While in Paris, if you get tired of the hustle and bustle of the city or the crowds of tourists around the Eiffel tower, take a deep breath (and a few photos, of course) in one of the Parisian gardens. This city is definitely proud of its green spaces: from the posh Luxembourg Gardens to modern Parc de la Villette, from extensive Bois de Boulogne to the green path of La Coulée Verte, it offers a great choice of retreats not only for lungs, but also for photographers' eyes.

The Centre George Pompidou, also known by the locals as Beaubourg, is a complex and colourful building between Le Marais area and Les Halles. Besides housing the largest modern art museum in Europe, a vast public library, a center for music and acoustic research IRCAM, this 7 level high-tech structure also offers great views over the central part of the city of Paris.

Have you ever asked yourself what makes a travel photo stunning? Everyone has their own reaction and sense of aesthetics, however several key ingredients need to come together to create a great image: interesting subject, emotional impact, correctly selected camera settings and strong composition. Speaking of the latter, there is no single way to compose an image. Depending on your subject and the story you want to tell, different composition rules may be applied. Of course, rules are also meant to be broken. Here, we offer a variety of ideas for composing well-balanced images with more impact, and in a future post we will talk about breaking all the rules.

Just like we do, digital cameras see the world in colours. While we can easily produce photographs with the exact same colours as we see them, in some images colours do not “work” together and are more of a distraction than an advantage. The solution is then to “think black-and-white”: to strip the image of its colours and to leave only the moment, the emotion, and the idea. Nowadays most colour to black-and-white conversion is done digitally. In this tutorial, you will find some tips on how to convert your colour images into powerful black-and-white ones using Lightroom.

Many photographers have heard about the concept of Depth of Field (or DOF). Some only have a vague idea of what it means while others have a good grasp for it but still struggle to put it in practice. Understanding depth of field is fundamental for any photographer, travel photographers included, because it provides control over the resulting look of the image. So if you are ready to enhance your travel images and make the most use of the opportunities that come your way, it’s time to master the depth of field in your photography...

For our friendly critique #3 we have selected a photograph taken by Rupert Mitch, in which we see a combination of vintage signs and various objects found in a flea market. Taken during the winter season, the scene benefits from nice and soft light. The colourful vintage signs are a definite highlight here and immediately attract the viewer’s attention. The rest of the image is full of details, and offers a lot for the eye to explore...

Just before Christmas, Paris City Hall opens its doors for yet another magnificent photography exhibition about the city and its dwellers in the turmoil of life and historical events, this time as seen by the world’s greatest photojournalists of Magnum agency throughout the 20th century. This show not only tells the history of Paris and its evolution in time, but also showcases some of the finest examples of photojournalism, including many timeless classics that can be seen printed in large format...

A dusty DSLR camera sensor is one of the worst photographer’s enemies. If you have ever spent time cloning out those endless ‘dust bunnies’ from a sunset sky on ten photos in a row, then you know what I mean. Dust gets inside the camera every time you switch lenses, or simply use your zoom as particles get sucked in the lens and finally end up on the camera sensor. All photographers face this issue, let alone travel photographers who spend most of the time outdoors. Knowing how to clean your camera’s sensor is something important that deserves special attention...

Highly contrasted scenes are not easy to photograph: even though the technology is advancing rapidly, our eyes still see more than we happen to capture on our camera’s sensor. When traveling, you may find yourself in different situations: taking a photo of interesting architecture against a very bright sky, capturing narrow medieval streets with strong shadows or a tropical sunset under the palm trees. While you can always opt for underexposing your image and only leave the silhouettes, for some photos you may prefer to keep the details in both highlights and shadows. In this Lightroom tutorial you will learn how to recover maximum information from a highly contrasted scene with minimal loss of quality.

While traveling, we don’t always have the luxury to pick the best time of day for photography or to come back to the location when the light is what we are looking for. We take the photos when we can, the best we can. Then we go home and this is when post-processing comes into play: it may either save an image or enhance it for more impact. In this short tutorial, we'll start with an image that has some blown-out highlight issues and look at ways to correct them in Lightroom 5 with minimal loss of image quality.

When I think about photographing London from the top, The Shard and the London Eye come to my mind first. These famous landmarks offer magnificent bird's eye views over the British capital if you don’t mind paying the ticket entrance, patiently wait in line for your turn to have a good look and a chance to take your own photos of the vista. However, there are a few other spots in the city that offer interesting vantage points to photograph London from the top with surprising panoramas. The good news is that they are all quite close to each other and yet offer different views...

While taking photos, have you ever asked yourself or a fellow photographer whether your image is bright enough or dark enough? How can one know if the image is correctly exposed? How not to overdo it in post-processing? The answers to all these questions hide in a little graph called the Histogram, which is a valuable tool for any photographer. If you still feel a little intimidated by it, continue reading and we will shed some light on this mysterious yet easy to use tool for photographers...