It’s becoming autumn and the days are getting shorter and darker. As I’m more the summer kind of person who despises the cold and gets tired of the dark, I’m happy about some warm, orange memories of summer with some lens flare and the taste of iced coffee.

For our summer vacation, we rented a car and went on a little roadtrip. Even though the main stations of the trip were planned and booked, the main purpose was to where photography would bring us. As I’m a rather practical person, I tend to choose the most practical combination of camera lenses when I go on a holiday. Except from this time, when we brought almost all our photography gear to be ready for every opportunity.

Jonathan dared to snap a shot while I was just about to wake up at a friend’s place in Lüneburg. Usually, that is enough reason for murder as I’m absolutely not a morning person. In the end, this ended up as being one of my favorite photos of the vacation.

We went for a short walk in Lüneburg, Germany, before the weather turned from warm and humid to a summer shower.

As I tend to travel with as few lenses as possible, this trip was very inspirational for me in terms of more creative travel photography. I got intrigued with wide angle shots and how travel photography suddenly becomes more interesting if you don’t only document the stops and activities, but actually take the time to think about photography technique, framing and angles.

These photos were taken in Bremerhaven, a German city with a big industrial harbor. Originally, it wasn’t on our route to the Netherlands, but we talked about whether there could be any possibilities for some great industrial shots. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get close to the harbor area itself. We still got some cool wide angle shots of some of the city’s signature features.

In the Netherlands, we spent most of our time walking around the city Groningen, just exploring without any sense of direction.

We also spent some time in Lauwersoog, a natural reserve where we took the GoPro for a swim in the sunset and the next day got up at 4.30 am to photograph the sunrise. As I said, I’m not a morning person at all, but I’m so happy that I sacrificed sleep and got these photos for it. I should do that much more often, especially now with autumn and a lot of fog coming. It’s just a big decision when you live in a city and there is some transportation involved.

On our way home, we drove by Bielefeld and Oldenburg to visit some family and gave us the opportunity to take more wide angle photos.

Back in Denmark we even got the possibility for some more epic sunset photos with the Great Belt Bridge.

For me it was a whole new way of travelling with more focus on the visual than the educational. We barely visited any sights with paid entrance. We let the visual be the inspiration for our activities, where to go, what to see, who to talk to.

Of course we were also lucky with the weather as it was dry and warm almost all the time so you could use most of the bag space for gear and not warm clothes or rain jackets. A lot of people were outside and enjoying the summer in different ways which gave us plenty of possibilities for some street photography.

I will be on vacation in the UK soon. A different country at a different season with different people. I’m excited to see where that will take my creativity and style. :)

We even made a video

Watch it on YouTube:

Play

Gear used

• Canon 6D
• Canon 16-35mm f2.8 L
• Tamron 28-70mm f2.8
• Canon 50mm f1.8
• Canon 50mm f1.8 II
• Canon 135mm f2 L
• GoPro Hero3