How to Photograph Iconic Landmarks Without Cliches

Every famous landmark has a shot that has been taken ten million times. You know it before you arrive: the same angle, the same foreground, the same postcard. There is nothing wrong with taking that shot. The mistake is taking only that shot. This guide is about coming home with frames that are yours. For the travel side of the craft, our travel photography guide covers the fundamentals.

Save

Study the Cliche First

Before your trip, look at the hundred most popular photos of the landmark. This is not to copy them; it is to know exactly what everyone else did. Note the tripod holes, the standard focal length, the usual time of day. Each of those is a variable you can change. The cliche shot tells you where the light comes from and where the crowds stand, which is genuinely useful scouting information.

Change One Variable at a Time

Move. Walk the full perimeter before you shoot. The angle two hundred meters left of the viewing platform is usually empty and often better. Look for a foreground the postcard shot ignores: railings, puddles, trees, doorways, people going about their day with the landmark behind them.

Change the time. Most landmark photos are taken at midday because that is when tourists are awake. Blue hour, night, fog, rain, and snow transform famous places into something most visitors never see. A landmark in bad weather is a landmark without competition.

Save

Change the scale. Go tight: architectural details, textures, repeating patterns that read as the place without showing it whole. Or go wide with the landmark small in a larger scene, which tells a story about the place in its environment instead of the thing itself.

Save

Use people honestly. A figure in the frame gives scale and life. Locals using the space, not tourists posing for it, is the difference between a travel photo and a snapshot of one.

Technique Notes

Front-to-back sharpness matters when your foreground is doing the creative work, so mind your aperture and focus a third into the scene. For night landmark work, bracket your exposures: the building lights and the sky rarely fit in one frame. And shoot more than you think you need while conditions last; fog and crowds both change by the minute.

Learn faster with a plan. The ShutYourAperture Academy has 22 photography courses, from the fundamentals of aperture, shutter and ISO to genre courses like landscape, portrait and street.

Editing Landmark Files

Landmark edits go wrong when they chase drama the scene did not have. Straighten the verticals, control the sky, and let the composition carry the interest, since the composition is why you went. The Landscape, Cityscape and Drone Preset Pack covers the natural and cityscape looks these files call for, and the free starter pack in our Lightroom presets guide is the no-cost way to test a look before your trip.