Crafting your life-style as a journey photographer
A jet setting life-style, visiting new locations every week and photographing for quite a few publications and shoppers sounds great doesn’t? For a few of us, sure, however really, I do know {that a} full-time life-style of journey additionally doesn’t enchantment to everybody.
I’ve observed that the older I get, the extra I need to expertise a vacation spot for an extended time period, to scale back journey days and lengthy haul journeys and actually take in the cultures, landscapes and locations quite than leap about everywhere in the world!
The excellent news is, you don’t should journey all 12 months spherical to work as a journey photographer, there are lots of different methods to construct your profession and mix it along with your present life-style or commitments.
Working as a contract journey photographer doesn’t should imply packing up your belongings and minimizing your life right into a backpack (+ digital camera bag in fact). It may be so simple as sharing/promoting work out of your previous travels or pitching an article or venture thought for future travels.
You may suit your work as a journey photographer into your present life-style by growing your portfolio as you journey regionally on weekends, on longer worldwide journeys a couple of instances a 12 months or by specializing in a particular area of interest throughout the trade.
Maybe wellness tourism is your choice, this might imply specializing in native choices like yoga retreats, wilderness lodges and scenic landscapes whilst you construct up your picture portfolio and showcase your inventive strengths. When you’re assured in delivering a constant high quality of images, the subsequent step may very well be pitching to wellness manufacturers and companies to seize a set of photos for his or her advertising and marketing use or capturing images to pitch for publication in a related journal.
Which of the beneath describes finest the way you see your self working as a journey photographer?
- Photographing locations to pitch + publish each your phrases and pictures
- Creating picture libraries and content material collections for manufacturers and tourism companies
- Photographing luxurious motels and experiences in lovely locations
- Maintaining it native and showcasing tourism choices for guests in native guides, newspapers, magazines and dealing along with your regional tourism board
- Pairing photographing vacation spot weddings with panorama work in tropical and unique areas
- Researching and writing articles on forgotten cultures and offbeat locations + telling tales along with your images.
- Working with non-profit organisations to doc charities, environmental initiatives, and sustainable tourism ventures.
- Collaborating with manufacturers and companies to make a dream journey pictures venture come to life.
- Travelling to {photograph} locations with the intention of promoting prints and dealing with galleries, inventory libraries and even maybe your personal retailer?
- The entire above!
I’ll cease earlier than I get too overexcited, I simply love dreaming up the chances for my very own profession, however particularly different photographers who’re simply getting began! There are such a lot of potential avenues to enterprise down as a journey photographer and I can’t specific how thrilling it’s while you get your first shopper, have your first photos revealed or make a dream marketing campaign a actuality.
01 – Contemplate the way you see your self working as a journey photographer. Are you open to a life on the street, or would you like a mixture of stability and smaller scale adventures? There’s no improper reply right here, you’ll simply be making it simpler by narrowing down your focus and life-style targets.
02 – Curate your present portfolio or photos from earlier journeys. Are there any areas you must work on to create consistency inside your pictures? How would you describe your work to an editor or why ought to a model work with you? These solutions will grow to be clearer if you happen to’re collaborating within the course, however it helps to start out fascinated by your inventive imaginative and prescient, your strengths and how one can seize a vacation spot in another way.
03 – Do you’ve a web site or PDF portfolio that isn’t Instagram? Creating your personal house on-line is important to showcasing your work as soon as you start pitching and dealing with shoppers. It merely permits you to management how your work is displayed, what photos a possible shopper sees first and means you possibly can steer outcomes by crafting a portfolio that meets the shoppers wants and makes for a straightforward sure. Once more, this isn’t important straight away, however needs to be a part of the thought course of as you’re employed in the direction of your first pitch or venture as a journey photographer.
That’s all for now, I simply needed to share this perception as typically the time period ‘journey photographer’ can conjure up visions of a life on the street with no base or dwelling, however it’s totally attainable to create your personal life-style and luxuriate in a contract profession. My very own profession has shifted over time and has seen some years once I’m on the street for 10+ months of the 12 months, others once I’m primarily based completely overseas, and a few years once I’m spending extra time at dwelling writing about previous journeys, creating content material for native shoppers or planning for the 12 months forward.
Journey and panorama photographer from Australia who is way extra snug in a pair of flippers than heels! Having labored for publications equivalent to Lonely Planet, Wanderlust and the Sunday Occasions, Lisa based The Wandering Lens to share vacation spot guides to the worlds most photogenic locations and out of doors experiences.