You just won a once-in-a-lifetime vacation to New York City. Before you leave, think quick. How are you going to capture your memories from the trip?
For the purposes of this post, we’ll give examples of NYC. The same basic premise holds true for London, Rome, Beijing, wherever.
First thing you want to do is look at your itinerary. Plan out your shots ahead of time. List your spots and if you’ll want photos/video/or both at each place.
- Bus tour downtown
- Statue of Liberty
- Central Park
- Brooklyn Bridge
- Broadway show
- The Guggenheim (or any other museum)
- the list goes on and on
1. When on a bus tour, you’ll want both your still and video camera. If you want your photos in focus, you must use a fast shutter speed. Put the camera in either shutter priority, or sports mode to force a quick shutter speed. If you want the cool effect of the motion on the bus, then auto mode is fine.
The video camera is great for capturing things in motion. Sounds obvious, but I often see people taking video of tall buildings. Not the most interesting to watch. Video of bicycle messengers, horse drawn carriages, Segways on Broadway. These are all things you might not see back home.
It’s going to sound like cheating, but the best way to get photos of tall buildings is… to buy a postcard.
2. The Statue of Liberty is an excellent backdrop for family vacation photos as well as beautiful video from the ferry. Remember, if you’d like to get up to the torch, you must try and reserve this months in advance. Try here to get tickets (they’re already sold out until November).
As you can see, both photos and video make for a great memento from your trip to the Statue of Liberty.
3. Central Park, or pick-your-famous-park in your destination city, provides various landscapes for photo opportunities. There are fountains, lagoons, horse trails. If you’re going in the winter, there is Wollman Ice Rink. Here’s where video would come in handy.
4. The Brooklyn Bridge is a lovely place for photos. You can walk across and get photos of Manhattan as well. The video camera would be handy for photos of boats going by. Try and plan your timing well. If you walk across to Brooklyn at sunset, you can catch the sun setting over Manhattan.
5. Any thoughts on whether they allow cameras at the show? Nope. However, it might be a great shot to capture all your fellow tourists waiting in the tremendously long lines for half-price tickets that day in Times Square. Check out this site for details. No video needed for this shot.
But, if you’re into people-watching, make sure you do have the video camera along.
6. You can be pretty certain that no museum will allow flash photography, well, maybe the children’s museums. Put your camera on the museum setting right away. This will allow the greatest amount of light without use of the flash. Don’t bother with the video camera (it’s generally boring in a museum and there’s not enough light).
The shutter will be open a long time when there’s no flash, so it’s quite easy to wind up with out-of-focus photos. For best results, take along a little silly putty. Well, I was going to say tripod, but who’s going to take that on a sightseeing trip? The silly putty can be stuck to almost anything for use as a makeshift tripod. You could also try one of those new water bottle tripods sold here.
These tips can be used for any city with a little forethought. Plan out ahead of time what photo/video you’d like to get so you’re certain to have the right equipment with you.
Check out your destination city’s tourism website for ideas. They will usually have a list of events taking place during the time you are there.
Will you want to include yourself in the shots? Make sure you line up travel companions to take the shots.
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