Trip Alertz For Jetsetters, By Jetsetters
If the ‘travel’ albums across your various social media accounts and photography portfolios are full of pictures of you standing in front of famous landmarks and smiling (and sometimes even wearing the same clothes), you need help getting out of the box. And don’t get me started on those people posing to prop up the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or the queue of folk waiting for their chance to stand on one of the bollards outside the Louvre to make it look like they’re holding their finger tip on the peak of the glass pyramid. How completely unoriginal (side note, I’ve done both of those things and I hate myself for it). Let’s look at a couple of ways to make your photography a little ‘family photo album’ and a bit more ‘Look my cool photography’.
Film on film
This is a great idea that I’ve seen a few times but it still hasn’t really taken off as a standard format (probably due to the time involved). If you’re staying in one spot for a day, you can plan to take photos using film cameras in the daytime that can be developed quickly, and hold that photo up in frame to take a second shot that evening, showing how the place looks in the day time and the night time in one shot. Clever, huh? You could even try to put a friend in the centre of the daytime image facing to the left, and place the same friend in the night time image looking to the right, such that they are looking at themselves (and maybe smiling and waving) in the final version. That’s one way to make a photo in any city look a thousand times more fun.
Look into my crystal ball
Actually, any shiny ball will do. The aim is to place the ball in a well-lit position such that the reflection of the thing you wish to photograph is clear. You can shoot from close up or even zoom. The effect will be to create a hanging mirror image world that is bent out of perspective and dreamlike. Placing the ball in a small pool of water can also help to add more reflections that could potentially include the sky, giving the viewer a strange 360 degree concept of the scene. People love to flick their eyes between mirror images to see how things look different in different lights and from different perspectives. Give the people what they want.
