Pictures of Beautiful Places in the World: How I Photograph Them

I explore. A lot. When I look back through my pictures of beautiful places in the world, I remember the walking, the wrong turns, the small towns and the streets I nearly passed by. There are famous views in there, of course. I research them, I visit them, and I enjoy photographing them. But the photographs that feel most personal usually come from something I found along the way.

That might be a doorway in Venice, a restaurant floor in Bogotá or an old house sitting beneath a misty Icelandic hillside. Sometimes the whole landscape stops me. Sometimes it is one small thing inside it. After travelling to more than 45 countries, I still get excited by that moment when I see something and think, there it is.

I Research the Famous Places, Then Leave Room to Wander

I do my homework before a trip. I want to know where the popular viewpoints are, what the architecture looks like and what I might find in different parts of a city. I take tours too. There is value in having someone introduce you to a place, and there are views that deserve their reputation. Dubrovnik at sunset is a good example: the old town, the harbour, the Adriatic and the last warm light make an extraordinary combination.

Research gives me a starting point. Once I am there, I want enough room in the day to follow something unexpected. If every hour is already assigned to the next attraction, a promising lane becomes something to walk past because I am late for somewhere else.

I remember a couple of the iconic Instagram spots in Lofoten. People were lined up, taking turns to make the photograph from exactly the same place. Of course I took it too. Naturally, my version was better than everyone else's. I'm joking.

I understand the appeal. You travel all that way, and you want the view you have admired for years. But in my experience, the photographs people respond to most on my site are often the things I found away from those lineups. Finding them takes time, plenty of walking and a fairly persistent desire to see what is around the next corner.

Dunedin Train Station gave me that opportunity within a well-known landmark. I was drawn beneath the covered platform, where the roof structure, windows, tracks and diagonal shadows all pull into the distance. Moving around the building opened up a completely different photograph. That is something I do almost anywhere: make the view that brought me there, then keep looking.

Walking Is a Big Part of My Travel Photography

Whether I travel solo or with my wife, I walk. Sometimes we cover 20 kilometres in a day. At that pace, with a camera and plenty of stops, you see a remarkable amount of ordinary life. A delivery arrives. Light reaches a narrow street. Someone opens a shop. You notice how one neighbourhood gives way to another.

I certainly could not keep up that kind of walking in Vietnam's extreme heat. Conditions set the pace. There is no prize for covering a particular distance, and being exhausted does very little for my ability to notice a photograph. The point is to give myself time on the ground.

My wife and I have had some of our best travel experiences simply following our curiosity. I wrote about one of those days in Saying Yes in Beijing: A Lesson in Curiosity, Travel and Life. Small, unplanned encounters tend to stay with me long after the itinerary has been forgotten.

This early-morning Barcelona street is the sort of place that rewards walking slowly. Wet stone catches the light, bollards lead into the distance, and balconies and doorways build up above them. There is no single grand attraction to point the camera at. The photograph comes from seeing how those everyday details work together.

I try to notice what first made me stop. Was it the light on the ground? A shape? A person? That first response helps me decide what belongs in the frame. Then I check the edges and the background, because an interesting subject can still disappear inside a cluttered composition.

In this Bogotá restaurant, the patterned floor caught my eye. There was detail everywhere: iron chairs, tables, photographs, signs and objects covering the walls. Keeping the tiles prominent gave all that activity a place to begin. An interior you enter during the day can be every bit as rewarding to photograph as the destination you set out to see.

The Hidden Door of Venice: One Small Detour

I cannot count how many times I have been walking down a street, noticed a small lane and thought, let's have a look down there. My Venice door photograph came from exactly that habit.

I was in a residential back alley, away from the familiar waterfront views. At first there seemed to be nothing much to photograph. Then I cracked open a gate to a backyard and saw the doorway. Bingo. Old boards, worn plaster, brick, vines and all that texture, sitting together in a place I could so easily have missed.

The photograph went on to receive recognition and appear in a special edition of Black and White Magazine. You can find it on my Awards and Exhibits page. I am proud of that, but what I remember most is finding it. There was no queue, no marked viewpoint and no photograph saved on my phone telling me where to stand.

Black and white lets the surfaces hold the image together. The pale doorway gives the eye a clear shape, while the vines and broken textures keep it moving. That small entrance says as much to me about the Venice I experienced as a broad canal view. Both belong in a collection of photographs of beautiful places.

50,000 Kilometres of Back Roads and Small Towns

The same curiosity follows me when I drive. In a little more than a year, I put 50,000 kilometres on my new 4x4 camper van, exploring Canada and driving to every small town I could find. That is the whole reason I bought a self-contained 4x4 RV: to have the freedom to keep going, take back roads and explore off-road.

I love the possibility of a day that has room to change. A small town can hold my attention far longer than expected. A side road can become the part of the drive I remember. The van supports that way of travelling, with more freedom to spend time in places that interest me.

My Canada photography collection, United States wall art collection and European wall art collection bring together the landscapes, cities and small discoveries I have photographed along the way.

People sometimes describe finding a photograph as luck. There is certainly luck involved. But being out there, over and over again, gives luck a lot more opportunities. Many kilometres lead to nothing I want to photograph. Then a small building, a change in weather or an unexpected stretch of road makes me stop. That is my wanderlust at work.

Beautiful Landscapes Often Have a Small Story Inside Them

My interest in buildings follows me into the countryside. An old house can give a landscape a human scale. I start wondering about the people who lived there and what it would have been like to look out at that view every day. I do not need to invent their story for the photograph to suggest that a life was lived there.

In this Icelandic valley, I kept the abandoned farmhouse small. Moving closer would have made the building more descriptive, but the broad hillside and mist are what give it that sense of isolation. The river across the foreground helps establish the space. The muted green and ochre matter too; this is a colour photograph even though its mood is quiet.

How much land to leave around a subject is one of the most useful decisions in landscape photography. Filling the frame makes us examine an object. Stepping back asks us to consider where it belongs.

At Drangshlid, the turf houses sit beneath a much larger cliff. Their simple fronts are easy to recognise, while the rock face makes their scale apparent. I wanted the buildings and the landscape to stay connected. The cliff is doing as much work in the photograph as the houses.

Working With the Light and Weather I Find

I research light, but travel rarely gives me complete control over when I reach a place. Weather changes. A tour has a schedule. There may be only one chance to see a particular stretch of coast. I need to recognise what the available conditions offer.

In this Antarctic photograph, some mountain ridges are clear and others disappear into low cloud. The grey water gives the snow a darker base, and faint blue tones remain in the shadows. A completely clear sky would produce a different picture. Here, the partial view and the softened slopes are part of what interested me.

Bright snow also makes exposure worth checking carefully. I watch the histogram and highlight warnings so that important snow detail does not disappear into featureless white. I also look closely at the darker areas. A photograph needs tonal separation, but every shadow does not need to become bright.

Warm Evening Light in Cobh

Evening light can bring a very different feeling to a place. In Cobh, the yellow and green boats give the harbour its immediate colour, with the waterfront houses behind them and broken reflections below. The town remains visible, but the boats are the starting point.

I pay attention to those smaller relationships. A boat against another boat, a warm hull against cooler water, a reflection interrupted by ripples: those are manageable pieces of a busy scene. They help me make a photograph with a clear subject while keeping the wider setting.

Blue Hour Along the River in Chengdu

For this Chengdu skyline, I waited for the period when the sky still held its blue and the city lights were becoming distinct. The warm riverbank lights and their reflections gave the scene a balance I wanted to preserve.

That balance changes as the sky darkens. I watch the scene itself, checking whether the buildings still separate from the sky and whether bright signs are overwhelming the quieter parts of the frame. A reflection also needs space. Cropping too tightly around the skyline would lose much of what makes this riverside view appealing.

Letting Night Stay Dark at Bran Castle

Bran Castle called for a different treatment. Its illuminated walls stand within a dark wooded hillside, with a softer ridge behind. I kept that darkness because it gives the castle its presence.

When I work on a night photograph, I resist the urge to reveal everything equally. Here, the lit architecture gives us enough to look at, and the surrounding trees supply depth. Black and white makes that relationship especially clear. The choice between colour and monochrome comes from what carries the picture: sometimes colour is essential, and sometimes light and shape are enough.

Look Up, Change Position and Check the Whole Frame

Walking with a camera also means remembering to look up. As an urban landscape photographer, I am drawn to the way buildings change as I move around them. A few steps can alter the overlap between two structures or open a patch of sky that makes a shape easier to see.

At Garak Tower East in Seoul, the curved facade rises above a street directory, with a straighter neighbouring building on the right. I kept the sign in the foreground because it connects that upward view to the street. It gives the eye a familiar scale before the architecture takes over.

I ask a few simple questions while framing: What made me stop? Is it clear in the photograph? What is touching the edge? Would moving left, right, closer or farther away help? Those decisions matter long before I open an editing program. An unusual angle is useful when it reveals something about the subject.

The Life Around a Place Matters Too

A beautiful city is more than its buildings. I love street photography because people give those streets their daily life. Work, conversation, waiting, movement and quiet expressions all belong to the experience of being somewhere.

Sometimes a face becomes the whole reason for stopping. I go into that side of my work in Portrait Photography Tips From a Working Fine-Art Photographer, where I talk about photographing real people in the streets with available light. The same attention that helps me notice a doorway helps me notice a person, although photographing people brings its own need for connection and consideration.

In this Havana night scene, the classic taxi is the strongest shape, but the old facades, pools of light and softer figure farther down the street keep it part of a living city. The car drew me in; the surrounding street gives the photograph its atmosphere. That is often what I want from travel photography: enough detail to feel that the place continues beyond the frame.

Choosing Photographs You Want to Live With

When I choose pictures of beautiful places in the world for my print collection, I look for something that holds my attention beyond the first glance. A spectacular view can do that. So can a weathered door. I want the photograph to have a clear subject and enough depth that I keep finding things in it.

For someone choosing travel wall art, a personal connection is a good place to start. You might recognise a city you love, remember a particular kind of light or feel drawn to a place you have never visited. Each photograph in this article links to its own product page, where you can look more closely and see the available options.

My Popular Photos collection is another place to look for a photograph you connect with, from familiar destinations to quieter discoveries.

I will keep researching the famous places and making those photographs when I get there. I will also keep walking down the small lanes, looking into the distance from a back road and wondering what is in the next town. There is usually one more turn I want to take before heading back.