Monuments and Memorials: Travel Photography

Is your camera smarter than you?  Are you confused by all those weird "Av," "Tv" "S", "A" or "P" choices on the mode dial, causing you to take refuge on "Auto?" Are you only using $100 worth of the features on your $800 camera? Are your photos too blurry, dark, or the wrong color? Or do you just want your pictures to be more interesting and artistic?

Learn how to take great pictures BEFORE you go on that expensive trip! And we will teach you how to use your camera IN THE FIELD, not in a classroom! Join our standard Monuments and Memorials workshop, offered Wednesdays and Saturdays, in which the instructor takes you to some of DC’s most popular attractions: White House, Lafayette Park, the Einstein, Lincoln, Korea, and Vietnam Three Servicemen Memorials, and finally to Union Station, where you learn to make all the moving people DISAPPEAR!

Remember, it was Confucius who said:  "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember.  I do, and I understand."  At Washington Photo Safari, we help you "do " and understand!

The instructor begins the Safari with a 45-minute travel photography orientation, giving you basic tips in composition, F-stops and shutter speeds,  portraiture, and interior photography. While you are taking pictures, you receive hands-on guidance on how to make those images even better! Advanced and smartphone photographers will appreciate the instructor’s extensive knowledge of the best camera angles in DC. This is suggested as a preliminary course before taking special safaris. Open to any photographers at any skill level with any camera, phone, or tablet.

Here are the basic photography tips you will learn:

1. how to hold the camera for maximum picture sharpness
2. how to use selective focus to determine the subject of each picture, using focus hold
3. how to frame your subject using available flowers, trees, bushes and doorways
4. how to keep your vertical lines as straight as possible in architectural photos
5. how to fool your camera’s meter, using exposure lock, so that it gives you the correct reading when facing backlit subjects or light/dark-colored subjects
6. how to take pleasing outdoor portraits in bright sunshine and in shade
7. how to pose people you DO know in front of famous landmarks and monuments
8. how to take pictures of people you do NOT know
9. how and when to use the fill-flash and cancel-flash features of your camera
10. how to take pictures inside of large interior spaces, like train stations, churches and museums, without using a flash or tripod
11. how to take close-up pictures of flowers, statues, and monuments
12. how to decide when to use black and white, and how to fix the white balance
13. how to put strong composition lines and balance into your pictures
14. how to control depth-of-field with aperture priority F stop settings, how to stop or blur action, or make moving objects disappear, using shutter-priority mode
15. how to use all the other doodads on your camera you were afraid to try!

With this class, you also get pre-safari advice on what equipment to bring, and available post-safari critique of the photos you take.

The Monuments and Memorials safari provides basic instruction on all aspects of travel photography, explains F-stops, shutter speeds, white balance, ISO settings and reviews composition techniques for taking pictures of people and places. Highly rated by customers on Trip Advisor, it is the most popular of all the 140 different photo safari itineraries offered by Washington Photo Safari.