Audstermania: December 2012

I'm officially obsessed with the photography of Mitchell Kanashkevich his photos really do tell a strong story of a vibrant and rich world. So beautifully captivating and perfectly portrays the diversity and vibrancy in our world. His photos compel me to be better and work on my craft everyday, with every opportunity you learn something new to bring along with me on my travels and motivates me just to get anywhere close to his level. Furthermore, his portraits compel me to work specifically on these skills and my communication skills to obtain a more meaningful experience and photo.

Below are just a couple of my favourites from his portfolio:

Mitchell's 5 top tips for travel photographers are:

1) Communicating within a frame - think more actively about your composition! Travel induced sensory overload is inevitable, but it is important to remember the story you're trying to communicate within your frame. Dont forget to pause and think about the message you're communicating and the image you want to result in.

2) Great photographs are created through the combination of both luck and preparation, none are created through pure luck alone, but understanding what your intentions for each photograph can help your cause. Don't be lazy to do you homework! Understand the lighting, the activities that take place and the type of story you wanna tell about a specific place.

3) Don't rest on your laurels. Taking multiple "money shots" of a subject can make not only for more photos, but experimenting with different viewpoints, ISO, shutter speeds etc and makes for a more meaningful experience.

4) Interaction and creating a rapport with your subject, especially when you're taking portraits can be the oint of difference between a good photo, into a great on. This will result in the magic within photographs that are impossible to capture with just a long angle lens alone.

5) Leave and break away from the group! Ever heard of group think? Well Mitchell sugests that this could detrimentally affect your photo. Whilst part of travel photography is exploration the adventure, travelling with a group in most instances are more often than not unavoidable, but suggests that it's important to make time to explore on your own in order to create more personal photographs.

The full list with Kanashkevich's extended commentary can be found here.

Check out more of Michael's work on his website here.