Travel photography: the complete picture

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This was published 14 years ago

Travel photography: the complete picture

In the frame ... the right accessories can improve your travel photos.

In the frame ... the right accessories can improve your travel photos.Credit: Oliver Strewe/Lonely Planet

The digital age has revolutionised the way photos are made. One of the features of this brave new world is the availability of various camera add-ons that make achieving your creative vision easier. These devices give the serious amateur the sort of creative control that was once available only to experts. While point-and-shoot cameras are ubiquitous, they take a lot of creative control out of the hand of the user. If you want to let your imagination run free, nothing beats a single lens reflex camera (SLR). Here are a few add-ons that will help turn your travel snaps into screensavers.

Want a picture of the Taj Mahal by moonlight or a waterfall with that ghostly flow effect? You're going to need a tripod – but who wants to lug a huge hunk of metal around? Enter the Joby Gorillapod, your flexible friend.

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Its three multi-segmented legs bend and rotate like octopus tentacles.

Just 24 centimetres high, Gorillapod can be used as a conventional tabletop tripod but, better still, you can wrap it around a lamp post, a branch, a railing or any other solid piece of street or forest furniture.

There are several versions, from the Gorillapod Focus, which weighs just 500grams and can support a load of five kilograms, to the light version, the Gorillapod Flexible Mini-Tripod, all you'll need for a point-and-shoot. Whichever version you choose, consider a ballhead – it extends the Gorillapod's versatility, and is easier to pack and carry.

See joby.com

Digital images on your computer screen are fine and dandy but nothing beats a printed image to pass around. The Polaroid PoGo Instant Mobile Printer is the digital photographer's instant print shop.

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Plug the 12cm x 7cm PoGo into your camera via its USB cable and, provided the camera is PictBridge-enabled (and most are), hey presto, an instant print. The PoGo is also Bluetooth-enabled, so you can even print images made on most mobile phones. Prints are smallish – just 5cm x 7.5cm – and the PoGo prints with inkless technology, using a thermal technique to activate special glossy paper. Expect to pay about $200 in Australia but you can save a bundle at amazon.com.

See polaroid.com/pogo

Got some great shots from that trekking expedition in Nepal? Now, is that Mount Everest, Lhotse, Nuptse or Ama Dablam in the middle of the frame? If such questions drive you crazy, what you need is a GPS device that tells you exactly where you were when you pressed the trigger.

There are plenty of GPS devices that will synch with your camera and embed your latitude and longitude into the EXIF data that sit alongside each image as a digital caption. But they're pricey and most will only work with high-end digital SLRs.

Another option is the Holux M-241 GPS Datalogger. Switch it on and, when the Holux locks on to three or more NAVSTAR satellites, it computes the track you're taking, your speed, the time and latitude and longitude. You can download this information to your PC using geotagging software and cross-reference with the time stamp on your images to show exactly where a shot was taken. The Holux lacks some of the fancier features of a fully fledged GPS device but, then, the price is similarly downsized.

See bhphotovideo.com

Fitting a Lensbaby to the front of your camera is like putting your creative impulses on steroids. Described as a “selective focus lens”, the Lensbaby has a front element that tilts and shifts so only a small part of the image is in focus – the eyes of your subject, for example, or a single poppy in a field of wildflowers – throwing the rest of the image into a wild blur.

The effect is much more startling than selecting a wide aperture on a telephoto lens. You control the extent and position of the blur via the aperture and focus. The Lensbaby system is slightly fiddly and it only works with an SLR camera but the results put the wow factor into your shots.

See lensbaby.com.au

A wireless shutter release is not something you're going to need every day but there are times when nothing else will do. On a recent cycling trip, I clamped my camera to the lower frame of my bike to get a shot of the spinning wheel in the foreground and luscious countryside behind. The wireless release allowed me to fire the shutter without taking my hands off the handlebars. The model I use is a Zigview, plugged into a Nikon.

This is an infrared device with a claimed range of 100 metres, which could be handy if you ever want to set up your camera near a dead zebra and wait for lions to come along. Otherwise you're not likely to need that sort of range. The connection on the Zigview seems a little flimsy but it works fine and it's inexpensive.

See bhphotovideo.com

The author has field-tested all this equipment, purchased at market prices at his own expense.

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