How to make travel photography captivating, intriguing, thrilling?

When I travel I take photos of a variety of subjects like waterways, buildings, cultural events, the local people, landscapes, conveyances, nightlife, myself and my wife, things I see around me -- pretty typical stuff. I rarely plan for photographs. Instead I just take the best shots I know how at the moment that I want to record a memory or otherwise see something beautiful.

I know there are worse and better ways to compose shots (eg rule of thirds), better and worse ways to plan for and handle lighting conditions (eg magic hour), more and less interesting subjects (eg beautiful architecture).

What I'd like know is what recommendations do you have to make travel photos more compelling? How do you move from moderately interesting shots to something really engaging? Are there photo principles that apply especially to travelling? How do you increase the likelihood of catching something really special? Are there any recommendations on post-processing hundreds or thousands of different subjects?

Answer

The thing about travel is, you are someplace unique. The thing to do is figure out just what is unique about where you are, and try to capture some aspect of it that means something to you. For instance, in Amsterdam I saw bikes everywhere so I tried to get interesting shots involving bikes:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kigiphoto/4165886056/in/set-72157622827849667/

The other thing to think about is that other people generally have an idea about what a place is. So you can either try to show something similar to what everyone knows a place is about, but with little twists - like this shot of the many buildings of Hong Kong across the water plus the famous sort of boat they have, I bought a flower from a street vendor and carried it around taking pictures:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kigiphoto/5197306319/in/set-72157625391550866/

Which is a great way to meet people by the way. People love anyone with a flower!

Or, you can just try to go for the most nicely done canonical shot of the place you are at, so people are just excited to see a really good example of what they are expecting. For me Venice is canals and boats and I tried to find a nice atmospheric shot that would instantly say Venice to anyone viewing:

http://www.pbase.com/kgelner/image/80167194

I think it's also a good idea not to review too many images from the place you are about to travel to, so you don't get too stuck into thinking about getting a few particular kinds of photographs from a place.