Family Travel Tips For a Photographer | Do You Need To Carry a Tripod?

© 2013 Wazari Wazir | Istanbul | Blue Mosque | Sultan Ahmed Mosque | Family Photography

© 2013 Wazari Wazir | Setting Up a Tripod For a Family Photography Against Hagia Sophia in The Background

If you take your family on a vacation, to a faraway places, thousand kilometres from your hometown, do you really need to carry a tripod with you? Actually the answer is, it all depends. Most of you who pay a visit to my blog is a photography enthusiast or someone who have a deep interest in photography and most of you I believe own a DSLR camera or at least a very good compact camera, so the question here is, do you really need to carry a tripod when traveling with your family?

I mention family here because I believe if you travel with your friends for a pure photographic outing, those of you who have a tripod, most likely will carry a tripod but with family? I don’t want to make a long post here but my point here is that, if you really need a very good, well composed picture of yourself with your family members, then a tripod is a must.  I’ve many bad experience, I mean “bad” photograph captured by a stranger, sometimes the composition is not right, the horizon is not right, and the focus is not spot on.

Yes, when you are traveling to a popular destination like in Istanbul, where thousand of tourist and travellers taking pictures here and there, it is not that hard to ask someone to take a photograph of you with you loves one, but like I said before, I had a lot of “bad” experience. If the weather is fine, you can set your camera to a faster shutter speed and not to worry someone who take a picture of  you and your family will get it sharp, but sometimes the weather is not great, on a cloudy days for an example, where fast shutter speed is not possible and this one will make you to use a slow shutter speeds, hence increase the probability of a blurry picture due to camera shake.

I travel thousand of a kilometres away with my family not to bring back home a bad picture, I need to use Low ISO, Small Aperture to get a great sharp image, and  this two factors will contribute to a slow shutter speed, so a tripod is a must.

Before I take my family for a vacation in Istanbul, I bought a new tripod, yes, I did not have any tripod with me before, most of you who have been following my blog knew that I’m not a “tripod guy”, most of my photography subject did not require a tripod.

Actually you don’t need to buy a tripod just because you wanted to travel with your family, you can borrow from your friends if they have one and not using it for a period of your traveling, but for me, I just don’t want to bother my friends, I need to get one simply because I rarely have a picture of me together with my family, most of my family photograph are without me in the frame, so I can justify to myself why I need a tripod.

The tripod that I’m using here is a Fotopro, yes it has pros and cons but I’m happy with it, it’s quite heavy but not too heavy and most importantly it can fit well into my luggage and easy to set up. Actually my wife did help me carry the tripod around because I was carrying my son Raphael with a baby carrier and quite heavy backpack for my children’s needs. Yes, in some places you cannot bring tripod, you have to leave the tripod at the ticket counter and pick it up later, but it is just a small price to pay to get a great shot that you can proudly printed big and hang it on your wall.

Take my advise, if you are traveling with your family members, then bring a tripod with you, yes, it will be a cumbersome to carry it around but I can guarantee that you will never regret it, so don’t think twice, just take the tripod with you and bring back a beautiful memories that you can be proud of.