Handy Tricks: World Traveler Edition

Step 8 Taking Pictures, Sightseeing

Star:
GO TO MUSEUMS! Someone put a lot of work and effort into collecting all the best stuff in the country and putting it in one building for you to look at. You can learn a lot, very quickly, and definitely do a lot of picking up on culture.

Also, museums are the opposite of every typical tourist trap, and can help you escape that "what do I do now?" feeling.

As for photos - some countries are pretty free about people taking photos on the street. Urban Brazil, for example, is not. I learned really quickly how to take photos on the stealth, and how to hide my camera.

Walking down the street, I kept the camera under my shirt, so that when I saw something I liked, I could whip it out, but it otherwise wasn't an easy target for theft or a giant tourist-marker.

Ask, before photographing faces. Every culture, and every person, has a different opinion on the subject.

Have humor. I took a photo of a McDonald's sign in Sao Paulo that read "McColosso!" I mean, it probably makes sense to Brazillians, but in that moment, it struck me as being fairly hilarious. Almost instantly, security descended. "Did you just take a picture of McDonald's??" he demanded, threateningly. I was still laughing about the McColosso, and pointed at the sign. "McColosso?!" I said. He said something else in Portuguese. I said I didn't speak that much Portuguese. Then he smiled, and told me not to take photos of McDonald's. Humor can help you out, especially when it comes to meeting people who think you should be in trouble.

Shoot from the hip. It can be lots of fun to get good enough at taking pictures that you don't have to look through the viewfinder, to get a good shot.

If you have to stash your camera (say, you're going swimming at the beach), take out your memory card, first. That way, if your camera gets taken, your photos don't.

Remembering your new friends: If you want to email the photos you took back to the people who are in them, get them to write down their contact info and then TAKE A PHOTO of it. Then, later, when you're looking at your photos, you have their face and their email address, automatically collected back-to-back!

Also, carry a small camera!

Billy's camera totally rocks, and takes high quality photos and video.

Tim's favorite is tiny, waterproof, and does time-lapses.

If you have a Canon Powershot, you can do CHDK on it, and get a whole lot of high-end features in a super-cheap camera.

Tim:
Bring a couple of flash cards for your camera and a usb adapter or usb thumb drive. That way you can backup and share data.
If soldiers take your camera for taking pix in the wrong place, you won't lose all your photos.
Put a copy of your favorite software on the flash drive so you can edit and upload with ease at an internet cafe. I like Thumbsplus for editing/organizing and Picasa for image storage online. It's a lot easier to carry an extra flash card than a whole computer. I find that if I have the software I need on a flash disk, I don't need to carry a computer. That makes my pack a whole lot lighter and I don't have to worry about theft so much. Internet cafes tend to charge for connection. If you just want to use a computer that's not online, that's usually really cheap. Especially if you're somewhere with unreliable connections.
A little water/sand proof bag to carry your electronics in is a good thing, but put a hanky in there so condensation doesn't soak your stuff. Any plastic bag will do, and if you're going on water, more layers of bag. An empty peanut butter jar sealed with a bag gasket is extra secure. It's also good for keeping a passport dry. When sweat made my passport delaminate, the Chinese almost didn't let me in to their country.

Comments

[digitallyinsane]

While in St Petersburg, it was a little hard to tell where you could and couldn't take pictures. I still took tons of pictures in places I wasn't supposed to cause my camera works pretty well with the flash off and I can shoot from the hip and the shoulder. We hit the main points historical sites and got off the beaten path. Got yelled at by some angry old woman in the Hermitage for having my camera in my hand, but that's the worst encounter we had. Man, the souvenir shops just hand you shots of vodka. They call it "vodka tasting," more like "get the tourist drunk so they spend money." We appreciated it.

[americangeiko]

Silica Gel (that packet you get with your shoes that says "do not eat me") will keep the humidity from eating your camera's lens. I always keep a few packets in my camera bag. Works great.

[malogro]

Wait....what? You know, I'm from Brazil. I know it's not really safe to carry around a expensive digicam, but noone ever told me NOT to take pictures of something. I mean, I'm from the country and all and had never seen such a thing. Where was that?

[stasterisk]

Everywhere in Sao Paulo