Travel has gained much-deserved popularity in the past two decades. Traveling has now become a means of therapy, entertainment, leisure, work, and even the purpose of life.
This has also given birth to travel influencers and a whole industry online that profits from perfect travel pictures. Every day people like you and I feel the pressure to participate in this culture of excellent pictures, bodies, poses, and outfits.
Vacations used to be all about making memories, de-cluttering your head, and winding down. There was little technology, and you were away from the hum-drum of the world, enjoying the views of a vast mountain range.
But now, we have technology in our pockets and our hands. Even to de-stress our life, we capture every memory as we create it.
In the process, we are often tireless in our pursuit of getting the best shot so that the moment can be perfect in our memory too.
Here are some tips that you can use to make yourself look fabulous in your vacation photos:
Try to Tell A Story
Anyone can click vacation photos with a beautiful background, but the secret to a good picture lies in telling a story, something that people can interpret and understand. Although you can add captions to your images, you want the photo itself to be able to tell the story as well.
For that, you can play around with your pose, expressions, setting, composition, and a little bit of editing.
Be in the Spotlight
Take vacation photos in a spot where there is enough light falling on your face and body, making you see fully with every detail.
Great lighting can make or break a picture. Apart from that, it also makes your skin look great and the colors in your outfit pop.
You can stand directly in the sunlight for great lighting and shoot at sunset, aka golden hour.
Follow The Rule Of Thirds
Not just for vacation photos but for every kind of photography, the rule of thirds is essential. The frame is divided into three lines, horizontally as well as vertically. The focus of the picture lies at the intersection of these lines.
This makes photos look better as the human brain does not have to struggle to look at them. To use this, you can switch on the grid on your camera or phone.
Plan Outfits That You Feel Confident In
Looking confident and appearing optimistic in vacation photos has a lot to do with feeling confident in what you’re wearing.
For confidence in posing all day long, wear outfits that suit you best and feel like skin to you. You can also research a little bit about fashion and make your vacation wardrobe exactly how you envision it.
Again, you can keep your outfits simple to crowd the picture with their overwhelming design or patterns.
Make the Composition of Your Vacation Photos Interesting
More than striking the right pose, wearing the proper outfit, and having the right equipment, it is about your picture’s composition.
Pay attention to the foreground and the background of the image and complement each other at all. Finding an exciting environment for you to make a picture look much more professionally done.
To know how to get the perfect composition, you can start trying out new things in images and also take help from YouTube, other online courses, and people who know photography.
Get The Right Angle
This is one mistake that most people seem to make these days, taking pictures from their eye level. This makes the person in the frame look shorter and eliminates a lot of their legs.
You can improve it by keeping the camera in the middle. This makes you appear more proportionate in the frame. You can also take pictures from an angle that is slightly below to elongate the legs and the person’s height.
Fix Your Posture
Your posture can make a huge difference when taking a picture. If you slouch and are not standing straight in pictures, you might not look confident and happy.
To make the image look more put together, just fixing your posture can do wonders. So before you start clicking, straighten your spine, pull back your shoulders, and have your chin up for the perfect click.
Play with Your Expressions
Expressions add a lot to the picture, especially when you’re the focal point.
You can try many things with your expressions, such as laughing, staring into the distance, and looking sideways to find what you look best in.
Many influencers are seen smiling slighting and gazing downward, but that seems to make you look a bit too amiable and subservient. To appear like the influential person you are, you can look straight into the camera to connect with the audience.
Experiment with Posing
Experimenting with how you pose in pictures not only makes you realize what works best for you but is also great practice in posing.
It is only by posing for vacation photos and changing it up every time you come to know how you like yourself best in pictures.
If you’re new and need ideas, you can follow many travel influencers on Instagram to get an opinion from them.
Editing Pictures
Clicking a great image is only sixty percent of the work done; the rest forty is done in post-production.
Editing can take all the unnecessary elements out of a photograph and elevate it to look exactly like you want it to look. Most people think that editing is just Facetune, where you make yourself look like a completely different person.
With editing skills and color correction, you can develop your style and make your pictures entirely different from how other people would click an image.
To start, you can watch a couple of video tutorials and start playing around with editing apps to see what works best for your pictures.
The Takeaway
These are some of the ways that you can elevate your vacation photos to professionally clicked pictures. For this, you have to practice and know how you like your pictures.
It is also important to remember that photos are meant for your memories and to feel great about yourself.
If you feel great in the image and are truly happy without worry in the world, then you’ll have a beautiful picture for your lifetime. So, the key is just to let go and enjoy yourself to your fullest.
Do you have any tips for looking gorgeous in your vacation photos?
AUTHOR: Mariyam is the editor and founder of The Beautyholic Blog. She has a passion for learning all she can about beauty and wellness. Her articles aim on providing tips for those who improve their looks as well as feel better about themselves. You can check her out on Instagram and Facebook.
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These are all such great tips, thank you for sharing! I always get so cranky while traveling because of the curse of “photos I take of everyone else vs. photos they take of me” — blurry, chopped-off head, finger in frame, etc. I love the idea about the rule of thirds, and will definitely turn the grid on my camera! Maybe that will help others, too 😉 I have been considering getting a Lightroom subscription for better editing, too… any tips about that?
Tegan, I completely understand – used to deal with those issues myself. So, I bought my husband a nice DSLR camera and it seemed to motivate him to improve his photography skills. Now, I get the most beautiful photos from our trips. With regards to Lightroom – I totally recommend it! Opt for the Lightroom/Photoshop subscription for $9.99 per month.
Love your blog!
Such good tips and loss of things I hadn’t previously thought about despite considering myself a fairly good photographer!
Finding the right angle is what my photographer’s weakness. I will definitely share this to my fellow photographers to learn more.
Some fantastic tips here, I always struggle with posing for those ‘instagram perfect’ photos but I am trying. I have also been experimenting lately with editing and I love how my photos look now after a little work in lightroom. Thank you for sharing
Great tips! Thank you!