Tips for Taking Travelling Selfies!

 

Last week, I had the pleasure of being on the road to go to Anna Guest-Jelly & Curvy Yoga’s Curve Camp.  I have a whole other post coming swooning over this event (it was INCREDIBLE) but alongside the event itself, my dear friend Liz Lamoreux and I added in a few extra days to really get the chance to soak up the Nashville experience.

It was such a hoot to get touristy and explore the city from that way and I took a LOT of photos and especially self-portraits along the way.  I though I might share with you some tips I have for taking travel selfies & how to really capture the visual story of your trip!

Embrace Your Touristiness

The fun thing about travelling, is that if we give ourselves the permission to….we can embrace being a tourist!  Now, I’m totally the type of traveller who usually likes to pretend I live there so I don’t always embrace my touristiness in an effort to blend in & try to experience the ‘everydayness’ of a city.  On this trip though…I definitely went all out touristy and it really made the trip.

In a place like downtown Nashville, it is tourist galore and it was easy to get unabashedly touristy (and really these days, its folks of all ages embracing the arms length selfie)!  One of my favourite ways to get touristy was to get ‘photobombed’ by all of the photos & statues of celebrities there.  As you can see, we had the Elvis photo but the fun continued as we got a pic of Rayna & Juliette (of the TV show Nashville) and of course Dolly Parton photobombing us too!  I dare you to try it next time the moment arises.  Was it potentially embarrassing? Heck yes…but sometimes these potentially embarrassing moments feel so freeing to do anyways and end up with big belly laughter (which makes for a good trip don’t you think)!

Of course, you can also play tourist in your own town too and just go for it!

Embrace all sorts of types of Selfies!

One of the easiest ways to take a selfie is to reach out our arms for an arms length photo.  As we’re travelling, we are also likely to find all sorts of opportunities for other types of selfie moments!

One of my favourite photos on the trip was seeing our long shadows when we went to the backstage tour of the Grand Ole Opry.  Its a fun way to get a group photo that is also low pressure! The photo on the right was a moment when I saw our reflections backlit in the Country Music Hall of Fame and asked Liz to pause with me to take the photo.  While I took many other selfies and photos in both of these experiences, these two are my favourite.  Sometimes when we capture the unexpected, it helps tell the story of our experience even more!

Reflections, shadows, aiming at our feet and putting down the camera are all great ways to break out of the mould of the arms length selfie when on our travelling adventures!

Take Group Photos

Oh my…this made my trip asking the participants if they’d join me in a group selfie! It can be a great way to get a little bit of folks we meet along the way, asking them to come along with us!

It might be someone we have a great chat with on the bus to our destination or a group we are travelling with!  One trick to getting lots of people in the photo is to have them be a bit further back in the photo (you know…in case you were wondering how we got everyone in this)!

Find Murals or Street Art

One of my favourite ways to get to know a city is to get to know its murals.  Whether it is a small town or a big city, murals often help a place share a part of its history in a visual way and it is a great way to get to more about where you are.  Places like Clarion Alley in San Francisco are full of murals, but quite honestly, there is rarely a town or city where I haven’t seen at least one.  They are everywhere!

In Nashville, I had heard there was a Johnny Cash mural and had hoped to find it.  I asked a few folks downtown if they knew where it was, but no one seemed to.  But then just when we had some time to spare, Liz & I happened to drive past it and were able to jump out of the car to take a few photos with it (the photo on the left was taken by Liz).

Not only does a mural tell us about the city, but it makes for a great drop back for photos!  So next time you are travelling and see a local mural, I dare you to go for it!

Find Makeshift Tripods

Most of us aren’t likely to have a tripod with us on all of our trips, so to be sure to add ourselves into the photo we can think about what I like to call DIY tripods! As in…a bench, or a rock, or a railing (a wide one that would be stable for your camera of course)!

I often simply put my camera on top of my camera purse as a soft place to rest it and also get that ‘from the ground’ perspective!

You can find out more about DIY tripods in the Beloved Camera E-Book!

Tell the Visual Story of the Trip

One of the best things about getting our camera or phone out to take selfies & photos along the way is that we end up being able to look back at the visual story of our trip.  Of course, we’ll want to have a balance between taking photos and really experiencing the trip (not just seeing it from behind the camera) but I know that for me when I don’t pull out my camera here & there, I miss being able to see that part of the journey when I look back at it.

So whether it is simple moments like having a Sangria with a friend on the hottest day you’ve ever experienced or finding  heart shaped leaf on the ground just as you are leaving, we can take mere moments to snap a photo and add these into the story of our travels!

Take a Photo Walk

One other tip for taking travel selfies I have for you is to take a photo walk!  A photo walk can be as simple as taking your camera or phone out with you for a few minutes with no other intention than to capture a bit of the beauty around you and maybe even add yourself into it!  You just might find some gorgeous flowers to capture or want to pause in the beautiful morning or evening light!

It can be a great way to find some solo self-care time or for you early birds like me, to go on adventure while the rest of your travel crew continues to rest.

---

 

Want to learn to take better selfies?

Get the Selfie Starter Guide, a new E-Book from the Be Your Own Beloved Workshops!

This powerful 30 page E-Book will help answer both the creative and technical questions you might have around taking selfies!

Of course, being a Be Your Own Beloved E-Book it will also invite you to see yourself with kindness rather than critique!