Travel is a concept that most people dread. Sure, some love the idea of getting away for a week, or even a couple of weeks. But then the loneliness of the road wears down, and hope is all you can think about. However, for those with the personality of always being on the run and at the same time love photography then ‘Travel Photography’ might be something to look into.

If you’re looking for inspiration, or insight into Travel Photography then I highly recommend reading this interview. It’s on PopPhoto.com, and it’s of Tewfic El-Sawy a well renowned travel photographer. He shares some tips on how to get started, and what it takes to be a successful travel photographer.

While the circumstances behind the source material changes, the fundamentals of the photography remain the same. Lighting, colors, shape all are factors to keep in mind. Like in all facets of photography, you’re trying to tell a story through your photos. Nothing changes with the travel, only that you’ll be telling different stories.

If you want to learn a bit more of El-Sawy, he has a blog site. The bulk of his work is on his main site though, and it’s there where you’ll see his incredible gallery. If it doesn’t inspire you to be a travelling photographer, I don’t know what will.

I just returned from San Francisco, which I believe is one of the most photogenic cities in the world. Unfortunately, I didn’t get much time to shoot since I was at Macworld most of the time.

However, one morning a friend and I took the early bus to Treasure Island. I have been out there many times, but never as the sun was rising and I wanted to see that.

My point in going was to get a nice skyline photo so I could try the new “Auto-Align” and “Auto-Blend” features in Photoshop CS3. Even though my hands were shaking in the cold and a huge ship tried to block my view, I was able to take a few shots as the sun was rising.

When I got back to my computer, I opened up Photoshop CS3 to stitch together the shots. I couldn’t believe how easy it is to do it. It was really just three steps.

1) Open all the photos to the same project.
2) Select all layers and choose “Auto-Align”
3) Choose “Auto-Blend”

That is seriously all that I did and I was amazed at how well the photos were stitched. Even with the morning sky being list from left to right, the blending was good.

You can see my photo below: (click to enlarge)

Also, my friend took a nice panorama while he was in line for the keynote. He also used CS3 to stitch the photos.

A FMP reader sent in a link to a great set on Flickr. Flickr user michael_hughes’ has travelled to different tourist locations around the world. But, rather than posting direct shots of the attractions, he purchases souveniers and places them directly in the place of the real attraction. For instance, above you see a toy Eiffel Tower exactly displacing the real one.

What a great idea! Now it has me thinking of what type of photo I should take on my trips to I have a consistent collection like this one.

The whole set is wonderful, you can see it here.