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Frommers.com Podcast: How to Take Better Vacation Photos

Do your vacation photos look like more like mugshots and mistakes than portraits and landscapes? Find out how to make your pictures as interesting as your trip.

Professional photographer and author of Portrait and Candid Photography: Photo Workshop, Erin Manning, joins host Kelly Regan to talk about digital travel photography and offer advice on educating your "design eye" to take better photos. Learn some basic rules of composition, how to work with and manipulate light, outsmart nighttime shots, and other tricks and practical tips for taking better vacation photos with your digital camera.

To listen this episode, click the "play" button on the MP3 player below.


To download this episode to your hard drive, click here. To listen to previous episodes or to subscribe, visit www.frommers.com/podcast/.


Top Tips from This Podcast

See transcript below for links to more information.

  • Multiple Shots: Take multiple pictures of the same subject from different angles.
  • Rule of Thirds: Divide your scene into a tic-tac-toe board, and place your subject of interest at one of the intersecting lines, rather than perfectly in the center.
  • Lighting: Pay attention to where the sun is. Early morning and late afternoon are best for capturing people due to the softer light.
  • Flash: Learn the flash options of your camera to get the right lighting for your situation.
  • ISO Setting: When you're shooting where it is darker, bump up your ISO setting which increases the sensitivity to let in more light.
  • Shooting through Glass: Use a polarizing filter. If you don't have, but are wearing polarized sunglasses, hold your sunglasses in front of your lense.
  • Memory: Buy lots of memory. Depending on the type of memory your camera takes, it can be pretty inexpensive.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

Announcer: Welcome to the Frommers.com travel podcast. For more information on planning your trip to any one of thousands of destinations, please visit us at www.frommers.com.
Kelly Regan: Hi, and welcome to another conversation about things travel. I'm Kelly Regan, editorial director of the Frommer's Travel Guides. I'll be your host.

Today we'll be talking about taking digital pictures on the road while you're traveling. My guest today is Erin Manning, the author of the book, "Portrait and Candid Photography, Photo Workshop" which is published by Wiley Publishing. Erin is a professional photographer, and also the host of HGTV and DIY network's show "The Whole Picture." She's great at helping people understand the topography and technology by translating all the technical mumbo-jumbo into everyday words. I think it will be a fun conversation.


Erin, welcome! Thanks for being here.
Erin Manning: Thank you. Thanks very much! It's great to be on the show.
Kelly: I want to start out by talking about your photo-taking philosophy for a bit. One of the reasons I was excited to talk to you today is that [laughs] I do a lot of traveling, but I'm a profoundly boring photographer. I take pictures while I'm there and I'm really excited about them. Then I get back and I look at them and what I see is [laughing.] old building, old building, me next to an old building, empty beach, me on the empty beach [laughs] you know.

I feel like the pictures that I end up with don't reflect any kind of sensibility. I'm wondering if you have any tools or exercises or tips for people like me who take really boring pictures; to try and get us to, as you call it in the book, "educate your photographic eye for design."
Erin: Yes. There are quite a few things you can do. I know sometimes it can be overwhelming when you're on location somewhere. You're on vacation and there are so many things that you're looking at all at once. What do I take a picture of? How do I take a picture of it?

Lots of things to consider, but if you just think of this: Every time you go somewhere, tell a story with your pictures. Here's a really simple way to do it. Whenever you're anywhere, say you're in front of that old building, take a wide shot of the entire area. Take multiple wide shots of the area. This is what a lot of journalists do when they take photographs of an area when they're going to write a story about it, because people want to see where you're at.

Then get in close or get a medium shot, maybe something interesting about that building, a doorway or a window. Next, get in close and get some detail shots.

Now when you lay all of these pictures out together, they're going to tell a story and they're going to be much more interesting.

If you think about a movie or a television show where it's been edited, you don't see a picture of someone in the show from the same angle from the same distance in every single shot, right?
Kelly: Right.
Erin: It's all different angles and shots all edited together. That's what our mind's eye wants to see.

Along with... consider some rules of composition. It might help you out. It might give you a little guideline to go by.
Kelly: OK like what?
Erin: First off, a really easy one to think about is the rule of thirds.
Kelly: OK...
Erin: Not only when you're shooting a building or some inanimate object, but also people. Don't always place everything right in the middle of the frame. Think about placing it a little off center. Because what you want to do is visually divide your scene into a tic-tac-toe board. That's dividing it into thirds. Then you place something of interest at one or more of those intersections, and your photograph is just going to be much more dynamic and compelling.
Kelly: Right. And sort of less like a mug shot.


[laughter]
Erin: Yes, less like a mug shot. If you're taking a picture of a person, driver's licenses and passports are great for plunked right in the middle. But do something more interesting especially if you're on location with other people.

Oh my gosh, you can take in so much more of the environment and make it look really beautiful by just placing your subject a little off center and including some of the background in the other part of the photograph, on the other side of the photograph. It just gives your eye somewhere to go in the photograph.


Also, think about different angles. Come up above, shoot from down below, shoot from all different angles.

So think of the wide, medium, and close up shot, and then think of different angles. And as you're playing around, just consider the rule of thirds. Maybe even incorporate some interesting colors into your photograph.

When I travel places I might see one color that really pops out at me. I went to Italy this last year, and I was in Capri. I noticed there was red gate, and a red hat in a window, and people had on red shoes. That might not be a way to document the entire area. But what an interesting fun little slide show to look at later.
Kelly: Yeah. It's kind of a recurring theme that will pop up as people are going through the photos.
Erin: Yeah.
Kelly: Oh that's great. That's a great idea.


We're talking a lot about shooting outdoors and I'm very curious about the whole issue of light and lighting. In the book you say that shooting outdoors requires being able to identify good light and knowing how to manipulate it to achieve the look that you want. I'm curious what you consider to be good light, and what do you mean by manipulating it?

[laughter]

Is there a certain time? Is there a best time of day to take pictures?
Erin: Those are all great questions. First off, light is what photography is really all about. Once you learn to how read light, you are just going to take off. Things are going to... it's like opening up a whole new language.


What you want to do is think about daylight. Pay attention to where the sun is in the sky. Really the best time to shoot is really early in the morning and really late in the afternoon because that's when the sun is lowest in the sky. It's softer, it looks beautiful on people. It also gives you some nice dimension.

Let's say you have friend in front of a mountain and you want to take a great picture. If you took it in the middle of the day, the light's going to be directly overhead, your friend is going to have shadows under their eyes, they're going to be squinting because it's really bright, and the light is going to look really flat on the mountain behind them. You're not going to be able to see the interesting texture in that mountain. Or if you think about...
Kelly: Or reflection in the water.
Erin: Right. If you look at magazines and books and start thinking, "hmm, did they shoot this right before the sun set? Or did they shoot it very early in the morning?" The answer probably at least 70% of the time is yes. Those are the most beautiful times to shoot. It really is. It just makes people look fantastic.


Let's say you're somewhere traveling. You don't always have the luxury of shooting right when the sun is setting. Or maybe you don't want to get up really early. You're on vacation, right?
Kelly: I hear you! Right.
Erin: Yeah. So maybe you want to take it easy and have fun. Maybe you're out seeing an important monument and it's high noon. What do you do?

Well, there are two things: One, if it's at all possible, if there is some open shade anywhere near what it is you want a picture of, you can place your subjects in the open shade. It's still very bright and sunny outside but as soon as they step into the shade, the light on their face becomes much more even and soft. They're probably not going to be squinting.
Kelly: You don't get those harsh shadows that you were talking about.
Erin: Right. Exactly. Let's say there's no open shade, you can't shoot in the afternoon, and you can't shoot in the early morning. It's just blasting sunlight. [laughter] Here's what you do: you can turn on the flash on your camera.
Kelly: Oh!
Erin: This is why you need to understand how to control the flash on your camera. Oftentimes people need to know how to set their camera to "program" or "manual" if they have a compact point-and-shoot camera. Turn on the forced flash. You just press that little lightening bolt icon on the back of the camera and cycle through your different flash options. The icon will appear right on your LCD screen.


You choose forced flash which is just the icon itself, there's nothing else next to it. That way you can flash the shadows out of your friend's face. Make sure you're no more than 10 feet away, because if you are your flash isn't going to reach.
Kelly: OK. Yeah, that wouldn't have occurred to me to use a flash in broad daylight, but that's a great idea.
Erin: You know what; I should talk to you too about manipulating the light. You asked that. Reflecting light into shadows is a great thing to do too. Professional photographers use reflectors to bounce sunlight or studio light back in to their subject's face to fill in those dark shadows and corners. Maybe you're out and about and you're not bringing a professional reflector with you.

Oftentimes if you can find something white, like a big white wall, or a white tablecloth, or sometimes even a white t-shirt... oftentimes if I'm shooting people and I know we're going to be running all over the place and I need to maybe reflect light into them, I'll bring a white t-shirt with me, and maybe pin it up on the wall on the other side of them to bounce some light into the shadows on their faces. That's one way you can manipulate.

Another is to diffuse light, that harsh light coming down. There are different ways you can do that, too. Professional photographers have these silk diffusers that they use, and it really makes the light look beautiful. But if you don't really want to carry one of those around with you, you can maybe use a really transparent piece of fabric like parachute fabric that you can get at a fabric store.


I've even used those white plastic trash bags that you can get at the store. That you can find pretty much everywhere, people leave them out everywhere, or you can stash it in your bag. It's all about being lightweight.
Kelly: Well, it's pretty flat. It's pretty lightweight.
Erin: You can hold that. I've taken macro shots, you know close up shots of flowers, and I've used that as diffusion between the sun and the flower. It really makes it look beautiful.
Kelly: Oh. How pretty!
Erin: And, no one has to know what, what you're using to diffuse it, but you can.
Kelly: Yeah. Exactly, exactly. OK, well, those are great tips. To transition from shooting in kind of broad daylight to shooting at nighttime - I know people can find shooting at night to be very tricky. So, are there things that people can do to ensure that there's some depth and some ambient light to the shot? Because I know for me, to my untrained auto-focus-prone photo-taking abilities, I find that the pictures often bleach out the person or the subject that's right in front because the flash just kind of - bouncing off of them. And, then the background becomes very dark.
Erin: Right. Yes. There are so many party pictures like that. It's like here are all these really blasted out people in the shot. And, where were they? - Because we can't see anything.
Kelly: Yeah.
Erin: You know, or you're at this beautiful party with candlelight and, and lights in the background. And, the host has made a big effort to make it look beautiful. And, you come back with all of these pictures that look just like what you were saying. So, yes. I have felt your pain, and other people do too.
Kelly: Yeah. It feels kind of Blair Witch Project, you know? With the flashlight - like AAH!
Erin: Yes. Well, that's what's great about the digital cameras now. If you're unsure how to use it, you can always start off in the Automatic Mode and you can take some OK shots. But, the problem is that you're not going to be able to control it in certain situations and get the great shots.

So, here's what you do. Again, you can go back to your Flash - and every camera varies, so it really depends - but, there are a couple of ways you can do it. One - cycle through your flash options - just pressing that little lightning bolt icon and, you might have something called Night Flash. Or, perhaps it's on the Mode dial on the top of your camera and it looks like a little person with a star or a moon above their head.
Kelly: Oh. Right, right, right.
Erin: If you turn it to that, the camera is going to use its lower shutter speed which picks up ambient light in the area, yet it will still flash. It creates some really interesting effects. You have to be careful if people are moving a lot. Or, if you're shooting moving subjects, you might get a little more blur than usual. But, sometimes, it makes for a really interesting effect.

So, this way, say, you're at, at a party, and you turn it to Night Flash. Or, in some cameras, it's also known as Slow Sync and you have to get to that through your menu options. You can flash someone yet still pick up all of the beautiful light in the background. So, it gives, like you're saying, some dimension to that image.
Kelly: Yeah. I mean, I think those are, are great ideas. And, I think again, it's about people just kind of understanding all of the different options that are available to them. Certainly now, that so many people have digital cameras. There are so many different ways to configure the, the settings before you actually do the shot.
Erin: Yes you're right. And, they're trying - the manufacturers are trying to make it easier and easier for everyone, so you don't have to bring the manual with you to figure it out. There's just a couple of buttons to press or just go to your menu. You can just cycle through that thing.
Kelly: Yeah.
Erin: It's like rummaging through your sock drawer, but eventually you find what you need.
Kelly: Yeah, exactly. Do you have any suggestions - I mean, one thing that often happens when you're traveling is you often see, or I often see, you know, people who take beautiful portraits, but also, as you say, candid photos of people who they encounter on their travels - someone that they see on the street or you know a woman selling wares at a market or something.

And, I mean, do you have any suggestions for approaching unfamiliar people and asking them for their permission to take a picture? I mean, how do you, how do you get people to forget about the camera so you can capture like a, a moment of spontaneity?
Erin: Right. That's often an issue. And, when you're traveling and you see someone very interesting and you want to take a picture of them, you don't want to just steal the photo, so to speak. You want to be respectful of people. And, especially if they're, you're close-up and they're noticing you, is...
Kelly: Exactly.
Erin: ...you're doing a one-on-one portrait. It's important to ask them, even if you don't know the language. You know, a couple of hand gestures, head nods...
Kelly: Right.
Erin: ...smile, laugh. They'll figure out what it is that you're intending. And, often times, they're quite happy to let you take their picture. Or maybe, offer to send it to them in email. Or sometimes, in some instances, a, a couple of dollars or whatever the local currency is - sometimes helps. It just depends on where you're at.
Kelly: Yeah.
Erin: But, always, always my motto is - be respectful of, of other people and life is going to be a lot nicer...
Kelly: Yeah, yeah.
Erin: ...when you photograph.
Kelly: Yeah, yeah.
Erin: But, then if you, let's say - OK. So, you've asked this person and they say it's OK to take their photo. You need to have kind of a little conversation. And again, even if you don't know the language - laughing, kind of moving around get them, getting them to give you some kind of reaction, if that's the look you want.
Kelly: Right.
Erin: Other times, maybe, it's just a very still, soulful look. It really depends. But, then again, having a conversation, and also having them do something.
Kelly: Right.
Erin: Have them - if they're sitting by the side of the road and they're, they're sewing up a blanket or whatever they're doing - have them keep doing it. And, as they are involved in whatever they're doing, you can capture some real authentic moments.
Kelly: OK, yeah, I mean, it's hard. I think people - the tendency for most people is that when you say, Can I take your picture? They want to pose and they want to smile and they want to get very kind of stiff and formal. And, the idea is to kind of move away from that...
Erin: Take your picture.
Kelly: ...and, to get and to capture something that, that you've kind of stumbled upon as opposed to, like, something that feels very staged.
Erin: Right. You don't want something forced. Stay away from the Cheese pictures because those are so boring. And it - and it really puts a veneer over the personality of the, the person...
Kelly: Exactly.
Erin: ...that you're trying to photograph. That's not what you want. You don't want the Cheese! Look you want something that's really...
Kelly: Natural.
Erin: ...emoting. Yeah, very natural. So, as you're just talking to them, sometimes they're not even aware that you are still taking the photograph. You're having a conversation and life happens right in front of your lens.
Kelly: Right. I mean, and, another thing to, to - for travelers to keep in mind is that in some cultures taking photos or taking photos of certain events is considered disrespectful or sort of wrong. And, so that's another reason to always ask first, as you said, as much as you're able - with kind of hand gestures, and maybe a few common - commonly understood words, so...
Erin: Absolutely. Yes.
Kelly: Yeah.
Erin: And, you know, a lot of times there might be a guidebook for that area that will give you that information. Like - at this festival, they will jump up and down on your camera if you bring it out of your bag.
Kelly: Yeah.
Erin: So, you want to make sure that you're following local customs and not upsetting anyone.
Kelly: Or, if it's a religious ceremony, you know, it can be it can be very distracting and disrespectful to, to try and take pictures and have a flash going off while there's this very kind of holy event taking place, so...
Erin: Yeah.
Kelly: ...it's always good to just - it's always good to, to kind of ask around and, and to just make sure that you're doing this in the, in the right circumstances, so...
Erin: That's right. And, and, on that note, too, in most instances, when you're inside someplace, say, at a museum, if you're traveling or whatever - you do need to turn off your flash. If you turn off your flash, it might still be too dark. So, what you need to do is raise your ISO. That's just basically...
Kelly: OK.
Erin: It's like film speed, but raising your camera's sensitivity to the light.
Kelly: OK. OK.
Erin: So, yes - flash can be disrespectful in a lot of situations.
Kelly: Yeah, yeah. Definitely. And, while we're talking about sort of capturing these moments of spontaneity - I mean, do you have any tips for taking live action shots, for capturing motion in activities without it turning into just kind of a blur? I mean I imagine, obviously, that the speed will have to increase, as well, in this situation.
Erin: Yes. There's some simple ways to do it. If you have a compact Point-and-Shoot camera, they have an option in there for Sport. If it's on your Mode dial, it's like the little running man within your menu. It's either called Sport, or sometimes they call it Kids and Pets.

It's an automatic setting you can use on your camera that gives the camera a faster shutter speed. And, this way when you are taking pictures of things that are moving in front of you, you're going to capture that action a lot faster...
Kelly: Right.
Erin: ...unlike the slow shutter speed before when we were picking up light in the background - a fast shutter speed is going to capture that action. And, if someone is moving or running by you, try following the action with the camera, put your...
Kelly: OK.
Erin: ...your eye up to the viewfinder or look through the viewfinder, if you have an LCD in the back of your camera. Follow it. Hold your shutter button halfway down. And, then when the moment happens that you want to capture, press the shutter button the rest of the way and it will quickly take the picture.
Kelly: Right. And, that'll - allows you - that allows you to keep auto-focused, so you don't have to wait for that focus moment. Yeah.
Erin: That's right. That's often times why people encounter shutter lag with digital cameras is because if you press the shutter button in all - one fell swoop - it has to, like, Who...
Kelly: Yeah.
Erin: ...adjust to the exposure and the focus and all that. And, it takes it maybe a little extra time. But, if you press the shutter button halfway down and you're ready - that's going to lock in the exposure and the focus...
Kelly: Right.
Erin: ...and, the area you think you want to capture the shot.
Kelly: Right. That makes a lot of sense. In terms of live action shots, outdoor shots, community shots - there's also this notion of taking group shots. Either, you know, you might be at a festival, as you mentioned. Or, you know, you might be traveling with, with a family - a family reunion or something.

And, you want to kind of capture these moments. But, you want them to be again, you know, not kind of staged and forced, but you want them to more kind of spontaneous. I mean are there ways that people can be aware, or people can make sure there's some focus to the picture? And, that the, the group just doesn't come across as, like, a police line up or, you know...
Erin: Right.
Kelly: ...just like this amorphous kind of blob.
Erin: Yes. If you're going to photograph a group, the more people you add to the picture, the more variables you will have, and the more direction you will need to give them. That can be difficult, because when everyone thinks: "oh, we have to line up like you're saying", it can look very stiff and staged.

You can get everyone into a group, and you can start that way. Or you can put people into a circle together. Put them in a line, but tell them: "OK, I'm going to take multiple shots of you all", because if you don't, you're going to get at least one person who's got their eyes closed, or looking off the other way.

You definitely have to be talking to this whole group: "Hey, Sue, get over here; Uncle Bob, look at me."

[Kelly laughs]
Erin: You need to be talking to all of them. Get them all in a group. Make sure that they're paying attention, and that they're looking at the lens, because that's the kind of picture you want.

Next, I often tell groups: "hey, group hug", and as soon as group hug happens, they start interacting and laughing; maybe they're looking at each other. Those are the real moments that you capture. While they're doing the group hug, or looking back and forth, you'll capture some shots within that.


Keeping them all in focus is another problem, because people are on different focusing planes, different distances from the camera. Oftentimes, you'll have a group shot where the person in front is in focus and everyone else who's in back of him is all fuzzy, right?
Kelly: Right.
Erin: Here's another automatic setting on your camera. It's on compact cameras. It's also on digital SLRs. That's where you set it on landscape, or infinity mode.

Think about an Ansel Adams shot, where everything is in focus from near to far.


Set it on that. It looks like a little mountain icon on your camera. Set it to infinity, or landscape. What that's going to give you is, everyone's going to be in focus, provided that they're not too close to the camera, because your camera may not focus that close. But everyone in the front of the group to the back of the group will be in focus.
Kelly: OK, that's great to know. Again, it's: "know your camera, and know the settings".

Another thing that travelers might often encounter is taking pictures through glass. When I went to Mexico with my niece this year, she wanted to take lots of pictures outside the plane window, like: "oh, here we are on our way to Mexico"; and "here we are, landing at the Cancun Airport", and things like that.


But it could also be that you're walking down a sidewalk, and you see this very character-filled space that's in the window of a cafe or a shop, and you want to take a picture.

I know that it can be very problematic. A polarizing filter will often help with that, but if someone has a simpler camera, or doesn't travel with a polarizing filter, are there ways around that; to keep the glare from happening with the light bouncing off the glass?
Erin: Yeah, the reflections and everything. First off, it's a good idea to turn off the flash. Know your flash settings, because as soon as you flash, it's just going to reflect right off that glass.


Secondly, if you don't have a polarizing filter, there's a nifty little idea that a lot of people do: wear polarized sunglasses. You can just hold your polarized lens in front of your camera, and you have an instant polarizing filter.
Kelly: Wow, look at that.
Erin: Yeah. That's one way to do it. Depending on the window that you're trying to get a picture of, you want to stand off to the side and not shoot directly into the window.

As you're photographing and looking at different angles of the window, you may not see the reflections that you would see if you were shooting it straight on.


You can experiment with that, but mainly, turn off that flash. If you need to bring more light into the camera, raise your ISO just a little bit.
Kelly: Yeah, as you were saying before, increase the ISO.

We're just about out of time, but before we go, I wanted to wind our conversation up.

You know, we've been talking about a lot of these terms, such as SLRs, and point-and-shoots. But the bottom line, equipment-wise, is: I'm wondering how much camera you think a traveler really needs.

A lot of travelers will not be printing out poster-sized photos to display. It will be more of a "snapshot in an album", or "online slide show" kind of thing.


What do you think is a good caliber of camera to use, in terms of the mega pixels, and things like that?
Erin: That can be a really personal choice. A lot of people might not want to carry a digital SLR around with them everywhere they go. They would prefer to have a pocket camera.

A lot of the compact point-and-shoot cameras now are at least five or six mega pixels, which means that if you shoot at the highest resolution on that camera, you are going to be able to blow it up to poster size, at least to 11 x 14, or maybe to 16 x 20, depending on the image.


I always recommend that people shoot at the highest resolution on their camera, because you never know when you're going to capture that magical shot. Maybe you will want to blow it up. You may be thinking that you want to put it into an album, but you never know.

Plus, if you put the image into your computer in an image editing software program, unless you want to zoom in and crop out something in that picture, as soon as you crop something in a photograph, you lose all the pixels around it, so you're losing all that resolution. And you need a lot of resolution in that picture, if you want to have some detail in the thing that you've cropped out, so I always recommend shooting at the highest resolution.


Most of the compact point-and-shoot cameras now are at least five or six mega pixels. That's plenty.

I don't think a camera's value should be measured by how many mega pixels it has, because there are so many other variables. It could be the quality of the sensor. Typically, the more expensive the camera, the better the sensor, so you'll get higher quality images, but that doesn't mean you have to spend a lot on a camera.

If you're just going to be running around and you want to get some great shots, I think a good camera to get might be one that has anywhere from six to eight mega pixels, and that has anywhere from 4x to 10x optical zoom. That's like using a long telephoto lens.


You want to be able to stand in a spot and zoom in with your camera, even if it's a compact camera, and capture the detail and the architecture of a building way above you. Or maybe you want to be able to zoom in and capture something you wouldn't be able to get if you took the time to run up and get closer to it.

I hear a lot of people saying: "Oh, we're going to Africa. We're going to take pictures of animals."

Well, you'd better get a camera with a telephoto lens.
Kelly: [laughing] You're not getting that close to the elephants.
Erin: That's right. Exactly. Think about it. So you want to get a camera you can really zoom in with. Get, at least, a 6x optical zoom, or more. There are some smaller compact cameras now that are increasing their optical zoom ability. It makes it easy for us to take great photographs.


The other thing I love about point-and-shoot cameras is that they have a video mode.
Kelly: I was just going to say that, actually.
Erin: Unlike the digital SLRs, with the interchangeable lenses, compact cameras have a video mode. Maybe you're in a little situation, and you want to get a little video. How easy is that to do?

I'm a professional photographer. I bring my big camera with me when I'm on vacation, but I also always carry a compact camera, because I never know what picture I'm going to get, or where.


I always say that the best camera to have is the one you have with you.

[laughter]
Kelly: Yeah, exactly. And if your memory card in the camera is large enough, you can take video, and you can take a good number of pictures, and they can live there together, if you're not traveling with a laptop or a flash-drive and are unable to offload a lot of the images that you're storing on the camera.
Erin: Exactly. Buy lots of memory. Have at least a one-gigabyte card in your camera.

Now they have two-, four-, six- and eight-gigabyte cards, but if you're traveling, I recommend getting a couple of one- or two-gigabyte cards, and you'll probably be fine. You can keep all the images on the card, and not have to worry about transferring them somewhere while you're traveling.
Kelly: Right. And you can just pop one out and pop the other one in, if you happen to run out of space.
Erin: Exactly. And there are other devices you can bring with you, too, if you're concerned about that.


Those cards are very fragile. Once you take a card out, you want to make sure that you don't drop it somewhere, or that the dog doesn't chew on it. You don't want to get it near any kind of magnetized surface that will erase all your photos.

It's a precious, little fragile thing, so if you can prevent yourself from taking it out at all, it's a good thing.

But there are other devices that you can use, where you pop in the memory card, and it's like a little, teeny-weeny, traveling hard-drive with a screen. You can store pictures that way, too.
Kelly: OK. That's great to know. Unfortunately, that's all the time we have for today. I could ask you a lot more questions.


[Erin laughs]
Kelly: I'm excited to take my next trip so I can take better pictures.
Erin: Great. Wonderful.
Kelly: All my family will be so excited to have something a little more interesting to look at from now on.
Erin: Oh, yes. They'll all want to see your slide shows and your scrapbook after this, believe me.
Kelly: Exactly. My guest today has been Erin Manning, who is the author of the book, "Portrait and Candid Photography: Photo Workshop". Erin, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. Our conversation was a lot of fun.
Erin: Thank you. It's been fun.
Kelly: Join us next week for another conversation about "All Things Travel". I am Kelly Regan, and we will talk again soon.
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