On the Road

How did I get to be the photographer I am today? It’s a question I get asked a lot by beginner photographers and, I think, there are some valuable lessons in my story. First though, I want to talk about how I view the work of other photographers.

Regular readers know that I emphasize in these columns the idea of visualizing opportunities that will set your images apart from the rest. There is another aspect to that idea, and that’s setting your images apart from each other. In other words, adding variety to your photography by adding, and even combining, techniques.

I ended the March 2017 column on my must-have lenses for travel photography and the tripods that support them with a promise that there’d be a part two on the gear that goes beyond cameras and lenses to enable me to get the pictures I envision.

Want to see something you don’t see every day—something, in fact, you can’t really see at all?

The September 25, 2016, issue of The New York Times Magazine was titled "The Voyages" Issue, and it featured an impressive collection of images. In the introduction to the issue, the writer Gideon Lewis-Kraus talks about the idea of the image as document or experience: this is what a place looks like as opposed to this is what it feels like to be there. He notes the cliché of “the traveler so busy with documentation that he misses out on some phantom called the ‘experience itself.’”

My flights in helicopters, small planes, and hot-air balloons are often provided by clients as part of my assignments; if I’m shooting for stock, I’ll pick up the hire fee. Aerial tours are widely available to tourists and photo enthusiasts alike, and there’s certainly no limit to spectacular locations you can photograph from above.

Not too long ago I entered a PhotoShelter contest that called for entrants to submit a single photo they deemed their best travel image. I didn’t know if the one I sent was in fact my best, but I was certain it would get the judges’ attention. If you’re a regular reader, you might have seen it featured in my column in the November, 2014, issue: the image of trucks, sheep, and goats held up by a landslide in the Zojila Pass in Kashmir, India.