Previsualization is a technique that many professional photographers use and highly recommend. What it means in a nutshell is to have a good idea of what it is you’re going to photograph before you even arrive at a destination.
Here the tram is stationary...
There are a number of ways to accomplish previsualization, but they all pretty much come down to doing quality research in the days, weeks and even months leading up to a trip. Even if you’re shooting around your own area, practicing previsualization is a good habit to form.
Before I embark on any assignment, photo tour or personal trip, I like to visit professional stock photo agency sites like GettyImages.com and CorbisImages.com, as well as photo sharing sites like Flickr.com, and I can’t forget Google Images. At these photo sites I can input keywords such as “Havana,” “sunset,” “people,” and all the images that other photographers have shot and tagged with those keywords would pop up. Then I can have a look at what they saw and captured and decide if those are the types of images I want to bring back (always making an effort to put my own spin on them).
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Several other resources for doing research are friends and family who’ve been to the place(s) you’re going, sending away for information from the tourist office of the destination (you know they’re going to be using some of the best photography on the brochures, flyers and other information they send you), subscribing to travel and photography magazines, using Google search, as well as a myriad of other sources.
Case in point…one of my really wonderful students and tour participants, Denise Cross, knew that I was going to be leading a photo tour of the Eastern European Christmas Markets. She’s an extremely talented and enthusiastic amateur photographer with awards, a number of photo sales and even a magazine cover to her credit (taken on my LA Theatre District on Broadway PhotoWalkingTour, no less!), and a few weeks ahead of my departure she sent me an article that talked about the “trimmed trams” in Budapest, Hungary, a stop that was on our itinerary and one of my favorite places to shoot. These were the local trams that had been decorated with thousands of holiday lights and move around town during the holiday months. As we were walking to Chain Bridge and over to Castle Hill to do some night photography, a brightly lit tram pulled up next to me and my group…I instantly recognized that this was our opportunity and so several of us were able to fire off a series of 3 or 4 shots, and these are my results.
Then it takes off at "warp speed"!
As soon as the tram dropped off its passengers and started to pull away, I anticipated that another photo op would present itself, and so I yelled to the group to keep shooting. In the lowlight of the Danube River’s edge I knew my camera, set to Aperture Priority, would give me a rather slow shutter speed, and that the slow moving tram with its holiday lights might make for an interesting image. Always at the ready, and knowing my camera intimately so that I don’t miss potentially once-in-a-lifetime photo opportunities such as these (the topic of a future post, I’m sure), I made a few more images and above is the result…the tram [slowly] moving along at what looks like warp speed.
In Previsualization Part 2 I’ll discuss about the great deal of time I spent previsualizing and researching before my recent assignment to shoot for a cookbook throughout Mexico, and how that research helped me to return with a well-rounded portfolio of images that truly captured the essence of each the 40+ locations we visited.
Are you making a conscious effort to do the necessary research and to practice previsualization when you hit the road? If so, what resources are you using to do this?
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Ralph Velasco is an Orange County-based photography instructor, international photo tour guide and author.
He’s an award-winning blogger and the creator of the My Shot Lists for Travel app for iPhone.
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Wow really nice shot. Hats off man….