Travel

With the technological advancements of mobile phone cameras and the downsizing of high-end camera systems, documenting adventures around the world has never been easier or looked better. PetaPixel aims to highlight visually stunning stories and information-packed trip ideas that will inspire a thirst for storytelling, no matter the equipment.

Photographing the Expansive Underwater Caves of the Yucatan

In the world of social media, it is unfortunately easy to take everything for granted, including the technical and logistical difficulties of making quality photos in the middle of the jungle or in remote villages.

Photographing the Diverse Beauty of North Bengal

My name is Subham Shome, and I'm a fine-art landscape and travel photographer based in Kolkata, India. I recently went on a photography trip through North Bengal that turned out to be my best ever through the region.

Nine Portrait Tips for Better Travel Photography

Chances are, if you’ve ever tried to document your travels with a camera, you’ve taken some cliché, if not really cheesy travel photos. I certainly have, and I’m embarrassed to show those photos to friends and family after my trips.

A Photography Guide to the East India Coast: Bengal and Odisha

It was a sunny afternoon some twenty-odd years ago when I, as a toddler, first stepped foot on a sea-beach and heard what I thought was probably some kind of a prehistoric beast, hungry and roaring in the distance. Turns out, it was just the ocean.

Tips for Photographing a Vacation with Your Smartphone

Photos are a time machine to the past. Nothing better represents this than vacation pictures. We aren’t taking these photos for us now, we’re taking them for us a year or more down the line to look back on. This article shares ways to think about vacation photography and how all it takes is a smartphone to create lasting memories.

Infrared Photos of France, From Iconic Places to Hidden Gems

For the last years, I have spent every summer traveling across France to discover the diversity of its landscapes and its natural heritage. Usually, summer is synonymous with crowds of vacationers and tourists. For this project, summer is also synonymous with lush nature, in which infrared photography works the best to reveal alternative colors.

A Photo that Took a Decade of Trying: Sunrise at Angel Arch

In 1991, near the end of some book projects that took me on some lengthy photographic journeys through the American West by car for two years, I came up with the idea of creating posters of some of my black and white images for a few of our western National Parks.

Photographing Waves: One of The Most Rewarding Subjects

Waves are some of the most rewarding subjects for photography that I know. For starters, if you miss one, another will be along very soon! Of course, they are also unpredictable and can be dangerous.

Top 5 Places to Photograph in Meteora, Greece

An ancient beauty of nature and human engineering, Meteora is a UNESCO-listed Monastery Complex located in northern Greece. Composed of tall vertical cliffs and century-old monasteries, this beautiful landscape draws a solid crowd of visitors every year.

Mt. Fuji’s 5 Best Landscape Photography Locations

I have been visiting the surrounding areas of Mt. Fuji for the last ten years and would have to say the easiest way to get around quickly is in a hire car. Most of the best viewing points are from the lakes and hilltops. The distances to each lake with public transport are far and not frequently available.

The Difficulties One Woman Faced to Become a Photojournalist in Somalia

Breaking through the barriers of cultural and gender norms in Somalia, Fardosa Hussein shares what it took for her to be able to practice what she is passionate about -- photography, videography, and journalism -- in a place where such a career is viewed with hostility and is, at times, dangerous for women.

5 Top Places to Shoot in Kolkata, a 400-Year-Old Indian City

Since time immemorial, the majority of street photographers among us chase a singular objective when they walk out with their cameras: chaos. There are, of course, exceptions to this generalization. But the most happening places mostly always give us the maximum to work with.

11 Tips for Great Nature Photos That Stand Out From the Crowd

So, you just bought a fancy new telephoto or macro lens and can’t wait to get in super tight, frame-filling photos on a cool subject of animals or plants set off against a posterboard smooth background. After all, that’s why you spent lots of money on those lenses, right?

7 Critical Mistakes You Must Avoid When Photographing Waterfalls

The fascination and beauty of chasing waterfalls never seem to wane and I know I’m not alone and it is not just photographers chasing them. Some of the best times I’ve had in landscape photography have been hiking to a waterfall and then sitting in awe at its beauty as water cascades over rocks.

11 Tips to Achieve Better Street Photos

Street photography is one of my favorite ways to create photos because it affords so much variety and opportunities for different types of photos.

Landscape Hunting at 18,000 Feet: Photos of North Sikkim, India

Landscape photography is as much about photography as it is about travel. I believe it would not be very outlandish of me to assume that for most of us, our hunt for stunning landscape images began at some moment of epiphany, in some corner of the planet, when some awe-inspiring vista was rude enough to make us realize how underprepared we were to photograph such a scene in all of its glory.