How to get the best photos

How to get the best photos

This article is for those of you who love to be on the move and active outdoors.

My name is Tor-Ivar Næss, @torivarnaess on Instagram, and I'm an ALFA ambassador. In my daily life I work in the air tower at Sørkjosen airport. In terms of activity, working in an air tower can be compared to working in an office: we don't walk very much during a working day. To compensate for the activity level at work, I have taken up landscape photography as a hobby. A hobby that has become a part-time job in the form of guided tours in Norway, but also to Iceland and the Faroe Islands.

Using trees and/or branches to frame the subject is often helpful. This is a picture I took in Waimea Canyon on Kauai Island, Hawaii.

It's a cliché to say, but the best pictures are taken with the camera you have with you. Today's camera technology in a newer mobile phone is so good that all you have to do is press the button, and you'll have a well-balanced picture when it comes to detail in shadows and bright light - also known as HDR (High Dynamic Range). Maybe you've seen this feature in the camera menu on your phone? It's worth its weight in gold!

This is Bruarfoss from Iceland. This waterfall is very famous for its beautiful blue colour. Here you are naturally brought into the picture by the blue colour - so that more of the picture becomes interesting to the viewer.

Kirkjufell in Iceland is famous from Game of Thrones. Here you are led from the bottom of the picture up to the mountain by the waterfall edge. Using lines in nature is often appealing in photos.

This article isn't about technology - the point was that you can get far with just the camera on your phone when you're travelling.

For me, photography is about telling a story about the trip I was on. In a way, that's the beginning of my first tip for better trip photos. Take photos on the way to where you're going - use the photos to tell a story about what the trip was like. Many people forget this and come home with pictures of themselves on top of a mountain.

Uma Uma - waterfall on the Big Island, Hawaii. This is a great example of how to frame something in your photos to give it more depth and interest.

Visiting the highlands of Iceland was like stepping onto another planet. This is the geothermal area known as Kerlingarfjöll. The landscape itself is very special, and it works especially well with the path that leads through the entire image up to the two people on top of the mound.

The first (and easiest) tip is to take a picture of what you like about the trip. This simply means excluding the things you don't like in your picture. Try different angles and/or heights to achieve this.

Another tip is to look for shapes and lines in nature. A classic example would be a path or a stream leading to something like a mountain or a cabin. Perhaps you can partially or completely frame the cabin or mountain you are heading to using vegetation along the way.

People in nature is a classic motif you never get tired of. Take a picture of your friend along the path on the way to the mountaintop, and use the path as a guideline from you to her to the top. Show the surroundings where your friend is fishing. Here you can use the difference between water and land as a line leading from you to your friend.

There are many ways to take good pictures, and I've mentioned some basic composition tips. My best tip is to take pictures of what you like about the trip - it could be anything from a crooked tree to the view from the top. Look for great subjects, and I promise you'll find them.

The yellow cottage on Sakrisøy and Olstinden in the background are made for each other. The symmetry here makes the image extra captivating to look at.

From each part of the picture, the lines of snow and northern lights lead to the old cottage on Kvænangsfjellet in North Troms. Something to look at from top to bottom here.