A day in the life o a travel photographer

Many people walk around with a dream of becoming a travel photographer. I mean, how amazing is it to travel around the world for a living right? That’s all people take into consideration. That you get to travel the world. Travel photography is hard work though. And not everybody is cut out to make it. In this post I describe what a typical day might look like for a travel photographer.

A day in the life of a travel photographer

Let’s imagine you just arrived at a new location. A location that you have been dreaming of visiting for a long time, and you want to get the most out of the experience. As you arrive, you spend the day scouting locations, looking for the best photography spots. You find a location, shoot for the sunset, and then you head back home to your accommodation, to finally end up falling fast asleep.

The following day, is a huge day for your photography, so make sure your batteries are charged.

Your alarm goes off 1,5 hours before sunrise, so you have time to get ready, and arrive at your spot 45 minutes before the sun starts rising. From the day before, you already know where you want to set up your camera, due to your location scouting. You are photographing all the way through the blue hour, sunrise and golden hour. Meaning that you have spent a couple of hours at location. After sunrise, you are heading for some breakfast.

While you are waiting for your food, you go through your photos and decide which ones you want to edit. As you finish eating your breakfast, you are off exploring once again. As the light is most likely too hard for the wide landscape photos, you are looking for more detailed photographs, some street photography or portraits of locals. You spend a couple of hours walking around and shooting different kinds of photos. If you have interesting cloud formations, you can get some really great landscapes though.

Next up is lunch, where you spend your time editing while you are waiting for your food. As you finish eating, you find a good coffee spot, where you continue editing for a couple of hours. If you are lucky enough, you can go back to your accommodation, and sleep for an hour or so, before you are once again off to photograph the sunset. However you most likely have other trips coming up as well, so chances are that you research new destinations.

When you are heading for the sunset you want to arrive early at your location, so you don’t miss out on any interesting light. After sunset, you stick around to photograph blue hour, and a few star shots as well. If you think your day is done now, you can’t be more wrong. As you did your location scouting the day before, you found a great spot for night photography. You spend a couple of hours photographing the milky way, if the light pollution isn’t too harsh, and afterwards it’s finally time for some sleep. Next day? You might do it all over again.

I can’t even recall how many days like this I have had. You might imagine that in the long run it can get really tiring. However, for many photographers this is what a typical day will look like, at a new location. You want to maximize your time at each place, in order to get the most out of the place you are visiting. There is no telling, when you might be able to go back to that same location.

When I travel in this way, I always try to give myself a few free days in the end of each trip to relax. I usually book a good hotel, and just stay in my room, relaxing, watching Netflix, editing and planning future trips. Photography is a grind, and you have to be in it to win it. Chances are that there is always someone, working even harder than you do.

A day in the life of a travel photographer

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