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 fantastic doesn’t? For a few of us, sure, however really, I do know {that a} full-time life-style of journey additionally doesn’t attraction to everybody.
I’ve seen that the older I get, the extra I need to expertise a vacation spot for an extended time frame, to scale back journey days and lengthy haul journeys and actually take in the cultures, landscapes and locations somewhat than bounce about everywhere in the world!
The excellent news is, you don’t need to journey all yr spherical to work as a journey photographer, there are various different methods to construct your profession and mix it together with your present life-style or commitments.
Working as a contract journey photographer doesn’t need to imply packing up your belongings and minimizing your life right into a backpack (+ digicam bag in fact). It may be so simple as sharing/promoting work out of your previous travels or pitching an article or mission concept for future travels.
You may suit your work as a journey photographer into your present life-style by growing your portfolio as you journey domestically on weekends, on longer worldwide journeys just a few instances a yr or by specializing in a particular area of interest throughout the trade.
Maybe wellness tourism is your desire, this might imply specializing in native choices like yoga retreats, wilderness lodges and scenic landscapes when you construct up your picture portfolio and showcase your artistic strengths. When you’re assured in delivering a constant high quality of images, the following step might be pitching to wellness manufacturers and companies to seize a set of pictures for his or her advertising use or capturing pictures 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 inns and experiences in lovely locations
- Maintaining it native and showcasing tourism choices for guests in native guides, newspapers, magazines and dealing together 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 together with your pictures.
- Working with non-profit organisations to doc charities, environmental initiatives, and sustainable tourism ventures.
- Collaborating with manufacturers and companies to make a dream journey images mission come to life.
- Travelling to {photograph} locations with the intention of promoting prints and dealing with galleries, inventory libraries and even maybe your individual retailer?
- All the above!
I’ll cease earlier than I get too overexcited, I simply love dreaming up the probabilities 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 pictures 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 highway, or would you like a mixture of stability and smaller scale adventures? There’s no incorrect 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 pictures from earlier journeys. Are there any areas it is advisable to work on to create consistency inside your images? How would you describe your work to an editor or why ought to a model work with you? These solutions will turn out to be clearer for those who’re taking part within the course, nevertheless it helps to begin desirous about your artistic imaginative and prescient, your strengths and how one can seize a vacation spot otherwise.
03 – Do you’ve gotten a web site or PDF portfolio that isn’t Instagram? Creating your individual house on-line is crucial 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 pictures a possible shopper sees first and means you’ll be able to steer outcomes by crafting a portfolio that meets the shoppers wants and makes for a straightforward sure. Once more, this isn’t important instantly, however ought to be a part of the thought course of as you’re employed in direction of your first pitch or mission as a journey photographer.
That’s all for now, I simply needed to share this perception as generally the time period ‘journey photographer’ can conjure up visions of a life on the highway with no base or house, nevertheless it’s completely doable to create your individual life-style and revel in a contract profession. My very own profession has shifted over time and has seen some years once I’m on the highway for 10+ months of the yr, others once I’m primarily based completely overseas, and a few years once I’m spending extra time at house writing about previous journeys, creating content material for native shoppers or planning for the yr forward.
Journey and panorama photographer from Australia who is way extra snug in a pair of flippers than heels! Having labored for publications comparable 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 outside experiences.
