Are We Counting the Days Until Vacation Time?

So, how many days until your next vacation? For myself and my husband it is approximately 19 days until we head off to Jasper for our 16th Anniversary. Now some of you may not think a weekend in Jasper counts as a vacation. I guess it all depends on what your definition is. According to the Oxford Canadian Dictionary vacation is defined as follows; "a period of several days or weeks spent away from work or school etc. used especially for recreation and travel; a holiday." I would go further in my definition to include any time away from the regular routine of life. So even though we are only gone for a couple of days it is very much out of our regular routine and away from work and home. I know some of you may be thinking - how does this go with my theme of photography? Well I'll tell you. No matter where I go I almost always have my camera with me. You never know when an opportune moment will arise. Also when going away I will always make time for photos and Jasper is no different.

The idea that I wanted to share with vacations and photography though is this: Never just take one picture of an idea unless the subject moves or you are just passing through and there is no time for more than one. If you look at some of the examples I've included this time you'll begin to understand my statement a bit more clearly. Take this scene on the right here. This was taken at Athabasca Falls just out side of Jasper with a 300 mm lense. It looks nice and I was able to get nice and close safely. (Safety will be another topic down the road). But what if I just left it at that? Would another angle have been better? Should I have zoomed out and alowed more of the scene? Without exploring these possibilities you really don't know what you are going to like when you get your photos into post production (after all there will have been so many by the end of your vacation). So I looked around after taking this exposure, which I do like and have put into a special book that I had made through Snapfish.com., and look what I found for another scene very close to this area... (picture to the left). If I had just snapped and ran so to speak I would have only had one picture of a area that is continously changing by natures erosion. I now have more than one to look at and to choose from when I put together a nature scene portfolio. Or in my holiday scrapbook I can now choose more or less of what I want to show of the area.

This brings me to another point with vacation photographs. Take a travel journal with you and take the time to journal things like locations, dates, history of the area, the weather, and for the avid photographer - camera settings so you can document your photos more acuately later. Why would I want to document my photos with camera settings? The reasoning is simple. What if you were in a creative mood and tried a few things out to see what they would look like? Then discover that you like the affect you created but now can not recall how you created that exposure to duplicate it again down the road. Learning to document your work early will save time in experimentation later. This also helps you encourage other budding photographers if you know what you did incase they would like to try something similar with you as their inspiration.

I could go on about more vacation photography tips and ideas, but I'll save that for another time. For now this food for thought has enough to mull over.

See you next time :)