Travel Photography | Human Touch

© 2008 Wazari Wazir | Mabul Island | Sabah | Malaysia North Borneo

I’m taking a break from posting my son picture here, just to make my blog a little bit interesting. This entry is about travel photography, from my point of view. I’m not an expert on this field because I’m not a travel photographer by profession, even though I wish I were but nevertheless as a photographer I do travel a lot but this photograph above which I took in 2008 is not part of my official assignment. This is personal photographic outing with my friends in Mabul Island of Sabah.

Let me get straight without wasting too much of your times here, my blog post here is about travel photography and human touch. You really can’t separated those two things, even though you might not interested with people in your travel photography, maybe you just like to photograph a monument, a landscape or anything that does not show up any human figure in it, you still need to interact with human. You still need to ask someone a direction, a helping hand maybe, above all you still need to interact with a human being. Human touch is really important when it comes to great travel photography.

I just wanted to share my story here in Mabul Island, we spent three days here, circling  all over the island, just to make our face familiar with the people living on this island. Mabul is not a very big Island, in fact, you can walk in circle surrounding this island in less than an hour or maybe less than thirty minutes if you decided to run around it but then again if you are a photographer, you will  definitely take your time to get to know this island especially its friendly people.

About the photograph above, I spent almost half and hour there watching those young peoples play the volleyball. I did not take the photograph straight away when I arrived at this location, I took a few minutes talking to one of the spectators there and spend few more minutes watching the game, at first they are curios with my intention but after awhile they don’t bother with me, I’m part of the “environment”, I was no longer a stranger there, they continue with the games like I was never been there.

I took this shot with just a standard kit lens 18-70mm with my Nikon D200 and my head almost touch the sand in order for me to get the shot, I want to include the coconut tree from top to bottom in full without any part being cropped. Maybe my act look weird to some of them but since I’ve been here almost half an hour watching the games, they just don’t bother and I just do my business while they continue with the games uninterrupted.

Travel photography is about people and places, it’s the people that make the place interesting and it’s about the people that have the power to attract us to come over again and again. It is a very good habit to make friends with them and hopefully when we have a chance to visit the same place again we no longer a stranger to them, and hopefully we will be able to photograph more intimate moment with them, such as taking picture inside their house, maybe have lunch or dinner with them.

Human touch is really important when it comes to travel photography, whenever you have a chance to visit a new place, always took the time to get to know the people, engaged with them and if possible spent few days with them if you really wanted to get a great photograph, only by being part of their surrounding or get involved with their life and activity we will be able to get some great photographs. Human touch does not comes with your Manual Camera Instructions book but it comes from within.

If you wanted to learn more about travel photography, I highly recommended you Mitchell Kanashkevich eBook entitled Transcending Travel – A guide to Captivating Travel Photography

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