Get It In Writing

The actual taking of the pictures is the easiest part of travel photography.  If you’ve ever taken clear, focused and colorful photographs for your own pleasure or to chronicle your vacations, then you already know what you need to do for decent travel photography.  The hard part about travel photography for freelance writers is getting paid for it.

The golden rule of freelancing is “Always get it in writing.”  NEVER assume that the editor will honor a verbal contract or even terms loosely given during one email exchange about copy or photography.  You need to be crystal clear about what you are going to be paid for on an assignment and what you aren’t going to be paid for.

Things you need to get crystal clear in travel photography for your articles include (but are not limited to):

How much you will get per photo
Are there any specific subject matters the editor wants?
What format is needed for submission
When you will get paid
Who will hold the copyright to your travel photography?

Take Many Pictures

In any professional photography area, you will need to take scads and scads of photos in order to find the one or two that will perfectly illustrate your piece.  You might be the one who makes the final decision as to which of your photos run and which don’t.  That is usually up to the photo editor (if your publication has one).  This also could be the graphic artist or the travel editor, depending on the title.  If it is a very small publication, than the editor in chief might also be the layout editor and the photo editor.

See if you can get to send digital photographs.  In this way, you can download your travel photography onto your laptop and then email them to your editor (or whoever) in order to get the piece done even before you have to come home.

You’ve Seen It

In case you are wondering what this most famous of famous photography images looks like, let’s refresh your memory.  It is a stark black and white photograph of six United States Marines pushing to raise a battle-scared American flag and pole into the sand and twisted landscape.  The flag is rising towards a bright white sky.  It looks as if the Marines are having a tough time raising the flag.

Why So Popular

What makes a picture enter the realms of famous photography?  Part of it is that it captures the essence of a huge event into one image.  “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima” is considered the iconic image of World War II, even though this happened on the Japanese front and not the European front, where most of the action was.  Somehow, despite all of the odds, the good guys won.

Another element that makes a picture rise to the ranks of famous photography is that it has a certain timelessness, using symbols that talks to our collective unconscious.  Flags are included in that silent pictorial language.  It is known to many cultures that flags mean victory.  Raising the flag, family crest or shield of your army or side onto the enemy territory was the ultimate declaration of victory.

Brief History

This elite specimen of famous photography is actually the second raising of the flag at Iwo Jima.  However, this was the time the island was finally won.  The flag was raised inside of a Japanese pipe.  The image was so startling and so triumphant that it was published in newspapers a mere seventeen and a half hours after it was taken, at a time when it normally took a couple of days for news photographs to be published.

The photo was so good that it was accused of what all famous photography is accused of – being faked.  Although there are many famous photos that have been set up (Marilyn Monroe over the steam grating comes to mind), Joe Rosenthal and the three Marines that survived World War II were able to testify that it wasn’t.  It was just one of those things.

Where Exactly Is It?

Although listed as being at the University of Arizona Libraries, the Center for Creative Photography is not exactly open to the public like other art libraries.  There isn’t any money or manpower to keep a proper museum up and running in a way that the images inside deserve.  But to lock the photographs inside of a bank vault away from those who love photography would be cruel.  So, the Center for Creative Photography came up with a compromise.

You have to make an appointment in order to see the collection.  If you are alone or in a group, you definitely need to make an appointment and expect to be chaperoned throughout.  You will be escorted to see some of the 80,000 pieces of artwork and can make requests to focus on particular North American photographers such as Ansel Adams, Josef Breitenbach, Aaron Siskind, William Mortensen, Frederick Sommer and W. Eugene Smith.

For Researchers

If you are a researcher, then you need to make special plans with the Center of Creative Photography in order to be able to access its vast archives instead of just looking at the more famous photography images that most casual visitors want to see.  You also can have access to the written works from and about the photographers as well as negatives.  You still need to make an appointment.  Please don’t just show up unannounced.  They hate that.

The Center for Creative Photography is open weekdays from 10am to 4pm.  It is not open on weekends ever.  If you go to the Center for Creative Photography’s website, you can view a comprehensive index of all of the materials in their incredibly vast archives.  Depending on what your research subject is, you might be eligible to apply for a research grant, funded by Polaroid.  Again, you need to see the website for details.

The Center for Creative Photography is the largest collection of its kind in the world and they keep as close an eye on it as possible, because they know their duty for posterity.

Cooperation Opportunities

Have you ever gone into a pet store and seen a display about a pet photographer coming to the store?  If you’ve ever come back on pet photography days, you know the lines go out the door.  This also happens for children’s professional photography or for any formal portraits, which can often be quickly set up in the corner of a large department store.

And what photographers do these stores pick on these busy days?  They pick photographers with a mobile photography studio.  Although some chain stores, like Sears, might have their own in-house photographers, for the most part, if you contact a store to set up a portrait day, you’re going to get some action (provided you have good references and a great portfolio, that is.)

Stocking Your Vehicle

You don’t need to bring everything and the kitchen sink along to your next portrait gig.  You do need a van, truck or at least a station wagon filled with lighting equipment, extension cords, extra batteries, different colored background drapes or cloths, a tripod, some reflective umbrellas or cards to help with your lighting and a vast array of props.  Usually, adults don’t need any more props than a chair.  But pets and kids need some squeaky toys to get their attention, at least.  And, of course, you need a camera or two.

The Darkroom

Just about the only thing you can’t stock in your mobile photography studio is a good darkroom and your darkroom chemicals.  Professionals who want to make creative photography out of even the most basic portrait need to develop their own pictures.  Many photographers can do away with the need of a darkroom altogether by going digital.  That way, their laptops, their memory cards and their cameras become the photography studio darkroom.  Some artists claim that the quality of a real live film photography studio can’t be matched, but technology is very quickly catching up with the imagination.

Photojournalism

This kind of art photography is much harder than it first sounds like.  How many college students do you know have a poster of Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue or of that one lone Chinese demonstrator who stopped a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square?  Those photos are art.  They tell far more stories than the actual newspaper stories they were originally used to illustrate.

The art of photojournalism lies partially in being in the right place at the right time but also choosing which photo to select.  It has to capture the essence of a situation or a story with one image.  This kind of art photography is sort of a visual haiku.

Digital Tricks

You don’t need a fancy photography studio in order to create art photography.  You do need a computer and an excellent image program, such as PhotoShop.  There, you take a photograph as the framework for which your artistic expression is loosened.  For some, the challenge is in making a fake photograph look identical to a real photograph.  Some make a real photograph as beautiful as possible.  The sky’s the limit with this type of art photography.

Portraits

The bread and butter of a professional photographer’s trade is in portraits – of people, pets, buildings or whatever.  The usual portrait, although framed and hung on a wall, is not often considered art photography.  The art is when these portraits are taken just left of center.  Instead of stiff poses looking artificially perfect, another approach is taken.

Instead of the usual portrait of a little girl in a dress, the photographer could mount a ladder and look down on the girl spinning in play.  That would be art photography, even though it may be hard to tell the features of the little girl.  It is still a portrait, but captures more about the girl than just what she looked like on a given day.

Telling A Story

Think about the most memorable photograph you have ever seen – whether in the newspaper, in a book or in photography gallery.  What was is that was so special?  For a lot of people, great photographs tell entire stories or reveal entire lives in one image.  Although these pictures can be taken by accident, often they are taken through the eyes of someone with a story to tell.  Walking through a photography gallery is a bit like paging through a short story anthology.

The images selected to hang in a photography gallery aren’t just interesting compositions or shapes.  They might be entirely what you think a bad picture would be.  Images in Photography galleries can be blurred, unfocused, off-center or poorly lit.  But the images in a photography gallery not only show the story of what that image is about and, most tellingly, they tell the story of the photographer behind the lens.

Perception Through The Lens

We all long to express ourselves in some way.  Many people choose to express themselves through the use of the arts.  Almost all professional photographers develop their own photographs in order to ensure you see what they see.  Words can easily be misinterpreted and forgotten.  But images, such as the ones in a photography gallery, stay in your mind for a very long time.

We see this all the time in advertising photographs (which sometimes do pop up in a photography gallery or two).  You are meant to see only the effects that one product or service brings.  The picture doesn’t show you all of the problems the employees might be having or the effect the product or service might have on the environment.  We only see the positive, which can be done in surprisingly ingenious and quirky ways.

A photography gallery might blur the line between real life and art, but that is its goal.  Despite all of the technology and skill into every image, the ultimate interpreter of each picture is you.  Your input is the last sentence in the story.