[trip style = beach + sun]
Today is Canadian Thanksgiving, or as some people put it, "turkey day." In observance of the Canadian national holiday, I'm trading pumpkin pie for pupus, and prose for photos in Maui.
Happy Thanksgiving, and as ALWAYS, I'm grateful for your support of Trip Styler. Your comments on TS posts, and social media shares and interaction are the wind beneath my trip styling wings.
Thank you,
Trish
[photos by @tripstyler]
[trip style = any]
Kirsten Alana {left} is a traveler, writer, and photographer on a quest to experience life to the fullest, and capture it behind the lens. When she's not snapping cityscapes in her home base of NYC, she speaks all over the world about travel photography and iPhoneography. Basically, if you want the 411 on how to photograph a landscape, dish, or subject, she's your gal, and was kind enough to share a few of her pro tips for taking WOWZA vacation photography! Knowing a lot of people are about to leave for fall getaways or are thinking about a winter escape, I thought today would be the perfect time for some vaca-tography 101 {which I'm definitely using while currently in Maui}. By the way, if you're on instagram, her photos make your eyes pop out cartoon-style they're so good...
1/ Your top three tips for shooting landscape photos?
* If it is black and white, make it dynamic and high contrast. Seek to emulate Ansel Adams. You can get away with the whole scene being in focus {shooting at f/11 or even f/22}.
* If you want to capture a place in color, look for a way to give the scene depth, placing some part of your scene that is in the foreground in sharper focus than whatever is in the distance/background. For some reason, depth becomes far more important in color landscape images than in black and white, and is more appealing to the human eye when constructed in this way.
* Include a dynamic sky! The worst thing you can do is have an entirely flat, white sky in a landscape photograph. Fog is different of course, but images with no clouds have nothing to distinguish the sky as an important part of the composition {and usually fall flat}. A stunning sky can set the tone, communicate the weather, give a sense of place---even be the most important part of a photograph.
2/ Snapping people - how do you add depth and interest to the shot?
I've studied Steve McCurry's work---think multiple National Geographic covers--- for a long time and I try to learn from the images of his that I really love. He adds a sense of place to his best images, making it more about WHO the person is than what they look like. Also, my best portraits have been of the people that I know at least on some level. Even when I was a full-time wedding photographer, my best portraits were of the clients who I had been able to know as friends. I attributed that to the fact that I was familiar enough to know them and then be able to express the best version of who I knew in a photograph because of that knowledge.
3/ Can you depend on your iPhone {or Smartphone} for wow-factor travel photos?
Yes! That being said, not out of the box. You have to take the time to learn a smartphone just like you would a point-n-shoot or dSLR camera. Few people can get the most out of any device right away. A smartphone is a complex tool just like any camera.
* To get WOW, you have to work for it and use your tool to its greatest advantage.
* A beautiful image is created by the photographer, their skill and their imagination, it's not created by the device---only captured by it. There's a big difference!
4/ You shoot a lot with your iPhone. What are your fave photo apps?
Currently, I'm really digging Hipstamatic again, I've discovered a love for VSCO CAM, my old standby Camera+ and I like Instagram for sharing but not as much for its filters. Additionally, I often use:
* ProHDR
* Filterstorm
* Over
* Diptic
* moreBeaute2
* AutoStitch
5/ Snapping food, your bite-sized tips?
* My golden rule is always use natural light. Food looks most appetizing captured this way. A steak lit by dramatic, high-contrast, noir style or candlelight does not usually look super appealing---and that's coming from a steak and potatoes kind of girl!
* I like to think of breakfast or lunchtime as the meals that I photograph before eating and dinner is the meal I simply enjoy.
* Also, if you're using an iPhone like I do, the Hipstamatic Foodie Snap pack is simply delightful.
6/ Going through hundreds of snaps at the end of a trip, are there any tricks {aside from using your gut} to decide what photos to feature?
Think about building a framework for the story you want to tell, whether that's in a blog post, an album or a slideshow for your friends and family. Use a variety of images: detail shots, wide shots, maybe an image of you in the place or portraits of people you were with. A well rounded group of photographs has little repetition and a lot of variety. You shouldn't show, or even always keep, every photograph you take.
[photos by @kirstenalana]
[trip style = any]
When she’s not training clients or being trained by her dog Zuzu, Leah writes Healthy On The Road, published the first Wednesday of every month.
At Healthy on the Road we often hail the benefits of walking---easily the most ancient and travel-friendly form of exercise you will ever find.
To the doubters who believe walking shouldn't be considered a valid form of exercise for anyone under the age of 65, I challenge you to consider the words of my favourite talk show host, Ellen Degeneres: “Let your haters be your motivators" and prove the doubters wrong.
The Walking Secret If the benefits of a daily fitness walk could be packaged in a pill, it would be one of the most popular prescriptions in the world. In order to reap the rewards associated with aerobic exercise, we must walker farther, or faster, or both! Ideally, you should aim to get at least 30 minutes of continuous brisk “late for a flight-speed" walking in per day, aiming to accumulate 10,000 steps.
How To Clock 10,000 Steps In addition to your brisk fitness walk which can take place ANYWHERE, seize any opportunity where there's an option to walk instead of drive {aka avoid the airport's moving sidewalk}.
iPhone Saves The Day I used to pedal high praise for the pedometer, a nifty, pager-style gadget often clipped to a pant pocket or waistband. I now accept that I lost many of you at “pager-style gadget!” Not only does this device look a little more out of place than it would have in the '90s, but for many of us, it’s just one MORE thing to remember as we head out the door. iPhones saves the day; to the developer pedometer app, I thank you.
The Go Pedometer This nifty 99 cent app allows you to track your steps even while the phone is in your pocket, as well as tell you the number of calories you’re burning per hour, plus your average speed, current speed and distance traveled. Simply press the start button, put your iPhone in your pocket and off you go!
More Healthy On The Road The 15 Minute 54321 Workout {you can do anywhere!} Keeping Fit In Hotel Hallways Exercises For The Rhythms Of Life Give The Pool A Chance – A Workout In The Water The 20-min Exercise Itinerary Healthy DIY Plane Snacks Hotel Room Exercises {You can do in your underwear}
[trip style = urban + sightseeing + wine tasting]
The past week has been a full pour of Canadian Kool-Aid---the best flavor, obviously. I just got home from BC's wine country Saturday morning, and somehow I've ended up in Whistler {where I'm writing this now} on Sunday. Though I travel {outside of Canada} almost as much as George Clooney's character in Up In The Air, I'm a little obsessed with the place I call home.
Canada's diverse. Full stop. Using Vancouver's wilderness-meets-cosmopolitan backdrop as an example, within a:
I could go on, but the list would never end....
Because a picture is worth a thousand words, here are some of the local finds and moments I'll never forget, snapped this week exploring my backyard.
Vancouver
{A Vancouver Aquabus swishing from stop to stop around the harbor.}
{A world of flavors and vendors at Granville Island Public Market}
{"The world's best gelato" from Bella Gelateria, as voted by judges and people at the Firenze Gelato Competition in Italy. I concur; it's the best I've tasted in a long, long time.}
{Two Vancouver cocktail institutions: An Old Fashioned---taking seven minutes to make done right---at the Di6mond, and a line up of libations at Pourhouse.}
{Coffee---no decaf here---and a homemade peanut butter cup at Nelson the Seagull.}
Richmond
{Learning about sustainable fishing from "fisherman frank", a second-generation fisherman based in Steveston, the largest commercial fishing port in Canada.}
{A farm-to-table education at Terra Nova Rural Park, home to projects for local schools, as well as garden plots for local restaurants and residents.}
{Bubble tea and a hot pot dinner on "food street", a three-block strip of over 200 Asian restaurants. A local expert told me that ordering bubble tea is akin to personalizing your drink at Starbucks, so I ordered a pudding-flavored bubble tea with pearls, add extra pearls and add extra pudding. The bev was giant and I drank the whole thing...and then ran on the treadmill the next morning.}
The Okanagan
{It's still summer in the Okanagan, Canada's only desert. The view from my room at the Manteo Resort in Kelowna.}
{Uber local cuisine at RauDZ Regional Table in Kelowna. Crushed from nearby grapes, the dinner started with white wine sangria accented by Okanagan peaches. From there, we ate chicken poutine, Dungeness crab cakes with salsa verde and a salted caramel dessert---that in a perfect world would be bottomless.}
{Wine tasting amid vines, sunflowers and a chicken coop at the Okanagan Crush Pad, moving toward biodynamic wine making by 2014.}
{Buying local at its best; picking apples right off the tree at Matheson Creek Farm in Penticton.}
If you're interested in seeing postcards from the international bloggers on my get-to-know BC tour, check out their posts here!
[photos by @tripstyler taken while exploring BC with Tourism Canada]