7 Tips to Take Better Travel Photos in 2025

As January draws to a close and we settle into the New Year, it’s the perfect time to invest in yourself and enhance your travel photography skills. If you’re experiencing new places and having photo-worthy experiences, it can be so rewarding to capture photos from your travels to share with friends, family, or even your social media following. Whether you’re an avid traveler picking up your first camera, someone who just wants to share their travels with their loved ones, or even an aspiring travel influencer, this guide will cover seven ways to level up your travel photography in 2025.

Follow the Light

The first step to capturing stunning travel photos is to shoot when the light is best. You may have heard of the golden hour—the hour after sunrise and before sunset. This is the best time to capture images because the sun is lower in the sky, providing much softer, glowing light. Partly cloudy days can offer beautiful sunsets, sunrises, and dappled light that pleases the eye.

Additionally, consider the sun’s direction when photographing a location. Shooting towards the sun will give you the best chance at photographing beautiful sunset or sunrise clouds, and shooting away from the sun can show off the last light striking your subject. Many locations photograph better at sunset or sunrise, so research beforehand to optimize your time and visit the right places at the best times.

Do Your Research

Traveling on a whim can be an exhilarating experience, but capturing stunning photos without proper research and planning can be challenging. Researching locations online is a great way to prepare for your travels. If you can, find the best time to photograph each location or use Google Earth to pre-scout your photo ops before your travels. Look at the weather before you shoot on your trip, as different weather conditions can vastly change the photo opportunity. Consider everything before deciding where to shoot each morning and evening.

Shoot in Manual

Now is the time if you haven’t yet learned to shoot in manual mode. Manual mode gives you the most freedom and creative potential. Understand how ISO, aperture, and shutter speed modify your image and the creative effects they can create. Shutter speed can help to freeze motion or show off motion blur. Aperture can give you more depth of field or hold everything in the image in focus. ISO can be used in low light or add grain to your image. All of the manual settings on the camera give you control over the final look of your image.

Use a Superzoom Lens

Keeping your suitcase light is essential when traveling, so carrying numerous lenses and other camera accessories can be frustrating. One of the best lenses for travel photography is the superzoom, which often spans a 10x (or more!) focal length range. These lenses not only lighten your load but can also help simplify the process. Rather than needing to swap lenses for different types of images, one lens can do it all, allowing you to focus more on shooting and less time on your equipment. 

Sony shooters: the Tamron 18-300mm f3.5-5.6 is exceptionally light, considering the massive focal range.

Nikon shooters: the NIKKOR Z 28-400mm f4-8 gives you a lot of reach on the long end, capturing everything from wide-angle to super telephoto.

Canon shooters: the Canon RF 24-240mm f4-6.3 is an excellent choice because it is compact, sharp, and covers a wide focal range.

Get a Polarizer

Whether in the ocean, the forest, or even the middle of the city, a polarizer is essential for travel photography. A polarizer removes glare from objects in your scene. This means it can cut through the reflection on the water, allowing you to see the actual color. In the forest, it can remove glare from leaves, helping color pop and stand out. For those not shooting the natural world, a polarizer can also help you to remove glare from glass, which is essential when photographing buildings, cars, and any city lights.

When picking out a polarizer, ensure you know the front element size of your lens. You’ll need to get the correct size polarizer to fit your lens. A polarizer is simple to use; you can rotate it to adjust the polarization in your scene.

Refine Your Composition

It can be easy to get starstruck when visiting a new place but try to think critically about composition. More often than not, you can create more interesting compositions when shooting that are not at standard eye level. Try getting low to the ground or backing up from your subject and zooming in. By thinking more about composition, you’ll take more creative images to help you stand out on social media.

Hone Your Editing Skills

As much as you may not want to hear it, post-processing is a considerable part of the photography journey. Shooting in RAW and editing in a RAW processor can give you access to powerful sliders that can help you transform your images. Many photographers are frustrated by the editing process as it takes time and can be challenging to get the results you want. Download courses or watch YouTube videos covering editing techniques in your free travel time and refine your workflow. This can help simplify your workflow, save you time, and help you achieve the results you’re after. To take amazing travel photos, you must understand how to post-process your images to perfection.

To Summarize

There is no better time than 2025 to hone your travel photography skills and elevate your images. These practical tips will help you improve as a photographer, allowing you to come home with more images that will impress your friends, family, and followers. Finally, remember that travel should be fun, so don’t let poor photo conditions ruin an otherwise great trip. Best of luck capturing amazing images on your 2025 travels!