Vacation or Photo Expedition? Balancing Photography and Family

If you are like me, any time you take a trip some­where, you get excited about oppor­tu­ni­ties to see new things with fresh eyes. Not only do you have some time away from the daily grind, but you have some time away from the famil­iar, and you can recharge your cre­ative bat­ter­ies. Every time I travel, I pick my pho­to­graphic kit–sometimes it is small, some­times it is pon­der­ous. Some­times the deci­sions are easy, some­times more com­pli­cated. When you pick your gear, you must con­sider the pri­or­i­ties of your trip.

If you’re at all like me, you might have a fam­ily. I have a wife and a three year old, and we fre­quently travel together. Though I both wish they were insane obsessed pho­tog­ra­phers like myself, they’re not. Isaac is usu­ally more inter­ested in play­ing in the sand at the beach. No one, under­stand­ably, wants to get up with me at sun­rise and stand out in the cold, wait­ing for a cam­era to fin­ish its expo­sure, or for the right light.

The thing is, unless you’re inde­pen­dently wealthy, or you want to travel with­out your fam­ily, you have a lim­ited num­ber of trips you can take each year, and a lim­ited amount of time you can take. On these trips, you will always have to bal­ance your pho­to­graphic pri­or­i­ties with your famil­ial ones if you’re try­ing com­bine the two into one trip. It’s impor­tant to define your expec­ta­tions, and make sure you under­stand the expec­ta­tions of your trav­el­ing com­pan­ions. Bal­anc­ing photo time with fam­ily time is an essen­tial part of cre­at­ing both mem­o­ries and photographs.

So, what to do if you see long expo­sures, dra­matic black and whites, and human inter­est, while your fel­low trav­el­ers see relax­ation, sleep­ing in, and hang­ing out?

Shoot in the Mar­gins — Mid­day is a bad time to shoot any­way, for the most part. If you wake up to shoot a sun­rise while every­one else is sleep­ing, you’re not dis­rupt­ing planned trips to the aquar­ium or a fam­ily walk on the beach. You can do your thing on your time, get some pho­tos, and be back in time to make cof­fee and break­fast for your fam­ily. This way, you not only hope­fully give your­self a chance to bag some great pho­tos, but you also win bonus points with the fam­ily for being thoughtful.

Be Inclu­sive (don’t be anti­so­cial!) — Involve the peo­ple you’re trav­el­ing with. Doc­u­ment the trip, catch some can­did por­traits in good light, show your activ­i­ties, share your trip. But also know when to put the cam­era down, when to enjoy the moment and enjoy the mem­o­ries rather than try­ing to find the per­fect, com­pelling angle.

Don’t Be Obses­sive — I am nuts about pho­tog­ra­phy. I try to shoot every day if I can, and when I can’t I am think­ing about pho­tog­ra­phy. Espe­cially when I am trav­el­ing, I want to see every­thing through my lens and explore things as a pho­tog­ra­pher. For non-photographers, this is really bor­ing. They stand around or sit while you explore forty five dif­fer­ent angles to try to best cap­ture the paint peel­ing off the hull of a fish­ing boat, or to best show the weath­ered wood of an old pier. If you want ded­i­cated photo time, build that into your trip, and/or plan it for when oth­ers are hav­ing down­time. Don’t expect to wan­der around dur­ing golden hour when every­one else is expect­ing dinner.

If you are plan­ning your trip as fam­ily vaca­tion first, pho­tog­ra­phy sec­ond, plan your gear accord­ingly. On a trip to Spain last year, I left the big DSLR kits at home in favor of a Pana­sonic GF1 and two lenses so that pho­tog­ra­phy wouldn’t be the focus of the trip. I still came home with some great images, and with­out the has­sle of trav­el­ing with heavy, bulky gear OR the scorn of my wife.

Plan a Photo Trip with Other Pho­tog­ra­phers — The best solu­tion is to plan a trip with fel­low pho­tog­ra­phers expressly to take pho­tographs, and to plan a sep­a­rate trip with your fam­ily to have vaca­tion. If you are trav­el­ing with other pho­tog­ra­phers, even pho­tog­ra­phers with pho­to­graphic goals dif­fer­ent than your own, you are more likely to all be on the same page about meal­times, shoot­ing times, and rest times. Your com­pan­ions will be more under­stand­ing when you fol­low a tan­gent and explore a cer­tain sub­ject. When you go to edit and review your images at the end of the day or the end of a ses­sion, you are more likely to have an inter­ested audi­ence with which to share your images. And when you skip din­ner because the light is epic, you won’t be sow­ing the seeds of dis­cord amongst your companions.

What do you do if you can’t afford the time or money to have a photo-specific expe­di­tion? As I said at the start, you make sure that everyone’s on the same page. If you really want to have photo time, you need to out­line the times for that, and sep­a­rate out your fam­ily time. You can incor­po­rate your pho­tog­ra­phy into your fam­ily time also, but be ready to put the cam­era away. And when it comes time for lunch, or fam­ily story time, or tuck­ing your son into bed, put the cam­era away, and enjoy the moments that are all the more spe­cial because they are ephemeral, fleet­ing, and go unrecorded. I don’t know about you, but while I love pho­tog­ra­phy and look­ing at pho­tographs, the rea­son I shoot is to com­mu­ni­cate expe­ri­ence, emo­tion, occa­sion. It is often more plea­sur­able to enjoy those moments with­out 10 ele­ments in 3 groups between you and the sun set­ting behind the dunes.

And remem­ber: it’s entirely pos­si­ble to com­bine it all and get mem­o­rable pho­tographs while on a fam­ily vaca­tion. You just have to choose your moments, and make the most of them.

Oh, and one last tip: wait to blog about all the great things you’ve learned and the pho­tos you want to share until you get back home, or everyone’s napping! ;-)