8 Tips to Take Memorable Adventure Photographs

After a family roadtrip through Slovenia, Jack shares his top tips for capturing more memorable holiday moments with great photos.

I’ve been taking photos for half my life. I can’t recall an adventure where a camera hasn’t tagged along. There’ve been adventures purely to take photos of a stunning spot, and there’ve been travels where adventure is the focus and a camera has snuck into my pack to document the fun.

As I look back upon my favourites, it’s the sentimental photos that are my most cherished. They’re the images where the adventure was put first and the camera was there to document the good times, rather than the sole purpose being to take a well-crafted photo.

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These photos are still great, but one Google will bring you a boatload of information on how to dial in your settings to achieve the perfect exposure and take better photos. It reduces the process to a technical exercise. I like to think there’s a difference between just a good photo and a memorable photo.

It’s semantic, but memorable photos are the ones that in years to come will transport you back to that moment – where the memories of the adventure come flooding back to you.

They’re different to the photo you snap at a lookout, or even an amazing, perfectly-composed photo that wins awards.

They remind you of the experience, an experience that was greater than just taking photos.

Shutter speed: 1/320 | Aperture: f/6.3 | ISO: 100

I recently travelled to Slovenia on a family holiday, road tripping the small, green, and jaw-droppingly beautiful European country while meeting distant relatives for the first time.

This trip wasn’t about being in the best spots to capture sunrise and nailing the perfect travel photo, but I knew there was going to be a chance to capture some memorable ones. I thought the We Are Explorers community would like to have a similar approach to their own adventures – to capture the memorable moments from these epic trips without it taking away from the moment.

As I travelled around I thought about a handful of tips that you can keep in mind when adventuring or holidaying, tips that’ll help you take photos that you’ll cherish forever.

Shutter speed: 1/800 | Aperture: f/4.0 | ISO: 100

Don’t Just Shoot the Postcard

The key word is ‘just’. The photos from lookouts are great, lookouts are generally there for a reason, often opening up to vast spectacular scenes that are extremely photogenic, but if this is the only time you pulled your camera out, you’re going to end up with the exact same photo that every other visitor, or Google image search will conjure.

Aim to shoot beyond these locations and capture more of the things that make your trip unique. Is it that section of the trail where you all struggled through? The weird spot that you had lunch? The beautiful drive?  This will help you capture more of your experience so you can transport back there. These next tips will help you go beyond the postcard.

A Bigger Camera Isn’t Always Better

The best camera is the one that’s with you. It’s an old photography adage, that was recently modernised by Chase Jarvis as the title of a phone photography book. The idea is to make the most of your creativity with the tool you have with you.

I like to take the premise and apply it slightly differently, especially when travelling.

I figure that if the best camera is the one that’s with you, how can you make sure you always have a good camera on you.

To drop another famed adage: bigger isn’t always better. I like to carry a light and nimble camera setup, so I don’t miss out on some great off-the-cuff moments because I left the camera left in the car, or shoved in my hiking pack, because it’s too big and cumbersome to have on me. I’m ready to press the shutter at a moments notice.

On this trip to Slovenia, I was able to achieve this with the mirrorless Nikon Z5II and a handful of lenses.

I created a light, nimble setup by using a Nikon 26mm f2.8 lens which is a small, light prime* lens. With this discreet setup, I could sling the camera over my shoulder when wandering around without the worry of a big lens swinging around. 

I still got to use Nikon Z5II to its full capability, by interchanging lenses when I wanted a wide-angle lens like the NIKKOR Z 14-30mm f/4 or the NIKKOR 105mm f/2.8 to get in closer for a particular shot. It was the best of both worlds.

*A prime lens has a fixed focal length, so it can’t zoom, but they are often lighter, smaller, and take sharper images.

Shutter speed: 1/250 | Aperture: f/3.2 | ISO: 320

Shoot Who You’re With

This tip sounds obvious, but again it’s what will help the memories of your trip come flashing back. The people you’re with are what make your trip unique.

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You don’t have to be like my Dad and get everyone to post up and say ‘cheese’ next to every monument, but instead of only taking photos at viewpoints and monuments, see if you can capture more of the people you’re with. Candid is best, or better yet shoot what you’re actually up to. Which is the perfect segue to my next point…

Capture the Action

If you’re taking photos of who you’re with, don’t just get them to pose up. Actually capture what you’re truly up to on your trip. We’ve seen a million photos of a small human posing in a big landscape – try to capture the fun or grittiness. 

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Whether it’s that extra tough, part of the hike that defines type two fun, or the coffee getting brewed on the cliff as the sun rises, these are the moments that help you capture the adventure for what it is: what you and your mates were actually doing on the trip.

Don’t Skimp the Details

Amongst the action are all the details that make your trip unique. It could be the wildlife, quirky trail signs, or weird plant life.  All of the smaller details that often get forgotten about, in lieu of a big epic shot, help you bring more storytelling into your photos. Plus, when you’re viewing them later, they help transport you into the scene, helping you to relive being there. 

Details don’t always have to be individual photos either, you could look at how you can bring certain details into the foreground or background of your photos.

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Shoot From Your POV

One way to do this is to shoot from your point of view, it sounds obvious, but think about what you have been seeing from your perspective throughout your hike or the adventure.

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We often zoom past these details that are framing the way that we see things. By including them in the foreground, you create a photograph that was more alike what you are witnessing on the trip. This is where instead of zooming in, you could use the NIKKOR 24-70mm F/4 to bring more of the environment into the frame.

Like above, including these details help tell your story.

Shutter speed: 1/500 | Aperture: f/4.0 | ISO: 160

Apply Some Simple Composition Techniques

I promised to not get too technical in this article, but over the thousands of years humans have been looking at art, they’ve found that certain composition techniques make some images more pleasing to the eye than others.

Two simple and straightforward ones that can elevate your photograph, particularly in the outdoors, are the rule of thirds and leading lines.

The rule of thirds is where your photograph is split into thirds, vertically and horizontally. Imagine a tic tac toe, board overlaid on your image.

Along each line is where you could place key parts of your image. For example an image where the horizon sits on either the bottom third or the top third of an image, would be more pleasant to the eye than it being placed at random.

Leading lines are where objects in your image create lines that lead your eye into the image, or are used to direct towards a certain part of the image, often your subject.

A simple Google search will bring up more examples, and more composition techniques but these are quick and easy ones to consider and you can apply them individually or both at once.

So while this isn’t a technical camera tip or going to make your photograph more memorable, it will make it more pleasing to look at, which should help you be more stoked on the images.

Don’t Be Afraid of Automatic

One of the things I’ve noticed among beginner photographers is that everyone’s itching to get out of auto mode, so they feel like a ‘real’ photographer. It’s certainly a part of learning the craft, but fumbling around with your camera to get your exposure correct could mean you miss an incredible moment.

It’s the subject, what’s in front of the camera, thats most important to getting a good shot. You can have a very technically perfect photograph, but if the subject isn’t very interesting, it’s unlikely to be memorable.

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That’s where automatic modes come in. Most SLRs and mirrorless cameras like the Nikon Z5 II, have dedicated automatic modes.

You can start with the fully automatic mode. This should allow you to get a well-exposed photo, and capture those in between moments. As you start to learn more about aperture and shutter speed and the role they play in capturing your photograph, you can move to aperture priority, or shutter speed priority modes.

They’ll allow you to set one setting while automating the rest, allowing you to focus on the subject and nailing that memorable moment. Plus, it helps you be more present with the moment rather than faffing around with your camera making sure you’ve got your settings right.

Shutter speed: 1/500 | Aperture: f/4.5 | ISO: 100

As I’ve matured, I’ve thought more about the different photography skills I’ve learnt over 15 years of playing around with cameras.

And I’ve come to realise that the most valuable way to use these skills isn’t nailing an epic photo or scoring a bunch of Instagram likes, it’s using the skills to capture memories not just  for me, but for the others you’re adventuring with too.

If you have any other tips you’d add to the list, let me know in the comments.