In our minds, a good travel photo captures the place, the people and not just a random stranger walking down a lonely, deserted, oversaturated road. (Those shots are lovely, however, not realistic.)
The Travel Photographer of the Year (TPOTY) awards for 2018 have just been announced, and the photos are worth putting down the Instagram for. A good travel photo should remind us that the world is a much bigger place that we think it is, full of people, places and perspectives that are beautiful exactly the way they are.
Though there are a few recognizable places like Japan's Fushimi Inari and Morocco's Blue City, Chefchaouen, there are select images that go beyond the typical travel tropes.
The TPOTY awards are run by photographers for photographers, and includes both amateur and professional photographers alike. Perhaps one of our favorite categories are the ones designed for youth photographers, and its spectacular to see young minds exposed to the world early on.
Here are a few that we loved (the first in this slideshow is a photo by 12-year-old photographer, Daniel Kurian):
