What are distinctive features of travel photography, allowing marking it out from other genres? First of all, let’s define travel photography as a genre that tells about a country through describing its nature, people, way of life, traditions, history, culture and other things associated with the country. So, according to the definition, travel photography can’t be separated from many other genres, since it comprises their features. Sometimes travel photography is landscape photography, sometimes it is a portrait or street photography. That is, travel photos can be taken in almost any genre, except for staged, studio and advertising photography. You may not believe it, but even wedding photographer in Switzerland can take travel photos, when shooting a destination wedding!

Let’s delve into peculiarities of travel photography genres.

• Landscape photography covers views of nature and, as a rule, avoids getting people into the frame. Rural and urban landscapes are the options, showing static, both day and night life of a city or a village. The key word is "static", since dynamic urban life is a focus of street photography.

• Street photography is usually a dynamic photo showing scenes of people’s life in their urban environment. Sometimes, street photography touches on architectural photography (in its aesthetical aspect), though it doesn’t limited to taking pictures of only architectural scenes. Often, street photography tries to deliver rhythm of a city: in some cities it is steady, while in others it is just flying. And yes, street photos are often night photos (night photography deals with outdoor photo shoots between dusk and dawn).

• Portrait is an integral part of travel photography, showing personalities of people living in a country and often delivering other important information, like features of social life, customs and so on. But this is more typical of scenic photography that is focused on people’s lifestyle and activities.

As you can see, travel photography really embraces many genres and one of them to mention is lifestyle photography. If you are a lifestyle photographer in Switzerland, you can create travel photos during your regular sessions taking pictures of people, surrounding landscapes or daily life scenes.