maybe a small dent in your ego: “No” you have, “yes” you can get. Take it from someone who once had to sell life insurance door-to-door for an entire week as part of a job training: there are worse things to try to sell than a photo. That week never seemed to end! By comparison, asking complete strangers to photograph them is a walk in the park. Below are a few tips:
Watch your non-verbal communication: make sure you come across as friendly and non-threatening. Also pay attention to your intonation.
Most people understand what you mean when you smile and in the mean time wave your camera at them. I then pause briefly and wait for a response whether I can continue or not.
Respect it when the other doesn’t want to be photographed. It’s no use to steal a photo when the subject is looking cross at you.
While cycling through Iran, where I made the photo on the left, I had an Iranian friend write in Farsi “Can I take your photo?” on a sticker that I had stuck to my lens hood. I then showed the lens hood to my potential subjects. I also brought a card (again in Farsi) with more explanation about who I was and what I was planning to do with the photos.
Try to memorize a few words of the language, even if only phonetically. For example, in Hindi I can (more or less) say “Look here please”, “Look over there” and “Look into the light.”
Finally, in this app era, we shouldn’t forget our smartphones: a free app like Google Translate allows you to translate sentences online. For foreign scriptures, such as Hindi, you will also be shown a phonetic translation and you can even have the sentence pronounced.
“I’d like to add one tip to the 101 tips: buy this book!”
Did you like this tip? In my new ‘101 Tips for Travel Photography’ you can find 100 more! This PDF ebook is available in two editions: with the Standard Edition, you get the 252 page PDF ebook as a download but 90% of buyers opt for the Deluxe Edition. The Deluxe Edition is currently on sale (US$39.95 instead of US$59.95). So, for only US$ 10 more than the Standard Edition (US$29.95), you’ll also receive access to a 3 hour video tutorial in which I show you how I photographed and edited 10 of my favourite images from the book.
Here’s a sampler of the layout and the contents of this 252 page PDF ebook.
Included in the Deluxe Edition is this three hour video tutorial in which I explain my approach to and the editing of 10 of my favourite images from the book.