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 purchasers sounds great doesn’t? For a few of us, sure, however truly, I do know {that a} full-time life-style of journey additionally doesn’t enchantment to everybody.
I’ve seen that the older I get, the extra I wish to expertise a vacation spot for an extended time period, to cut back journey days and lengthy haul journeys and actually take in the cultures, landscapes and locations quite than bounce about all around the world!
The excellent news is, you don’t should journey all 12 months spherical to work as a journey photographer, there are numerous 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 should 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 challenge thought for future travels.
You’ll be able to 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 inside the business.
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 inventive 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 group of pictures 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 accommodations and experiences in lovely locations
- Holding 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 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 images challenge 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 categorical how thrilling it’s if you get your first shopper, have your first pictures revealed or make a dream marketing campaign a actuality.
01 – Think about 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 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 develop into clearer in the event you’re taking part within the course, nevertheless it helps to begin fascinated with your inventive imaginative and prescient, your strengths and how one can seize a vacation spot in another way.
03 – Do you’ve got an internet site or PDF portfolio that isn’t Instagram? Creating your individual house on-line is important to showcasing your work as soon as you start pitching and dealing with purchasers. It merely means that you can management how your work is displayed, what pictures a possible shopper sees first and means you possibly can steer outcomes by crafting a portfolio that meets the purchasers wants and makes for a simple 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 challenge as a journey photographer.
That’s all for now, I simply wished to share this perception as generally the time period ‘journey photographer’ can conjure up visions of a life on the street with no base or house, nevertheless it’s totally potential to create your individual life-style and luxuriate in a contract profession. My very own profession has shifted through the years and has seen some years once I’m on the street for 10+ months of the 12 months, others once I’m based mostly completely overseas, and a few years once I’m spending extra time at house writing about previous journeys, creating content material for native purchasers or planning for the 12 months forward.
Journey and panorama photographer from Australia who is much extra comfy in a pair of flippers than heels! Having labored for publications corresponding 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.
