How to take the best travel photographs: National Geographic award winner’s top tips
Hongkonger Anthony Lau, National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year in 2016, has some simple advice: do your research, work with the elements, and don’t smash your zoom lens two days into a trip, as he did in Canada
It’s a nippy minus 27 degrees Celsius (minus 17 Fahrenheit) and there is a vicious wind sweeping across the plain, but Anthony Lau is in his element. He has managed to carve out a precious slice of time between work and family commitments to revisit Inner Mongolia.
A lone horseman is showing off his skills, silhouetted against the early morning sun, and Lau grabs his camera. This is what he has come all this way to do, but the extreme conditions are playing havoc with his gear – his autofocus isn’t working, the aperture is stuck on F8 and the battery is sluggish.
“I knew the battery would take time to charge up, so I could not rely on continuous shooting. I had to observe the horseman’s routine and carefully anticipate the shot. At the perfect moment, the horseman raised his whip,” says Lau, 47.
That shot, Winter Horseman, won Lau National Geographic’s Travel Photographer of the Year award in 2016, putting the amateur Hong Kong photographer in the international spotlight.
“You’ve always got to be prepared for failure and work with the natural elements, because you never know what will happen,” says Lau, who is head of operations for a professional services company.
