meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Life Kit

How to take better (and more distinctive) photos on vacation

Life Kit

NPR

Education, Self-improvement, Health & Fitness, Business, Kids & Family

4.54.9K Ratings

🗓️ 4 August 2022

⏱️ 21 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When your smartphone can hold thousands of photos, it's tempting to snap away. But that approach may not actually help you capture the best moments. These tips on creating stunning images will help you more meaningfully document your trips.

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is NPR's Life Kit. I'm Beck Harlan, Life Kit's Visuals Editor.

0:06.0

Picture this. Your alarm goes off before dawn. You hit snooze a few times, but you managed to drag

0:12.2

yourself out of bed. Throw on some clothes, get out the door, and make your way to your favorite

0:17.5

scenic outlook. More morning lights stretches across the water in front of you, bathing everything

0:23.9

with a rosy glow. You did it. You made it in time to watch the sunrise. Yes, you're tired

0:30.8

and there are bugs, but it really is beautiful. So of course, your next instinct is to reach into

0:37.6

your pocket, take out your phone, and document it. Before you know it, you have a screen in between you

0:44.6

and that brand new sunrise. Maybe a notification pops up, you reflexively open it, and bam, you're out

0:52.6

of the moment. And then when you get home, you realize that your photos actually kind of suck.

0:58.4

They're overexposed, and everything looks farther away than it did when you were just looking at

1:02.9

it through your eyeballs. For me, I think intention and purpose art everything. I think whether it's in

1:10.4

a photojournalistic context, which is obviously my background, or if it's in the context of

1:15.5

tourism, of street photography, of family photography. That's Visual Journalist Danielle

1:20.3

Salzman. Her work often focuses on legacies of Western colonization. Her photos have been

1:25.7

published by the New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic Magazine, and more.

1:31.4

She's also the founder of Women Photograph, an organization that supports and promotes the work

1:36.3

of women and non-binary photojournalists. Danielle had told me about a study where people were

1:42.5

asked to take photos of art during a museum tour. The researchers found that taking photos of the art,

1:48.8

surprisingly, didn't actually help people to remember what they'd seen. People who were

1:53.7

photographing had worse short-term memory retention of details. Not all photos were detrimental to

2:00.8

their memory, though. When participants focused on photographing specific details, really zooming

2:06.4

in on something, they tended to remember the overall object better. Researchers think that this

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.