Why travel zone photos are ruining your vacation and my $2,400 mistake

I spent $2,400 on a Sony a7R IV because I thought it would make me feel like a professional traveler. It didn’t. It just made my neck hurt and turned every beautiful plaza in Lisbon into a ‘compositional problem’ I had to solve instead of a place I was actually visiting.

Most travel zone photos you see on Instagram are a total lie. You know the ones. The perfectly empty street in Mykonos at 5:00 AM, or the guy looking wistfully over a balcony in Florence with zero tourists in the background. We’ve collectively decided that a place is only worth documenting if we can strip away the reality of it. We want the ‘zone,’ not the city.

The part where I tell you I was a total idiot

Back in 2022, I spent three weeks in Portugal. I had this obsession with capturing ‘the zones’ of Lisbon—the Alfama district, the LX Factory, the waterfront. I had a spreadsheet. I’m not joking. I actually tracked the golden hour for specific street corners. One Tuesday, I spent exactly 74 minutes standing on a steep cobblestone hill waiting for the yellow 28 tram to pass by a specific pink building. I needed the light to hit the tiles just right.

I got the shot. It’s technically perfect. And you know what? I hate it. When I look at that photo now, I don’t remember the smell of the salt air or the sound of the Fado music coming from the tavern behind me. I just remember being annoyed by a group of German tourists who kept walking into my frame. I was so focused on the ‘travel zone photo’ that I treated the actual humans in the city like obstacles in a video game. It was pathetic.

Anyway, that night I went to a tiny spot called A Tasca do Chico. I was so tired from carrying my 24-70mm lens (which weighs about 800 grams and feels like a literal anchor after six hours) that I didn’t even take my camera out. I ate these grilled sardines that were way too salty and drank cheap green wine. But I digress. The point is, the only photo I have from that night is a blurry, grainy iPhone snap of a spilled drink. That’s the only photo from the whole trip that actually makes me smile.

Why the Fujifilm X100V is a fashion accessory, not a camera

I know people will disagree with this, and the fanboys will probably hunt me down, but the obsession with ‘travel zone’ setups like the Fuji X100V is peak pretension. People buy these cameras because they want to look like the kind of person who takes cool travel photos. They want the ‘film look’ without the effort of actually understanding light.

The travel photography industry has convinced us that if our photos don’t look like a Wes Anderson movie, we haven’t actually traveled.

I refuse to recommend that camera to anyone. It’s overpriced, the fixed lens is limiting for actual street work, and the people who use them usually spend more time adjusting their ‘recipes’ than actually looking at the world. It’s a status symbol for people who hang out in coffee shops in Brooklyn. There. I said it. Total waste of money.

The 90/10 rule I made up

What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently. I’ve started following a rule that has saved my sanity. I call it the 90/10 rule. I spent a year analyzing my Lightroom catalog (about 12,000 photos) and realized that 90% of my ‘planned’ travel zone photos—the ones where I used a tripod or waited for people to move—were boring. The 10% I actually liked were the accidents.

• Photos taken from a moving bus.
• Photos where the focus is slightly off but the expression is real.
• Photos of things that aren’t ‘landmarks’ (like a weirdly shaped trash can in Rome).
• The shot you took while your partner was laughing at you for being a nerd.

I used to think that a ‘good’ photo needed a clear subject and perfect leading lines. I was completely wrong. A good photo just needs to not feel like a postcard. If I wanted a postcard, I’d buy one for 50 cents and save myself the luggage weight.

The ‘Zone’ is a mental prison

The problem with the whole ‘travel zone’ concept is that it categorizes the world into ‘shootable’ and ‘unshootable.’ You end up ignoring 80% of a city because it doesn’t fit the aesthetic. I remember being in Kyoto and walking past this incredible, messy, neon-lit hardware store because I was ‘on my way’ to the Gion district to get the ‘real’ Japan photos.

What a joke. That hardware store was the real Japan. The Gion district was just a stage set for people with expensive glass. We’ve become so obsessed with the ‘vibe’ that we’ve lost the plot. We’re documenting a version of the world that doesn’t exist for anyone who actually lives there.

If you’re heading out on a trip soon, do yourself a favor. Leave the big lens at home. Or better yet, take the photos, but don’t look at them until you get back. I’ve started doing this thing where I don’t even import my SD cards for at least two weeks after a trip. It helps detach the memory of the place from the ‘quality’ of the image.

I still don’t know if I’m actually a good photographer or just someone with a credit card and a hobby. Maybe there’s no difference anymore. But I do know that the less I care about the ‘zone,’ the more I actually remember the trip.

Is it possible to take a ‘perfect’ travel photo without being an insufferable tourist? I honestly don’t know the answer to that yet.

Stop overthinking the gear. Just go eat some sardines.