Puerto Vallarta, Mexico | Enjoy your vacation + still get great photos
Pro tip: Set aside 30 minutes each day during your vacation dedicated to taking photos. After your 30 minutes, put your camera away and be present and enjoy your vacation.
If you haven’t been on vacation on a resort lately, you will notice how quickly people will start to judge you if you whip your phone or camera out to take some photos for yourself or social media. This can be very intimidating if you don’t want people glaring and judging you as you’re trying to take photos.
As much as I enjoy photography, when I am on vacation, I rarely lug my camera around mainly because it’s big, expensive, and I hate always worrying about it. This also means, I rarely take photos on my trips and then I deeply regret that decision when I come home and nothing to remember it by.
So for this trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, I made a plan to shoot as much as I could. It’s was such bad timing to take a vacation but truthfully, we were in dire need of one. This past year has been a whirlwind. We celebrated our one year wedding anniversary, opened a business (a barbershop to be exact; you can check it out here), and traveled to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico with the business being less than 90 days old.
Here’s a video clip of what we did our first few days in Mexico:
We weren’t planning on any excursions but a friend on the trip with us surprised us with ATV-ing trip up the mountains. We couldn’t be more thankful that she got us this trip. It was such an amazing experience.
Sam + Howard got married a few days into our trip. Tommy officiated their wedding and I second shot the wedding. As anxious as we were, everything turned out beautiful.
We finished the remainder of our trip with some photo shoots by setting up 30 minute time blocks to shoot every day. I think this is the best setup out of all the times I’ve travelled and is a happy medium between shooting and living in the moment.
Next time you’re on a trip, try out this setup and let me know what you think. Or, if you have any other tips or advice for photos + enjoying your vacation, drop them below! I would love to hear them.