Planning A Travel Itinerary For Your Photography Trip
Almost 2 years after the outbreak of Covid, I am finally planning my next travel. In this story, let me share with you my planning process for the photo shooting part of the trip.
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Since the beginning of 2020, all of us have been literally grounded from traveling because of the pandemic. Almost two years later, I am finally planning for my first post-pandemic trip. Since everyone’s travel planning process may look very different, I thought it would be interesting to share mine with you and get your thoughts on what works and what can be improved.
Let’s first start with some context for the trip — I will be flying to Los Angeles and staying there for a week. There is no specific agenda for the trip. It is just mostly visiting museums, eating Japanese food to fix my craving for Japan, and most importantly take home with more street photos to replenish my photo inventory, which is almost depleted thanks to the pandemic. The 3-step planning process I am about to share will be only focused on the photo shooting part of the travel itinerary
Step 1 — Create a list of interesting locations to visit.
When I make a decision, I always start with a list of criteria, and I do the same when I decide what locations to visit for a trip like this. My criteria for an interesting and photo-worthy location are the following: (1) It needs to be busy enough, as my street photography work is dependent on humans. I just don’t know how to work with a quiet street with no one around. (2) It needs to show a unique characteristic and culture that you can’t easily find in other places. This explains why I usually avoid places that are full of tourists. (3) It needs to have some visually aesthetic elements. Some examples of what I usually look for are buildings, storefronts, architecture, and, one of my favorites, graffiti.
With these criteria in mind, I will start my research online. Using Google is always a good start, but don’t forget other resources like your friends or…
