The road trip photo bucket list: the photos you must take on your wide open road adventure

So you’re heading out on a road trip, armed with snacks, maps, your friends, a playlist of tunes, and, of course, your camera. But what’s the best way to document your travels in a photo diary? Skip the “camera-half-stuck-out-the-window” photos and the photos of yourself through the rear view mirror – here are some ideas on how you can take amazing photos on the road.

Nature, tamed

We’ll start off simply. You won’t need any high-tech gear for this one, and you probably won’t have any, because you’ve had to pay for your entire road trip. It’s time to sharpen that photographer’s eye – you can never get too much practice! Looking for lines in nature can be difficult when you’re in the city, but when you hit the road, you can keep an eye out for things like bushes standing in a line and making fences, or branches of trees interlocking overhead to create an archway. Look out for times when wild nature is subdued, and you’ll have plenty of beautiful photos to show your friends when you return from your road trip.

Picturesque reality

Photo from my instagram: @magali_c

A recent development in digital photography has been the use of HDR, where multiple exposures of the same image are combined to give you an image rich in depth and colour. The result? You’ll end up with a gorgeous, picturesque photo which looks more like a painting in all its detail than the original source. It’s a great way to capture that larger-than-life feeling that all road trips invoke.

Captured motion

Night times in the city are excellent opportunities for you to take photos. Look for busy roads or intersections, set up a tripod, turn down the shutter speed, and let the life of the city paint a picture of itself: the glaring red brake lights of cars rushing home, or the ghostlike blurs of businessmen striding home. With high exposures, you can capture the essence of the city in motion. Compare your photos from city to city and look for the subtle differences and beats of each as you go along on your road trip to really understand where you’ve been.

Bursts of memories

Sometimes the things that you remember most clearly aren’t clear images at all. With bursts of colour from bright lights against a dark background captured by your wide aperture lens, bokeh is a unique way of documenting your road trip. While the details aren’t clear, they don’t have to be: you can fill in the gaps yourself, even if you have to exaggerate a little!

By now, you’ll be brimming with ideas and excitement for your next road trip – take photos like the above, and you won’t have to end up with saying, shamefully, “You had to be there...”, because your photos will take them there.

Peter Brown is an avid photographer who loves taking his camera out on the road. His enthusiasm for cameras has led him to a bit of a tight financial spot, which is why he often turns to bad credit car finance institutions to make his dreams come true.

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