The Traveling Image Makers

This episode of the podcast sees the debut of my good friend Ralph Velasco, who I introduced last week, as a co-host. For our first show together, we interviewed Brian Cruickshank.Brian is a Los Angeles-based photographer whose work is represented by Getty Images to clients worldwide. Brian also leads annual photography tours in Cambodia through an affiliation with PhotoEnrichment Adventures.WIth Brian we discussed stock photography, the importance of having local support or a “fixer” when traveling to far out places, going beyond clichés when doing travel photography and other assorted topics.We hope you will enjoy the conversation.Duration 34m 51s.Next week’s guest will be Brenda Tharp.Subscribe on iTunes or join our newsletter!Music for this episode: “Zanzibar” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Links* WebsitePhotos by Brian See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Alright, my dear listeners, we are at episode 50 of the show, which means I’ve been publishing new episodes every week for almost one full year, never skipping a week.Let me tell you, this is a lot of work, especially since I do it all on my own, from finding and inviting guests, interviewing them, editing the audio, publishing the episode, sharing on social media, the whole shebang! It takes hours of my time every week, but I’m happy to do it, because you seem to love it and because it is working great to put my name out.In addition, it has enabled me to network with some great people.Some of those people I have met personally, some have become long-distance friends and today I want to introduce you to one of them. The reason for this is because, starting today, he is going to co-host the show with me. That not only means being able to share some of the load I mentioned above, but also being able to create new and interesting content and taking the show to new heights.If you have listened to episode 13, you

Some people like to travel with cars, others with airplanes, boats, or trains. Some people like to travel on foot. This is the case of Christian Meermann, who is an avid hiker and who recently walked the length of the West Highlands Way, in Scotland, from Fort William to Glasgow, and took some great photos along the way.Christian is an enthusiast photographer and teacher with a strong interest in black & white photography. His portfolio spans a wide range of genres like animal portraiture, landscape, macro, architecture and abstract photography. When he is not taking pictures, he teaches history and sociology at a comprehensive school, is father of two boys and also a photography mentor at The Arcanum.You should listen to the interview, if you want to partake in Christian’s emotions as he visited those incredible landscapes and to learn some valuable tips about hiking long distances with photo equipment.Duration 35m 53s.Next week’s episode will be a special one. I am introducing some major changes to this

I have been friends with this week’s guest, Mathieu Gasquet, since a few years ago, when we used to do a YouTube show about mirrorless cameras together. Back then Mathieu was still living in Italy, but he recently moved to Wales with his wife Heather. I asked him to be my guest on the show specifically to tell us all about photographing that great country, but we also chatted extensively about cameras, which are the focus of the website he manages with Heather.Mathieu’s adventure into the world of photography began during his childhood. His parents gave him a Yashica fx2000 that he accidentally broke during a holiday in Rome. After completing three years of cinema school in France, photography and video turned into his profession. He later created the website MirrorLessons with his partner Heather and it has gone from strength to strength ever since. He says he hasn’t settled on a favorite genre as of yet, but travelling and photography are definitely the two things that make him feel “free”.Duration 35m 51s.

I love the mountains, but for some reason I don’t get to visit them often, even though I live pretty close to the Alps. Maybe it’s because the people I hang out with are not lovers of high altitudes, but I miss them a lot. It was therefore a great pleasure for me to chat with Bethany Llloyd this week and to admire her beautiful photographs of the Alps and especially of the Dolomites.Bethany Lloyd is an outdoor enthusiast who takes her photography with her into the mountains. Winter or summer, feet on the ground or seat in a harness she endeavours to find her view from a new angle.Enjoy the show!Duration 28m 50s.If you liked this episode, please tell us in the comments below, or leave us a review on iTunes. Thank you!Our guest for next week will be Mathieu Gasquet.Music for this episode: “Zanzibar” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Links* Pandora Mountain Photography on Facebook* Bethany Lloyd’s mountain photography ar

A few weeks ago I was visiting Photokina, the world’s largest photo and video trade fair, held every year in Cologne, Germany. As I was leaving the exhibition’s floor at the end of my last day there, I happened to pass by Fujifilm’s booth and I noticed there was a talk about to start on the stage. The photographer that was going to present her work was Saraya Cortaville, who I didn’t know previously.I decided to stay a little bit more to attend the presentation and I am happy that I did, because her work was truly inspiring and her personality captivating. At the end of the talk, I introduced myself and invited Saraya to be my guest on the show and she graciously accepted, so we recorded an interview a few days later and here it is.Saraya Cortaville is an award winning portrait and social documentary photographer. She has received two fellowships (one of only two women in the UK to have achieved this) one for studio portraiture and most recently social documentary for a project she completed in 2015 whilst li

This episode of the podcast is all about giving. Whether it is giving life to a new human being, giving help to disadvantaged communities in developing countries or giving education to aspiring travel photographers and travel writers, my guest Kate Siobhan Mulligan certainly knows what it means to give.Kate Siobhan Mulligan is a freelance travel photographer and photo-educator from British Columbia, Canada. She is COO of The Giving Lens, taking teams around the world on photo workshops that also partner with local NGO during the trip to document, teach photography, and leave an impact on a community. She also is Lead Photo Faculty for MatadorU.com teaching both fundamentals and advanced Travel Photography courses. When not doing these, she freelances in many other areas, or often turns everything off to explore beautiful BC with her husband and their baby girl.We started my conversation with Kate talking about what a travel photographer must give up, when she has just given birth to a beautiful baby. We then

Susan Onysko is a travel photographer who has devoted the last decade to the art of capturing evocative stories from some of the most remote and extreme locations of our world — from Bhutan to Death Valley to Romania to Vietnam. Because Susan has an eye for both the unexpected images that evoke a locale’s purest essence and the relatable moments that unite us in our similarities, her well-rounded, professional work has garnered numerous international awards and exhibits.To Susan, people are the best representatives of a location; and their exotic, rugged, or smiling faces are the first to flash through the memories of her trips. Catching people in unguarded, genuine states requires patience, something of which she has an abundance as a mother of four. In locales with few people, she has reflected seemingly human emotions in wildlife. With the luck of being unaffected by jet lag, flexibility in toting family along for adventures, detailed use of digital editing tools to convey intended mood, and freedom from t

What does it take for an image to go viral and be shared on dozens of websites? Is it a matter of chance or does luck favor the prepared? What can we do to make our pictures more shareable and popular? Would you be ready to handle and exploit the unexpected interest?These are all questions that I discussed together with my guest of this week, Lorenzo Montezemolo, whose Fog Fingers photograph has recently and unexpectedly skyrocketed into the realm of viral images, having been published on the front page of Reddit, PetaPixel, Bored Panda, BoingBoing, Colossal, the Washington Post and others.Lorenzo is a landscape and nature photographer living in the San Francisco area. He has owned a camera since he was six years old, but it’s only been in the last 5-10 years that he’s become truly “serious” about photography. Photography is not his main profession but it is most definitely his main passion. While he enjoys traveling to far-flung places with his camera, he considers himself fortunate to live in a place where

My guest for this week’s episode is landscape and nature photographer Varina Patel. This is what Varina says about herself:There is nothing more remarkable to me than the power of nature. It is both cataclysmic and subtle. Slow and continuous erosion by water and wind can create landscapes every bit as astonishing as those shaped by catastrophic events – and minuscule details can be as breathtaking as grand vistas that stretch from one horizon to the other. Nature is incredibly diverse. Burning desert sands and mossy riverbanks… Brilliant sunbeams and fading alpenglow… Silent snowfall and raging summer storms… Each offers a unique opportunity. I am irresistibly drawn to the challenge of finding my next photograph, and mastering the skills required to capture it effectively.With Varina, we discussed a number of topics, including:* Minimalism* Conveying a feeling, a mood through photographs* Combining family life and travel* Is getting it right in camera still important?* Working the scene on location* What doe

This is the question that Matt Moreland tried to answer in an article I recently found while browsing the Web, titled "10 Ways to Save Money as a Freelance Travel Photographer". I though Matt's suggestions would be useful to anyone who loves to travel and can't count on a lavish budget, so I asked him to be a guest on the show.Matt Moreland is a travel and lifestyle photographer from Toronto, Canada. After travelling to Peru to hike Machu Picchu he spent 3 months living out of a Jeep across Canada and the Western United States. His appetite for road trips and photography has him currently working on a number of ad campaigns for major car brands such as Land Rover and Toyota. He is currently planning his next adventure, an extended East Coast road trip through Canada and the US in the fall with his dog Lucy. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

To say that my guest for this episode of the podcast, Luca Bracali, is a travel photographer would be too limiting, for he is also an expert TV director and a true explorer, having been to the North Pole, amongst other truly remote locations.My interest in Luca's work and personality, and the reason why I invited him to be a guest on the show, was sparked mostly from his commitment to the preservation of the environment and the deep respect and love he has for the Earth, its nature, and its people.Luca Bracali has travelled to 138 countries, is the author of eight books and the winner of eight prizes in international photographic competitions. Since 2008 he is a member of APECS (Association of Polar Early Career Scientists) for his contributions about the environment published in the media. In 2009 he was the only reporter to reach the geographic North Pole on skis. In 2010 Bracali debuted in the world of fine-art photography and his pictures have been on display, as solo exhibitions, in museums and galleries

A few weeks ago, when I asked Ron Clifford to be my guest on the podcast, we discussed what topics we could converse about and he quipped that we could mention his distinction of being a “bipolar” photographer.At first, I thought he was referring to having visited and photographed both the Arctic and the Antarctic, but what I discovered during the interview is that Ron had been suffering for years of bipolar depression.I think it was very brave of him to mention this and to tell the story of how travel and photography helped him overcome his condition.This is what Ron says of himself:I am an artist, coach, and creative mentor with a unique ability to help unlock the creative ninja that lives inside every person. You could say I really do is explore my world through the connections my camera helps me create – and to help others overcome roadblocks and see blind spots along their own creative journey.I have the best job in the whole world.I love to shoot in Nature, especially the landscape and wildlife photogra

Is technology killing our empathy?This is the question Jacquelyn Quinones asked during her recent TEDx talk in Paris. This is a question that we, as travel photographers, should ask ourselves every day.Technology lets us travel fast and almost always comfortably to remote places. It enables us to take thousands of photos of people from different countries and alien cultures. It invites us to share those photos on the Web with our followers. But in the end, aren't many photographers treating their subjects as if they were animals in a zoo? What is the story behind the portrait of a woman from the farthest reaches of Borneo? Where is the respect? Where is the empathy?I discussed these topics with Jacquelyn in a conversation that was, for once, devoid of geekery and totally focused on how we can change our approach to technology for the better. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It's not a secret that I believe writing is an essential skill for travel photographers. I discussed this in episode 21 with Jens Lennartsson, especially with respect to how travel writing can help photographers make a profit and sell their work to magazines and websites more effectively.So when I learned about Great Escape Publishing and their programs for aspiring travel writers, I contacted their director, Lori Allen and asked her to come on the show and talk to us about it.Great Escape publishes myriad books, report, online programs and guides on getting paid to travel. They also host live events around the world where you can try each of their ideas first hand. Their upcoming travel writing workshop in New Orleans will be their 133rd live event with expeditions in Mexico and Tanzania still to come this year and adventures in Botswana, Namibia, Thailand, Cuba and Jordan in 2017.If you ever thought of getting into travel writing and using it to make your photography more saleable, but you don't think you h

I have been wanting to interview Jay Patel for quite some time, but Jay is a rather busy person, what with having to manage a photography business that is expanding in various directions, running a popular website, traveling, and on top of it all, being the father of a large family.I finally managed to corner him in between trips to Iceland and Hawaii and of course wanted to know all about the land of fire and ice and his adventure chasing puffins and waterfalls. We also talked about what it takes to photograph the wilderness and I managed to extract from him some elements of his secret recipe for making a living out of photographing nature.Another topic that is close to my heart and to Jay's is that of conservation and we couldn't help but dedicate some time to exploring ways in which photographers can help saving our planet. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sometimes we are so taken up with the latest camera or lens, with pixel-peeping, and with learning the latest and greatest blending technique for Photoshop that we lose sight of some of the things that really matter when doing photography. I personally think that the greatest benefit that travel photography affords us is the joy of being there in the moment. If this is spoiled by having to fiddle with the complicated controls of the latest camera we bought, that we didn't have the time to familiarize with and that we carried inside a heavy backpack to reach our destination, then it's maybe better to stay at home.I discussed this topic with Viktor Elizarov, who has made simplification is mantra.Viktor is travel, landscape photographer and educator from Montreal, Canada. For years Viktor has worked as a designer in a range of areas from graphic design and web design to multimedia design and broadcast design. But in the last decade, he made a transition to photography. He runs the popular travel photography blog

It is always a great pleasure for me to converse with Karen Hutton. There is never a dull moment and she has so many stories to tell! For this episode of the podcast, I asked her to collect her best memories from her recent trip across Europe and from her "artists' retreat" in Provence.Karen Hutton is an International Landscape and Travel Photographer, Artist, Speaker, Author, Educator, Voice. She has over 2 million followers on social media; with over 11 billion views of her photographic work. She is a Professional Fujifilm-X Photographer and has been featured in Talks at Google, Photo Plus Expo and on Stuck in Customs, TWiP, Macphun Software, Forbes.com, The Grid, Rick Sammon’s DPE Podcast. Karen lives in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. You can find her at Karenhutton.com.It's hard to pinpoint the exact topic of our conversation, because we talked about so many things, but I think the central theme of it was the many ways of finding one's voice through art and of discovering one's true self by tr

If you've been following this podcast for some time, you will have certainly noticed that one of the recurring themes here is that of giving back, of using photography to effect some real change in the world and to benefit the communities that we visit when we travel.This was the central point of Episode 25 with John Butterill, of Episode 14 with Anna Tenne, and of Episode 13 with Ralph Velasco.I was very happy then, when I contacted Darlene Hildebrandt, asking for an interview, and she told me about her involvement with the people of the El Limonal community in Nicaragua. We immediately agreed that our conversation would be focused on that and, more in general, on the various ways in which travel photographers can do more than just come, snap some pictures and leave.Darlene is the creator of Digital Photo Mentor. She has been a professional photographer for over 26 years, and photography educator since 2011. Darlene provides valuable articles on her site, has a free ebook, and offers online photography cours

Raise your hand if you don't know Martin Bailey. Besides being a great nature and wildlife photographer, a fantastic educator and Arcanum master, a keen traveler, a prolific author, and an X-Rite Coloratti member, he's also the host of one of the longest running photography podcasts, having been continuously on the air for 11 years.Fueled by his passion for nature and travel, and a tireless desire to share his knowledge and artistic vision, Martin is a popular international tour and workshop leader, helping photographers from around the world to see and capture the wonders of this awesome planet we call home.It was therefore a great pleasure and honor for me to be able to interview Martin for my podcast and I am confident you too will appreciate his insights, if you listen to this episode. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.