The Human Touch
Recently Luminous Journeys senior travel photographer and photo tour workshop leader, David Lazar, got the cover shot on Australian Photography magazine, the country’s largest. Along with the cover shot is an excellent article written by David, focusing on the artistic use of the human touch for better travel images, even with landscapes.
Here’s how the article opens, including the link to the rest 0f the story found in the online version of Australian Photography. To check out future David Lazar photo tours, please visit his website and/or check out our Complete Photo Tour Schedule.
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As a travel photographer who enjoys telling stories through photography, I try to include human subjects in my work for more emotional impact.
Sometimes a street scene or landscape can be powerful enough without the need for a person in the image, especially if there is already a captivating focal point or interesting pattern in the landscape.
But there are many times when a landscape style photo will not convey any strong feelings to the viewer as there is not an interesting enough focal point. In this case, the addition of a human positioned well in the composition can enhance the image greatly.
In a wider landscape photo, the person’s face does not need to be visible, it is just their presence in the scene that adds life to the image.
Adding a person also helps to emphasise the scale of the surroundings, and show how grand or delicate a scene is by comparing it to the size of a human.
The difference with an environmental portrait is that the subject’s face must be visible and the focus is less on the overall scene but on the individual and their story. I like to capture both styles of photography featuring people in a wide environmental scene…
Part One of the article continues here…
