In honor of just returning from The Happiest Place On Earth, today we are talking about travel photography! I feel like everyone has their own view on travel photography, so I’ll share mine and what I focus on to get the pictures and memories that I want.

Poster image for blog post on travel photography

When you approach travel photography, the most important thing to ask yourself is:

“What do I want to remember?”

That might seem a little obvious, but I’ll give you an example. Last October we went to the San Diego Zoo. Quite often while I’m at the zoo I see people taking pictures of the animals. If you want to remember those animals, go for it. For me personally, that’s just not something I do. I have in the past, and when I view those pictures after a long time they mean absolutely nothing to me. What I want to remember when I go to the zoo is my kids’ reactions, the little things they liked to do throughout the day, and the little moments of holding hands and being together in a new place. So do I want a picture of a random monkey? Nope. Do I want a picture of my kids looking at a random monkey? Oh yeah! I also wanted to remember my kids swinging like monkeys all day long on the railings, ha!

Now, I did make an exception at the San Diego zoo and took a picture of the pandas because 1. Pandas are cool and 2. How often do you get to see a panda? Like never.

Boy looking at monkey through glass at zoo

Two boys looking through glass at hippo underwater

Two brothers holding hands while walking at zoo

Mom and son posing with panda in background at zoo

I also like to capture the little details that will help me remember things in more detail. Getting a broad picture of my kids playing in the water and running away from the waves is awesome, and I definitely have a lot of those. But you can only take so many of those before they all start to look pretty similar and not really stand out from other trips. For instance, this trip I wanted to remember Emmett’s powerful run that he kept doing. So I tried to capture his feet kicking up sand, his arms pumping. I want to remember how it felt when the tide came in, that rush of cold water over our feet. I want to remember Carson being so excited to find seashells.(Just so you know, looking at these photos it may look like I don’t have any pictures of their faces, trust me I do! I’m just trying to show some other ideas.)

Little boy's feet kicking up sand at beach

Two brothers holding hands while wading at beach

Close-up of boy holding seashells at beach

So next time you’re on a trip, try to be really intentional with what you take pictures of! It’s made a big difference with my travel photography, hopefully it will help yours as well!