Every time we share a travel photo, video, Instagram Reel, blog post, or TikTok, we’re telling a story about a place.
Whether you have 10 followers or 100,000, the content you create can influence how other people think about a destination, the people who live there, and the experiences they seek out when they visit.
That’s why I think travel photography deserves a little more thought than simply asking whether a photo looks good.
I first started thinking about the impact of the photos and videos I take while on a trip around Morocco back in 2018. A friend and I were walking down a road in Chefchaouen, a town in the north of the country that’s known for its blue-painted buildings and streets.
My friend paused to take a photo of a street vendor selling ceramics. When he put his camera up to his eye, the vendor called out to him, “no photo!”
It sounds so ignorant to say it now, but up until that point, I hadn’t really thought about the ethics of taking photos. But that street vendor calling out to us made me realize that consent really matters. Just because someone is in a public place doesn’t mean they want to be photographed.
Responsible travel photography isn’t about being perfect. It’s about considering how our images, videos, and captions might impact the people, communities, cultures, and environments we’re capturing.
I’ve spent the last few years learning about responsible tourism and reflecting on my own role as a travel creator. Along the way, I’ve changed how I take photos, what I choose to share, and how I tell stories about the places I visit.
Here are eight ethical travel photography (and videography) practices that I try to follow today.
- What Is Ethical Travel Photography?
- 1. Always Ask Before Capturing People
- 2. Think Carefully Before Geotagging
- 3. Avoid Travel Stereotypes and Clichés
- 4. Provide Context for What You Share
- 5. Practice Ethical Wildlife Photography
- 6. Share Places Thoughtfully
- 7. Follow Local Rules and Cultural Norms
- 8. Consider Whose Stories Are Told
- Why Creating Responsible Travel Content Matters
I’ve been creating content across my blog, podcast, and social media since 2019.
What Is Ethical Travel Photography?
Ethical travel photography is the practice of creating and sharing images in ways that respect local people, cultures, wildlife, and environments.
It’s about asking questions like:
- Did I have permission to take this photo?
- Am I respecting local customs and rules?
- Does this image reinforce stereotypes?
- Could sharing this location cause harm?
- Am I providing enough context for people to understand what they’re seeing?
There isn’t a perfect checklist that works in every situation. But approaching travel photography and videography thoughtfully can help ensure that what you capture is respectful of the places and people you visit.
1. Always Ask Before Capturing People
It’s tempting to take photos of, well, everything when you’re traveling. And I get it, it’s fun to take photos of local people. But taking photos and video needs to be intentional, and respectful to other people and cultures.
In some places around the world, people don’t want to be photographed for religious reasons. And in some countries, it’s actually illegal to take a photo of a stranger.
For example, privacy laws in parts of Europe require express consent to take a recognizable photo of someone, even in public spaces. And you can’t publish images of strangers without permission.
I think it’s especially important to be thoughtful when photographing children. Children can’t always provide informed consent, and parents or guardians may not fully understand how widely an image can be shared once it’s posted online.
Beyond privacy concerns, photos can reveal information about a child’s location, daily routines, school, community, or family. In some situations, that information could put children at risk or simply remove their ability to decide for themselves how they want to appear online in the future.
The bottom line is that regardless of official law, all people have a right to their privacy. The best way to respect that is by being mindful of how you take photos and videos.
So how can you shoot photos and videos with respect?
Start by asking for consent when taking a photo or video that includes a person in it, and if you plan to share it online, ask that person if that’s okay too. When asking a person for a photo, consider the power dynamics and the context of your request.
Of course, you don’t want to lose the essence of a place when taking photos and videos. It can be difficult to show your audience a busy market, for example, without showing at least a few people – who you may not be able to individually ask for consent.
When shooting photos and videos in busy places, there’s a few things you can do to respect people’s privacy. First, spend a few minutes waiting for the right moment, when most backs are turned. If you do end up capturing faces, you can do some artful cropping, keep the clip brief, or blur the face so it isn’t recognizable.
Blurring faces, darkening shadows, and shooting in moments when people’s backs are turned are some of the ways that you can respectfully share photos.
2. Think Carefully Before Geotagging
One of the biggest ethical travel photography conversations today involves geotagging.
Sharing exact locations can help small businesses and communities benefit from tourism. But it can also contribute to overcrowding, environmental degradation, and overtourism in fragile places.
Before geotagging a location, ask yourself:
- Is this place already struggling with visitor pressure?
- Could increased exposure damage the environment?
- Are local communities asking for more tourism or less?
- Is this a place that can realistically handle an increase in visitors?
This doesn’t mean you should never share locations. It simply means thinking about the potential consequences before you do.
There’s often a lot of debate about whether withholding a location is “gatekeeping.” In some cases, that criticism is fair. Travel information shouldn’t be reserved only for people with insider knowledge or special access.
At the same time, I don’t believe every location needs to be shared with the entire internet. Some places are already struggling with overtourism, while others may be environmentally sensitive or culturally significant. Choosing not to share an exact location isn’t always about exclusivity. Sometimes it’s about recognizing that increased exposure may do more harm than good.
For particularly sensitive natural areas, I sometimes choose to tag a broader region rather than a precise location. That allows me to share my experience while being mindful of the potential impacts that geotagging can have.
3. Avoid Travel Stereotypes and Clichés
When we think about travel content, it’s easy to focus on photos and videos. But the words we use matter just as much.
Travel writing has a long history of describing places through a colonial lens. In fact, many of the conventions of modern travel writing can be traced back to early explorers and colonizers documenting the people and cultures they encountered. Unfortunately, these accounts often reinforced ideas of cultural superiority and helped justify colonial activities.
While travel writing has evolved significantly since then, some of that language still lingers today.
Words such as exotic, untouched, undiscovered, and even explore can subtly frame places as existing for outsiders to experience, rather than as communities where people live, work, and have deep cultural histories.
Travel clichés can have a similar effect. Phrases like hidden gem may seem harmless, but they often imply that a place is somehow unknown or waiting to be found. In reality, these places are rarely hidden. They are often well known to local residents and Indigenous communities.
Describing a place as a hidden gem can unintentionally erase the people who already know, use, and care for that place. It can also contribute to the idea that destinations only become valuable once they are “discovered” by tourists.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write about lesser-visited places. It simply means being thoughtful about how you describe them.
Instead of relying on clichés, try explaining what makes a place meaningful. Talk about its history, culture, landscape, or community. Focus on what makes it interesting rather than framing it as a secret waiting to be uncovered.
When creating travel content, it’s worth asking yourself: does my language help people better understand a place, or does it reinforce stereotypes and oversimplify it?
4. Provide Context for What You Share
When sharing content online, it’s very easy to share places and experiences without context. A short Instagram reel might not have enough time for it, and it might not seem relevant to a travel guide.
For example, when sharing a video that covers the places in the world where you felt unsafe, context is so important. Safety often is a perception, and that perception can be shaped by several things, ranging from what we see in the media, to problematic stereotypes, and then of course our own intersectional identities, our personal boundaries, and more.
While I have felt safe in most European countries, I have friends of different ethnicities who’ve experienced microaggressions that make them feel a lot less safe than I do in those same places.
Similarly, my husband has felt safe in many places that I don’t, because I’ve been socialized, as a woman, to have my guard up in different ways than he has.
Because of the complexity of experiences, it’s important to always contextualize your travel content. This could mean acknowledging your personal identity and how it may have shaped your experience.
In other cases, it could mean providing more detail about a place or experience. For example, if you’re writing a blog about traveling in Cuba, it’s important to provide information about the US embargo on Cuba. The embargo impacts the Cuban local way of life, and can have an impact on how a person travels there, too.
Creating travel content that includes context is more responsible, and benefits you too! Including context leads to in-depth, valuable content that your audience will appreciate.
5. Practice Ethical Wildlife Photography
When you look on social media, images and videos of people bathing elephants, swimming with sharks, and posing with tigers are pretty common.
And I completely understand the appeal, and why people book these activities. Most of us love animals. We travel because we want memorable experiences, and getting close to wildlife is exciting.
It’s completely natural to want to interact with animals and share those experiences with friends, family, or an online audience.
But the unfortunate reality is that many wildlife tourism experiences are designed around what humans want, not what’s best for the animals.
A few minutes spent posing for a photo with an elephant or feeding a wild animal doesn’t tell us anything about how that animal was trained, housed, or treated before the camera came out.
Wildlife tourism can lead to the exploitation of animals because it’s an industry driven by profit. A few minutes spent posing for a photo with an elephant in a sanctuary don’t tell the full story of that elephant’s life.
Many elephants used in tourism have been trained for human interaction using methods that animal welfare organizations consider cruel. In Thailand, a practice known as phajaan (sometimes called “the crush”) has historically been used to make young elephants more compliant around humans through fear, restraint, and punishment-based training.
This means that no matter what kind of interaction you have with an elephant, you can assume that the elephant had to be trained to participate in the interaction.
This is why I think it’s important to be cautious about any tourism experience that requires wildlife to interact directly with humans.
If an animal is being fed, touched, bathed, ridden, held, posed with, or otherwise encouraged to interact with visitors, it’s worth asking whether that experience is benefiting the animal, respecting the animal, and enabling it to stay wild.
The same principle applies to wildlife photography and videography. Getting a photo should never be the reason we approach wildlife, alter their behaviour, or pressure guides to get us closer.
Whether you’re photographing whales, bears, birds, sharks, or elephants, keeping a respectful distance should always come before getting the perfect shot.
As content creators, we also have a responsibility to think about the messages our images send. When people see photos of travelers standing beside wild animals, feeding them, or touching them, it can normalize those interactions and encourage others to seek out similar experiences.
Instead, I try to share wildlife experiences that prioritize observation rather than interaction. If I’m photographing an animal from a distance using a zoom lens, I’ll often mention that in my caption.
It might seem like a small detail, but I think it’s important to normalize the idea that incredible wildlife encounters don’t require physical proximity.
The bottom line is that wild animals are not props for our photos, videos, or social media content.
Some of the most meaningful wildlife experiences I’ve had while traveling involved simply observing animals behaving naturally in their environment.
As travelers and content creators, we can help shift expectations by celebrating those experiences rather than promoting direct interaction.
6. Share Places Thoughtfully
Whether you’re sharing travel photos with a few friends or posting content to thousands of followers online, the places we choose to highlight can influence where other people travel.
A single photo, video, or recommendation can inspire someone to add a place to their itinerary.
While tourism can bring important economic benefits, it can also contribute to overcrowding, environmental degradation, rising costs for residents, and pressure on local infrastructure.
This is particularly relevant in destinations already struggling with overtourism. Places like Barcelona, Amsterdam, Venice, and Hawaii have all experienced tensions related to visitor numbers.
Residents in some communities have raised concerns about housing affordability, congestion, strain on public services, and the loss of local character as tourism continues to grow.
That doesn’t mean we should stop sharing popular places altogether. But I do think it does mean thinking carefully about the stories we’re telling and the travel behaviours we’re encouraging.
One way to do this is by highlighting places that receive fewer visitors but are actively interested in welcoming tourism.
For example, when I visited Iceland, I chose to spend time in the Westfjords, one of the least-visited regions of the country.
Travelers often focus on the Golden Circle and South Coast, but there are many other parts of Iceland that offer incredible experiences while receiving far fewer visitors.
Another approach is to provide context when talking about popular destinations. If you’re sharing a place that experiences overtourism, acknowledge it.
Encourage people to visit during the shoulder season, stay longer, use public transportation, support locally owned businesses, and be mindful of the impact their visit may have on residents.
It’s also worth thinking about what your photos, videos, and stories normalize. Are they encouraging a style of travel focused on rushing between landmarks and checking places off a list? Or do they encourage people to slow down, learn about a place, support local businesses, and engage more thoughtfully with the community?
The goal isn’t to tell people where they can and can’t travel. It’s to recognize that the stories we share influence how others experience the world.
By being thoughtful about the places we highlight and the behaviours we model, we can help encourage a more responsible approach to tourism.
7. Follow Local Rules and Cultural Norms
The photos and videos we share don’t just document our travels. They also model behaviour.
Whether we realize it or not, the content we create can influence how other people behave when they visit the same places.
If we post photos of ourselves crossing barriers, walking off-trail, entering restricted areas, or ignoring local customs, we’re sending a message that those actions are acceptable.
This is why it’s important to understand and follow local rules when creating travel content.
For example, while road-tripping in Iceland, you’ll often notice signs at popular sites reminding visitors not to walk on fragile moss.
That moss can take decades to recover from damage. Yet photos of people standing in protected areas continue to circulate online because people are willing to break the rules to get a more unique image.
The same principle applies to safety regulations. If a destination asks visitors to stay back from a cliff edge, keep off a beach during dangerous wave conditions, or remain behind a barrier, those rules exist for a reason.
No photo is worth putting yourself, rescue workers, or the environment at risk.
This also extends to cultural norms. Before entering temples in Colombo, Sri Lanka, for example, visitors are expected to remove their shoes. In many religious and cultural sites around the world, there may also be restrictions around photography itself.
Some communities, ceremonies, and sacred spaces may prohibit photography entirely, while others may require visitors to ask permission first.
As content creators and travelers, respecting those requests is important, even when it means missing out on a photo.
The same goes for drones. Drones can create incredible images, but they’re not appropriate everywhere. In many destinations, drones are restricted or prohibited in national parks, protected areas, historic sites, near wildlife, or around cultural and religious landmarks.
Even when they’re legally permitted, it’s worth considering whether flying one could disrupt wildlife, intrude on people’s privacy, or negatively impact the experience of others around you.
Before launching a drone, take the time to understand local regulations and ask yourself whether flying it is respectful of the place and people around you.
One of the simplest ways to create more ethical travel photography is to remember that getting the shot should never come at the expense of local rules, cultural practices, wildlife, or other people’s experiences.
8. Consider Whose Stories Are Told
Travel photography and travel media shape how we see the world. The photos, videos, and stories we consume influence our perceptions of places and people, often before we’ve ever visited them ourselves.
Because of that, it’s worth thinking about whose perspectives are represented in the travel content we engage with and share.
Historically, travel media has often been dominated by a fairly narrow range of voices. As a result, some experiences, communities, and perspectives have received more visibility than others.
This matters because different people experience destinations differently. Factors like race, ethnicity, gender, disability, nationality, religion, and sexuality can all shape how someone moves through and experiences a place.
Whether you’re a travel creator or simply someone sharing photos from a recent trip, one way to create more thoughtful travel content is to seek out and engage with a variety of perspectives.
Read articles written by local journalists. Follow creators from different backgrounds. Listen to residents, guides, historians, and community members when learning about a destination.
If you create travel content professionally, you can take this a step further by recommending and supporting creators from underrepresented communities when opportunities arise.
The goal isn’t to stop sharing your own experiences. It’s to recognize that your perspective is only one perspective.
The more diverse the voices and stories we elevate, the richer and more accurate our understanding of the world can become.
Why Creating Responsible Travel Content Matters
Awareness of the pros and cons of tourism is growing, and I’m noticing that people are increasingly interested in how to be a responsible tourist.
In my mind, being a responsible tourist means being thoughtful as well about how we share and portray our travels. Words, images, and videos are powerful and form messages – it’s important to recognize their impact.
When taking photos and videos while traveling, be mindful and respectful of the people and places you’re capturing. Always ask for permission before photographing someone, especially in culturally sensitive settings, and be prepared to accept a “no” gracefully.
Avoid treating people as props or exoticizing local communities—photos and videos should honour their dignity and privacy. My rule of thumb is to always pause and ask myself, what is my intention in taking this photo or video. The goal should always be to uplift rather than exploit.
This list of ways to take responsible travel photos and videos isn’t conclusive. Responsible tourism is an ongoing journey, and as we learn more about it, we can shift to better practices. It isn’t a race! The best we can do is make small, impactful changes, as we learn more.
If you enjoyed this blog, you’ll love my newsletter, as well as my Facebook group. You’re welcome to join these communities – would love to see you there!
More from Pina Travels on responsible tourism:
