Hey, has anyone here done travel photography professionally? I shoot sports professionally, and my wife keeps asking me if I could do travel photography professionally as well. Now, aside from family trips and some sports-related expedition work, I have no experience and no idea what the options/possibilities are. I am assuming that getting a free ride to exotic places just to take photos is reserved for the select few with a reputation. However, we do travel a lot anyway, so I was just wonderin' if there is some way to tack on a professional component to this (although my kids will be annoyed if I have more excuses to take photos). I don't much care about the money, but building a reputation in anticipation of the empty nest and much more travel is appealing.

Thanks in advance!

John

I looked into this at one stage as I've been a globetrotter for most of my career. This is calling back on memories, but what I remember is that LonelyPlanet required a submission of something approaching 500 images with text as an entry point. They would evaluate the submission and if it passed muster you would be expected to submit another 500 images per quarter for further consideration. After some unspecified time, you would either be accepted or rejected.

I've read tales of others that used to fund their travels through photography. But as with so many other aspects of this game, it's become much easier for publishers to crowd-source images for their guides. Doesn't mean it can't be done but my guess is you'll need to create a twist and stick with it to make it happen.

Thanks for the reply--no surprise, I guess...and definitely not what I am looking for right now. But I just thought I'd ask because my wife keeps asking me.

or you could self publish your own books on your travels thru Blurb and other book makers... it would be a start and maybe find a gallery that might interested in your visions of the world you travel too......another facet also would be to created digital backdrops out of your images also.....

checkout Trey Ratcliffe's website stuckincustoms.com

He is a well known travel photographer with lots of resources on his site

Googling "travel photography" and "travel photography agents" yields what looks like a lot of information.