
Written by Drew Evans
When my wife and I landed in Japan last month, we were both feeling a healthy dose of excitement, hunger, and sleepiness. Our months of research were finally here. In the unending sprawl of Tokyo, we found ourselves with what felt like an infinite list of things to do.
My photography brain was operating in overdrive. Where to start?
Most of us spend much of our time photographing the places we call home. Things are familiar. Even if you don’t know what you’ll shoot, you know where to go and how to get there. But capturing an unknown city is different. I felt a sense of overwhelm, and often found myself more worried about what I’ll miss than anything else.
Since it’s so fresh on my mind, I figure I’d share some of my thoughts on how to make shooting in an unfamiliar place feel simple.

Travel Light, Shoot Deliberately
Hot take: you probably take too much gear when traveling, and it’s the single biggest mistake you can make.
Okay, hear me out. This one mostly comes from personal experience. But I think people have a tendency to want to bring as much gear as possible on a big trip so they don’t miss out on every potential eventuality. FOMO is real, people!
But when you travel with your entire kit, one of three things usually happens:
- You’re weighed down. You take all of your gear out for the day and wind up feeling so uncomfortable that it negatively impacts your experience. Lesson learned: never travel with a Pentax 67 ever again.
- You worry about what could have been. Say you bring two cameras and a few lenses for each. As you’re out shooting, you’re overthinking every shot, more worried about whether your composition would look better at 28mm or 50mm. Or whether you should have used medium format instead.
- To avoid all the hassle, you inevitably just leave everything at the hotel except for your simplest, most effective kit.
I’ve now successfully traveled to three completely different countries with a Leica M6 and a 35mm lens. Compact, reliable, and unobtrusive. But most importantly, it’s a kit that creates a sense of predictability. It doesn’t matter if I’m out on the streets of Barcelona at night or wandering the bamboo forest in Kyoto—the camera and focal length is always the same, so I’m not worried about other options. It’ll make your trip more enjoyable, but it also makes capturing your surroundings much easier.



Don’t Just Discover. Anticipate.
Two weeks in Japan was incredible. So much ramen. So many museums and temples. And so, so much ramen. As with any big trip to new places, we spent a lot of time researching what to see, where to eat, and what to buy.
As a part of that planning, I also did a ton of research on where to photograph. And it wasn’t just “go to this part of town,” either.
If possible, get as specific as possible so you know where to start. Google Street View is an amazing tool—I found specific street corners, parks, and blocks that I wanted to photograph. Those locations were also great jumping-off points to discover more opportunities. While part of the fun of traveling is exploring entirely new places, it’s also really powerful to have a firm foundation under your feet.
I also highly recommend finding local photographers that inspire you. For example, I found some street photographers in Tokyo whose styles I really admire—while I didn’t hunt down their exact locations, they did make me think ahead to what things might look like while I’m there. The building density in Tokyo is very different than that of San Francisco, so it was important for me to get a sense of what I might see to influence what I could shoot.



Look Beyond Landmarks
Every city has a story to tell, and those are often discovered beyond the most famous spots in an area. The tough part is that you’ll likely wind up in those locations when traveling to a new city.
When exploring Kyoto, we hit many of the popular tourist spots: major temples, shopping districts, natural landscapes. They were all beautiful and interesting in their own right, but I kept thinking that my images would all wind up looking like the rest. And while that’s fine, I wanted to create something more unique to my trip.
Instead, I tried to focus on different compositions. Sometimes, it was a simple reframe of the same spot. Others, it was waiting for a person to get in the frame or using light/angles to my advantage. And while we often didn’t have a ton of time between spots, taking the extra 2-3 minutes can make a world of difference—who knows what might pop into frame.
In this shot, we were walking near Asakusa in a very picturesque neighborhood. I had already taken a handful of shots around the area, mixing modern buildings with ancient shrines. At one intersection, the movement stuck out—tons of action, both locals and tourists alike.

I waited an extra few minutes to see what chaos might come and grabbed this shot. It didn’t come out exactly as I had hoped, but it almost makes me love it more. Slightly missed focus, harsh light, frantic lines and shadows. It’s one of my favorites of that day because I found a composition that accurately captured how I was feeling. And it was all within a few blocks of one of the busiest landmarks we visited. For me, it tells a story much better than the snaps of the popular shrine, too.



A Few Quick Notes
There are so many ways to travel, and what works for me may not fit you best. Here are a few more things that worked well for me on my recent travels in new cities that might be helpful:
- Use a digital camera or phone camera often. I know we focus entirely on analog here, but it’s worth noting that having this option as a second camera (or as a primary!) is helpful… maybe even recommended. I took all of my normal day-to-day snaps on my iPhone and tried to save the artsy, experimental shots for film.
- Always carry a spare roll of film. This feels like a no-brainer and something that seasoned photographers probably would point to as a basic. But it’s painful if you shoot more than expected and have to ration your film. When in Barcelona, I had to waste an hour of one day tracking down a store that sold extra film. Cool store, helpful staff, but I could have done without the trip.
- Dig around on social media. I feel like I’d probably normally try to stay away from Instagram or Twitter or anything. But If you’re in a rut, check your location on Instagram to see what’s around you. We stumbled across our favorite coffee shop in Tokyo this way, and it also led me to a few interesting yet fun shooting locations. Two birds.
- Different film stocks may work for different cities. This might just be a me thing. But I find that some cities naturally look better on certain films. A city with more green trees and parks might look better on Fuji film, with its beautiful green and magenta rendering. On the other hand, a modern city with tons of glass buildings (and not a lot of color) may wind up looking better on black and white.



If you only take one thing from this article, it’s this: be flexible. About everything. Your gear, your bag, your shooting style, your film stock preferences. When you’re flexible and willing to change what you expect and what you’re used to, you’ll likely have a more care-free shooting experience.
Find the stories you want to tell and embrace them. It’s worth it, no matter where you are. I promise.
Thank you so much, Drew! Drew is a regular contributor here at Shoot It With Film, and you can check out his other articles here, such as Mastering Film for Landscape Photographers and 3 Film Photography Struggles (And How You Can Overcome Them).
You can also check out more of Drew’s work on his Instagram.
Leave your questions about photographing new places below in the comments!

Blog Comments
Pier Paolo
January 24, 2025 at 11:59 am
Some time ago I stumbled on the app Locationscout, have you ever used it?
Thank you for the interesting article.
Pier
Drew E
January 28, 2025 at 11:29 am
Haven’t heard of it before, but it’s a cool idea! Seems like a great starting point for a new location.
Christopher Welch
January 24, 2025 at 12:29 pm
Thanks for the article and insight. Maybe I’m doing something right because I always do your first tip- one camera and one lens. My favorite to travel with is either a Pentax Spotmatic or K1000 because they have always been unfailingly reliable.
Jondr
January 24, 2025 at 1:56 pm
Thanks for the advice.
At the end of the month I’m returning to the the Arctic circle in Norway. Last time I took a canon 80d and 4 heavy L series lenses.
It soon became anoying.
This time it’s a fuji x 100vi a pinhole camera and a pentax 17. This is a fraction of the weight. And more than I will need. I will adapt accordingly.
Barry Perhamsky
January 24, 2025 at 2:06 pm
That’s right, who wants to lug around all that equipment? And do you really need to take everything? Think what you’ll need. When photographing a city, do you really need a heavy telephoto lens? The lenses are there when you need them.
The first camera I had was a Retina iiic 35mm rangefinder with an f/2.8 50mm lens. That’s where I learned about the camera settings. And I took some great pictures. At first I had no idea what to photograph.
Ok , your camera with a 50, and perhaps a 28mm lens. You might go into a fancy building and want to get the interiers. Or in a situation where you really do need to backup. Or maybe a Japanese garden, First see if the 50mm lens works, if not., change to the 28. But other then that, I don’t think you’ll need any other lens. And all of that fits in a small camera bag. Oh and perhaps a few filters.
Barry Perhamsky
January 24, 2025 at 2:30 pm
Also, don’t forget to take along a few filters. A polerizer should be one, to eliminate the glare from the snow.
DeWayne Carver
January 24, 2025 at 3:05 pm
Great photos, great article! Another advantage to just using one camera/one lens, is you learn EVERYTHING about that combination, so you learn to use it in all kinds of situations and really squeeze all the creativity you can out of it. I do find that after a week or so, I may begin to tire of that camera a bit, so on the next trip, I take a different single camera and lens!
An old MF folder is lightweight and funky and fast, but after I while I kinda miss focusing on the groundglass. A Rolleiflex or K1000 are delightful to hold and focus on their groundglass, but they get heavy after a few days, and I start missing the little folder. I end up using all the equipment more, not less this way. It’s fun!
I second your advice about taking a smartphone as well. I like having it to take snapshots and throw-away photos, or pics to post to social media, and save the film for “me” photographs that will probably only appeal to myself.
adventurepdx
January 25, 2025 at 1:26 pm
Good article. I try to take a minimal photography kit when traveling, but I generally bring two cameras for two reasons: I shoot black and white in one, color in the other. And having two cameras means I have one as back-up if one fails, which did happen on one trip.
But I like small cameras, so there’s not much of a space penalty. For a month in the UK I packed my Olympus OM-1n and an Olympus XA. I took two lenses with the OM-1n, a 50mm f/1.8 prime and a 35-70 zoom. I used that zoom most of the time because it’s really compact and 35-70 is a good span of focal lengths.
On my last trip to Vancouver BC I took my Canon QL17 G-III and a Pentax IQZoom/Espio 115G. With a fixed lens rangefinder there’s no worry about “what lens”, and with a dorky millennial zoom point-and-shoot I have that longer focal length for an occasional shot!
Drew E
January 28, 2025 at 11:26 am
Thanks for reading! Like your idea of two cameras for B&W and color. I’ve done it a few times before too and it’s a great way to expand your capability on any given shoot. Made a lot easier when you’re carrying a small Olympus XA!