Things change.

It had been a while since we’d talked with John Shaw, and when a few months ago we viewed some of his recent images, we knew it was time to catch up. What we saw were stunning outdoor and nature images—no surprise there, this is John Shaw, after all—but we also saw something new, something unexpected. We saw travel images. John Shaw, travel photographer?

Well, not exactly. “A number of years ago, when I moved to Oregon,” John says, “I met Pam Atkinson, and her background, photographically, was travel images. Mine was obviously more nature, and we’ve sort of traded off. She’s been to Africa with me and done a lot of nature work, and I’ve gotten into adding travel and city-type images.”

John always had an interest in travel photography; he just had to wait until the technology allowed him to explore it. “Back in the film days, the concern—and I think this was the case with a lot of professional photographers—was, ‘Where can I sell this? Is there any return on the costs of going out and shooting this, because of the costs of film and processing?’ There just wasn’t much of a market, so I didn’t do it.”

Digital changed that. Pixels were free, and soon the capabilities of digital technology made it seem that anything was possible. “I could go out, particularly with the D3, and then the D3S, walk around the street and shoot stopped down for depth of field; and then, with VR lenses, I could get shots I just could never get before. It was a whole new world.”

Add in the post-processing potential of the RAW file and suddenly John was not only the photographer, but the lab as well. “The whole digital thing revolutionized my feeling about photography,” he says. “I wanted to go out and take pictures all the time. I got instant feedback and I could do so much more. Digital got me so much more excited about photography.”

These days John is not only shooting travel photos, he’s printing more images than ever before, and he’s getting into layout and design with an eye to producing his own photo books.

So things change…well, some things, anyway.

His signature style—clean backgrounds, compelling compositions, awareness of light, shadow and color—is amazingly consistent. “One thing that’s always bothered me is clutter,” John says. “When I got serious about photography, way back in the beginning, I favored long focal lengths because their angle of view narrowed out the backgrounds. So because of what the lens sees and its coverage, I’d isolate more, and I really liked that approach. It certainly influenced my later shooting style.”

John’s basic guidelines for nature and outdoor photography—including arrive early, stay late and always try to get closer to the subject—apply when he’s pursuing travel images. So does his dedication. “I think that one of the problems people have with travel photography is they go as tourists. People say to me, ‘You’ve been to Paris, what are your favorite restaurants?’ I’ve never eaten in anything but the real quicko places in Paris. If I went there to eat, I’d probably have enjoyed it a lot, but I wanted to be out photographing.”

As John is fond of saying, “The harder I work the luckier I get.” True in the field, true in town.

His basic camera settings remain the same—he relies on autofocus, prefers aperture priority and Matrix metering and is a big fan of checking the histogram. “One of the things I especially like about Nikon cameras is the histogram display,” he says. “It’s so easy to read—and here’s a tip in that regard: if you’re out in the bright sun and the LCD display seems hard to see, don’t look at it in terms of color or exposure. You’re just looking at the pattern of the histogram, so crank the brightness of the LCD all the way up—what you need to see is that graphic pattern.”

For travel photos he’ll forego the tripod that’s his constant companion on nature shoots—not only for practical reasons (who wants to be lugging one around Paris?), but because it’s just not necessary. “Thanks to the high ISO capabilities of my Nikon cameras and VR in the lenses, I’m walking around the cities taking hand-held shots. I never thought I’d be doing that. In the film days I was restricted to very slow films—200 speed was about as fast as I could go and get publishable quality. That’s where Nikons start now. With the D3S, I routinely shoot at 1000 or 1600 ISO and don’t think anything about it.”

On balance, travel photography fits right into John’s style and technique. “Nature photography or travel images, composition is composition, exposure is exposure,” he says. “I’m just changing where I’m aiming the camera.”

The best way to keep up with John is at his website, www.johnshawphoto.com, where you can see a selection of images and learn about upcoming photo tours and workshops.