If you’ve ever gone on a trip and come home with a camera full of crappy, uninspiring photographs… then please keep reading. I wrote this article just for you!

Over the next several minutes I am going to teach you about a simple photo-taking concept called “The Rule Of Thirds” that, if you put it to use, will dramatically improve your travel photos and ensure that you come home from you next travel adventure with a camera full of captivating images.

To start, let me explain something: For the past several months I have been traveling through Peru by myself. I have a camera with me (of course)… but because I’m alone, I have no one else to take my picture as I slowly travel about. Because of this, I’m forced to ask strangers to take my photo – strangers who have no idea what The Rule Of Thirds is or how to properly frame a photograph.

HERE’S PROOF: Just look at the following 3 photos that strangers on my travels have taken of me:

Pretty terrible photos, right?

I’ve pretty much come to terms with the fact that after this trip is over, I’ll have very few good photos of myself in Peru.

Besides the fact that my eyes are obviously closed in the third image and the picture is slightly out of focus, these three photos do a good job of summarizing the terrible photos I get in return when I ask other people to take my picture. And I’m sick of it!

That’s why I decided to write this post – To teach people about The Rule Of Thirds and the simple art of framing a photograph.

I’ll explain more about The Rule Of Thirds in just a moment. But before I do that, take a look at these photos I’ve taken during my travels in Peru… and note the difference between these photos here and he ones pictures above.

Now, I’m not the best photographer in the world (I’ll be quick to admit that), but I’m pretty sure the photos I’ve taken are a whole lot better than the ones other people on my travels have taken of me.

Do you see the difference between the first 3 photos I shared with you and the 7 travel photos pictured above?

If not, let me explain!

The main difference between the crappy photos at the top of this article and the images I just shared with you is that the images I shot were shot using a concept known as “The Rule Of Thirds.”

In order to best explain this concept, let’s take another look at that first crappy photo I shared with you.

Now compare this image to the photo below. Both photos are taken at the same place and with the same camera, but the difference between the two photos is substantial.

The problem with the first image is that it has my head placed directly in the center of the picture. This results in the boring blank sky behind me taking up half of the photograph… and the landscape behind looking less than impressive.

But look at that second photo now! It’s so much better… don’t you think?

It is! And it looks a whole lot better, because the photo is shot using The Rule Of Thirds.

What exactly is The Rule Of Thirds?

According to Wikipedia, The Rule Of Thirds “states that an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections. Proponents of the technique claim that aligning a subject with these points creates more tension, energy and interest in the composition than simply centering the subject would.”

In other words… when you take a photo, you have to imagine that there are four red lines running across the front of your photograph.

There are two equally spaced vertical lines that run from the top of the image to the bottom…

… and two equally-spaced horizontal lines that run across the image from one side the other.

According to The Rule Of Thirds, the subject matter of your piece should lie on one or more of these dividing lines… or should be placed at one or more of the intersecting points of these lines.

To demonstrate, let’s take a second look at the two photographs we were just discussing – the crappy one with my head positioned directly in the center… and the better one with the subject positioned on the right side of the photo.

The image above is complete sh#* because it ignores the rule of thirds. Instead of positioning my body along one of the red dividing lines, the photographer placed me directly in the middle of the photo, which makes for a boring and unattractive image.

To make matters worse, the person who took my photo in the image above even went so far as to center the horizon line behind me. If he had attempted to place the horizon on the line down by my shoulders… or the line up above my head, this would have been a big improvement. But instead, he decided to center everything in the photograph (my body, my head, and the horizon) and the end result is a photograph that belongs in the trash.

Now let’s take a look at that second photograph. Remember: This photo was taken at the same location as the first photo… and with the same camera. The only difference is that I took the second photo while thinking about The Rule Of Thirds.

Do you see the difference?

The Rule Of Thirds is at work here because:

1) I positioned the subject along the vertical line on the right-hand side of the photograph.

2) The subject’s head is at the intersection of the horizontal line at the top of the photo and the vertical line on the right.

3) The subject is on the right-hand side of the image and looking off to the open space on the left, which creates a sense of direction and space.

4) And finally, the horizon in the background is located along the horizontal line at the top of the picture.

All of this combined makes for a much improved photograph. Don’t you agree?

So, that’s what The Rule Of Thirds is all about. It’s about positioning your subject along these four imaginary lines… and/or placing the important elements of your photograph at the intersection(s) of these lines.

Examples of The Rule Of Thirds in action:

To make sure you totally understand this concept, let’s go back and look at some of those other travel photos I shared with you earlier… and let’s discuss how each of these photos is constructed using The Rule Of Thirds.

Okay. So here’s that picture of the tuba player once again. I snapped this photo during a street festival in Puno, Peru and it’s a great example of The Rule Of Thirds.

Using The Rule Of Thirds, the tuba player in the foreground (the one with the squinted eyes) is positioned along the right-side of the image. His body, combined with the instrument that he is holding, is centered along the right-most dividing line that runs vertically down the screen.

The tuba players eyes (the focal point of the image) are located just outside of the intersection of the two lines (the one running horizontally across the top of the image and the one running vertically on the right side of the image). And like the image above with the guy in the green shirt who is positioned on the right side of the picture and looking off to the left, the tuba player pictured here demonstrates the same characteristics. The open space on the left side of the image dictates which way the subject is heading.

Make sense? I hope so!

Now let’s look at another image with a totally different compositional layout.

The image above is totally different from the previous two photos we’ve been examining, but even here The Rule Of Thirds is in effect.

• Note how the city limits in the distance run along the horizontal line at the top of the picture.

• Note how the horizontal line at the bottom of the image runs along the front of the buildings directly in front of the two subjects in the photo.

• Note how the two people sitting in the foreground of the photo are pushed off to the right side of the screen and their bodies are located almost perfectly along the right-most vertical dividing line.

• And note how the male subject’s head is located at the intersection of two lines – the line running vertically on the right and the horizontal line running across the bottom of the screen.

All of these elements combined make for another great example of The Rule Of Thirds in action.

By now I hope you’re starting to see what I mean when I talk about The Rule Of Thirds. If not, here are some more examples:

The image above is a picture of a painting that was hanging in a convent in Arequipa, Peru. I could have positioned the painting of the nun directly in the center of my photograph, but that would have been rather boring. Instead, I pushed the image of the nun off to the left, while at the same time positioning her close to the vertical line running from the top to the bottom of the image on the left-hand side of the photograph. At the same time, the nun’s eyes are positioned along the horizontal line at the top of the pic.

Here’s another example:

This group of young strangers approached me in downtown Lima and asked if I would help them with an English assignment they had been given by their college professor. I helped them with the assignment and then snapped this picture of the group.

Can you see how I used The Rule Of Thirds to frame up this photograph?

If I knew nothing about The Rule Of Thirds I probably would have positioned the people’s heads in the center of the photo. The end result would have been a whole lot of sky in the background and a four cut off bodies at the bottom.

Instead, I positioned the people’s heads along the horizontal line at the top of the screen… and the end result is an image that pops with character!

This picture from Colca Canyon, Peru is a little different. There is a huge amount of blank space on the left side of the picture, while our subjects (the three people sitting on the edge of the canyon wall) are located in the bottom right-hand corner of the photograph.

This image uses The Rule Of Thirds in three ways:

1) The three people in the bottom right-hand corner are positioned along the lower horizontal line.

2) The subjects of the photo are situated in the right-most quadrant of the image, while the object they are looking at (the canyon on the left) lies in the two remaining quadrants in the center and on the left-hand side of the picture. This is very similar to the first two images we examined – the one with the guy in the green shirt looking out over the pyramid and the city scene in the background… and the one with the tuba player marching from the right side of the screen to the left.

3) And finally, the distant mountains in the background are situated along the horizontal line that runs across the top of the picture.

Here’s another example from the Christmas Market in Nazca, Peru:

The boy in the image above is framed up using The Rule of Thirds as well.

• His body is largely positioned along the verticle line on the left-hand side of the screen.
• His eyes are positioned along the horizontal line at the top of the screen.
• And where these two lines meet is where your attention is first drawn to when you initially look at this image.

This photo of a chullpa (an ancient stone funeral tower) in Southern Peru is very similar to the image of the boy in the photo we just looked at.

Like the boy in the image above, the funeral tower is positioned along the vertical line on the left-hand side of the picture. But unlike the boy in the image above who had his eyes positioned along the horizontal line at the top of the screen, this image here has the horizon in the background running along the horizontal line at the bottom of the screen.

So there you have it! THE RULE OF THIRDS.

When you head out on your next travel adventure, keep this concept in mind.

Instead of positioning you subject directly in the center, position the important elements of your photo along one or more of the four imaginary dividing lines that you’ve learned about in this article. Your photos will be greatly improved… and instead of returning home with a camera full of lackluster images, you’ll return home with images that truly capture the experience of your travels!

Good luck… and happy shooting!

PS – If you’d like to improve your travel photography skills even more, be sure to check out this resource from my friend Darren over at the Digital Photography School website. It’s filled with tons of additional info on how to improve your travel photography.

The Pentax Optio W90 is a 12.1 megapixel camera with a 5x Wide Angle Zoom and a 2.7-Inch LCD screen. The W90 is a waterproof, dust-proof, cold-proof, bump-proof digital camera designed for people who want a compact camera capable of handling just about anything you can throw at it.

This camera was first introduced to me by Ted Schredd (the author of my favorite bicycle touring book of all time: “The Cycling Adventures Of Coconut Head“) who is currently using the camera on his bike tour down the length of the United States.

Ted produced the video review you see above for the Pentax Optio W90 while on his bike ride from Summerland, British Columbia (Canada) to Los Angeles, California (USA). As you can see by watching the video above, there are  some definite advantages to having a camera such as then when traveling by bike (or traveling in general).

<— Click this button to get yourself a Pentax Optio W90 waterproof digital camera.

To learn more about Ted Schredd and his bicycle touring adventures (and to see more wacky videos like the one you see here), be sure to visit Ted’s website at www.funresearcher.com.

To protect your computer, you could purchase a specially made laptop sleeve like this one from Case Logic. But the problem with an item like this is that you are then carrying around an item (and it’s extra weight) that serves only one basic function. A laptop case/sleeve is a pretty big item to carry around just for this one purpose!

That’s why, instead of buying a special laptop case and carrying it around with you on your travels, I recommend you try using a hooded jacket, long-sleeve shirt, or rain jacket to protect your laptop computer.

By using a piece of clothing instead of a single-use laptop case/sleeve, you will have less overall gear to carry with you on your travels and your clothes will serve two functions instead of just one. Watch the video below to learn more.

During my first week with the camera, I took a drive out to Dinosaur National Monument on my motorcycle. While there, I snapped a couple dozen photos… and that’s where the trouble began.

After taking about 20 photos with my brand new camera, every once and a while I would get a “lens error” whenever I tried to zoom in. I didn’t think much of this at the time, as I figured it was just a rare incident. However, when I got home from my trip and went to watch some of the videos I had shot while I was in the Park, I realized that the microphone on my new camera was totally not working! The sound on all of the videos I had shot was completely not there. All I could hear was a loud buzzing sound coming from the camera.

“Oh no!” I thought to myself. “I just bought the worst camera ever.”

After discovering that the microphone on my new camera was totally not working, I ran to my pile of recent paperwork and pulled out the Best Buy receipt I had obtained when I purchased the camera. Unfortunately, I was three days out of the two-week warranty period. Nevertheless, I rode my bike over to the Best Buy electronics store where I had purchased the camera and told them about my problems.

After about an hour, the good people at Best Buy gave me another camera (even though I was technically out of the warranty period). (At this point, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with the Nikon Coolpix as a whole. I just thought that I had received a dud the first time around.) So, Best Buy gave me another Nikon Coolpix and I happily took it home.

But then, exactly two weeks later, I opened the camera and heard a loud popping sound come from the lens – not a good sound to be coming from a brand new digital camera.

“This is not good,” I thought to myself again. “I need this camera to work for 6 months or more while I travel through South America… and I can’t even get it to work for more than two weeks.”

I wasn’t sure what the loud popping sound was that I had heard when I turned on the camera, but I didn’t care. I instantly grabbed the camera and returned to Best Buy, this time asking for a complete refund – no exchanges, no store credit, nothing.

Obviously, the people at Best Buy tried to get me to buy something else, but I wasn’t going to do it. I did have to pay a $24 re-stocking fee to return the camera, but I was happy to have gotten rid of the camera and gotten back most of the money I spent on this glorious piece of $%#*.

So, now I’m back to square one. I had wanted to find a digital point and shoot camera that not only took great still photos, but also shot excellent HD video. I thought the Nikon Coolpix S4000 was going to work for me, but it certainly did not.

When you travel with a camera, you need something that is not only functional, but that can handle the demands of being on the road. The Nikon Coolpix S4000 is certainly not that kind of camera. In less than 4 weeks with 2 different cameras in my possession, I managed to take less than 100 photos before both items were eventually returned.

If you are thinking about purchasing the Nikon Coolpix S4000, I urge you to reconsider. The camera looks nice and has some features that sounds pretty cool, but ultimately, the S4000 is a total waste of money.

I’m getting ready to travel to South America in the next few weeks and in preparation for my trip I’ve just recently purchased a new digital video camera and some new editing software for my computer, which will (hopefully) enable me to produce some great little videos about my South American adventures while I am down there.

The camera that I bought is a  Nikon Coolpix S4000 and the editing software I will be using is called Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD.

Last year, when I traveled with my bicycle through Europe for 9 months, I had two different cameras with me. I had a Cannon SD1100 IS, which I used to shoot my still photos. And I also had a Flip Mino HD video camera, which I used to produce my video content.

The Cannon point and shoot camera I used last year worked great and the quality of the photos it took was absolutely superb. A highly recommended camera! However, the Flip Mino video camera that I used was not nearly as impressive. I wrote a long review about my experiences with the Flip cam, but the main problems I had with the camera were that 1) the screen was so small I could rarely see what I was shooting and 2) the camera was not compatible with the video editing software that I was using at the time, which made the editing process a total nightmare. In fact, I had so many bad experiences with that little Flip cam that, even though I shot a ton of video while I was in Europe last year, I’ve shared almost none of it. The process of getting it all edited and uploaded was just too much of an annoyance for me to deal with.

But now that I have a new camera and editing software, hopefully all of that is going to change and my videos here at BicycleTouringPro.com will drastically improve.

This new camera that I got, the Nikon Coolpix S4000 not only takes still photos, but it also shoots high-definition video (1280×720). While the resolution is not like that of super high-end video cameras, it is about on-par with the video that I was creating with my old HD Flip cam. Plus, instead of carrying two different camera (1 to shoot video and another to shoot stills), I now have a camera that does both (less stuff to carry on my travels. Whoo hoo!) And best of all, the MP4 files that are created when I record video on the Coolpix camera are 100% compatible with my new Sony video editing software.

Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD is an entry-level video and audio editing software package that I highly-recommend. I used the professional version of Sony Vegas to edit videos and audio when I was a film student in college, but that version of the software costs about $600 USD (which is outside the reach of most amateur video editors – myself included). Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD, however, is a rather inexpensive piece of video editing software that costs anywhere from $50 – $125 depending on which version of the software you order, and has almost all of the same features as the Pro version of Vegas.

Thus far I am pretty pleased with both my new digital camera and my new editing software. I’ll do a full review of each as I get more experience with them, but in the meantime I thought it would be both fun and interesting for you to learn about the technology I am using to shoot and edit the videos here at Bicycle Touring Pro.

Now here’s my question for you: What video camera do you use to record your travel moments? If you edit your videos, what software do you use and would you recommend it? Let me know by leaving a comment below. I’m interested to hear what you have to say!