How do you take good photos on a cycling holiday? Because when you get home after the trip, beautiful photos are an extra gift to remember. There is a lot to learn, and if you are really good (we are not), taking photos is a piece of cake. But if you don’t know how or what, you’ll see all sorts of features on your phone or on your camera and think: how do I do that? We have briefly written down 5 tips that can help you take a beautiful, Instagram worthy photo to create. One of those that everyone says: wow, how did you do that? So here are our 5 tips to create a good cycling holiday photo to make!
1. Get up early, go to bed late
The best time of day to take a photo is the ‘golden hour’. In short: this is the edge of the day, when the sun rises and sets. In the first or last hour (the golden hour), the light is less intense, much warmer, and you can take those photos that you always want to take. magazines Definitely a good tip for a clear summer day, because otherwise you’ll get photos with very bright light. In itself, it’s cool, but not quite as beautiful.
Also a tip: you get prettier pictures if a cloud appears from time to time. They also look better in the photos than just a starkly blue sky. The famous photographer Alain Rumpf I included that as a tip.
2. Create depth in your photos
Often we see photos where you mainly see the person in question or, for example, photos of a beach with the sea. You have no idea how far it is from A to B; you miss the depth in the photo. The simplest tip is: place something in the foreground of the photo, which creates depth. That could be picking up a piece of grass or placing a pole/sign in the photo, which creates the sense of depth. See two examples below.
3. Perspective
Perspective is very important. Of course you can just take all the photos you take ‘standing still’. But for example, by moving your knees or finding a spot just above the road, you create a different perspective and can turn a beautiful photo into a stunning one. Especially in the mountains, it can help to stand a little higher. That way you can also capture the background much better. That’s often what’s most amazing to see. Take a look at the examples below. By standing somewhere else (or flying 😉 you get a much better picture than if you had stayed at the same level.
Equipment is also on hand here. You don’t get these photos so easily with a phone call. You need a good camera: often with a zoom lens, a good wide-angle lens or one that can handle a high ISO without getting grainy.
4. Place your subject outside the center
The classic ‘mistake’ in a holiday photo is placing the subject right in the middle. To make a photo a bit more ‘exciting’, it is best to place the subject at one third of the frame. Those guide lines on your phone or camera are there for a reason. Anyway, not dead centre. You can also play with the lines on the road, as you can see below. Lines disappear towards the (bottom) corners of the photo. That makes a photo exciting.
5. Editing
The difference between a nice photo and a beautiful photo is the post-processing. Nowadays there are so many possibilities to edit a photo. Let’s be honest: that doesn’t have to be an extreme drastic action. You can work with filters on Instagram, but it’s more fun to play a bit yourself. You can use the ‘auto improve’ feature in Photoshop, Lightroom or even the Photos app from Apple. That really saves a lot of time. After that, it’s time to find the right presets. What often helps is a little tweaking of the saturation, contrast, and exposure, and you’ll quickly get a better result.
6. BONUSTIP
If you ever think: ‘where is that RAW term for anyway?’ then you should remember this tip. In RAW format Much more information and color information is stored from a photo than in JPEG format. Advantage? Photos with much more color depth that also offer many more editing options. Of course, those photos also take up more space on your camera, but if you have the option: shoot in RAW and Lightroom will help you out!
Questions & tips
Do you have any questions about this route, or have you been there yourself? Share them here. We read everything and usually respond within a few days.