Over the past couple of years I’ve had an increasing number of emails from aspiring travel/documentary photographers from all over the world. The three most common questions I am usually asked go along the lines of:
Can you give me advice on how to become a travel photographer and how to make a living from it?
Can you look at my photos and tell me what you think, give me critique?
Can you share your story? Tell me how you got to where you are?
I take the fact that I’m being looked at as someone to ask those sorts of questions as a huge compliment, but at the same time, a lot of these emails frustrate me, a lot. They also take up quite a good bit of my time, when I really don’t have that much of it. But, I feel obligated to answer, to help how I can.
You see, when I was starting out, I too used to send out emails to various photographers whose work I liked and respected. Perhaps I wouldn’t be where I am today, had it not been for the fact that about 70-80% of them actually replied. Some even called (on the phone) and gave me valuable bits of advice that helped me advance my career and improve as a shooter. In a sense I feel obliged to continue what they had going.
However, there is a big difference with some of the emails I get and those I used to send. The difference is that my emails were specific, but a lot of what I get is so general, so “airy-fairy”, see the questions above. This means that if I am to give a truly valuable piece of advice, I have to come up with some sort of a mini-essay. Sorry, I’m not that accomplished of a writer to pump these out regularly, along with all the other writing I do, not to mention the traveling. I need some time to live and to take photos myself.
In the future I’ll use this post as a reference point for anyone who sends me an email with the above mentioned questions.
How to become a travel photographer?
Most of the aspiring photographers that email me are still in the very early stages of their journey, if you belong to that category, then, before you think of anything else, see if anyone actually wants or cares about your photos.
How do you do this? Create a body of work. Start showing it to people, not to your mum and dad or your best friend, but people who are not afraid to hurt your feelings. Emailing photographers whose work you respect is one option, I’ll get to the specifics of how this should be done later. Another option that I keep mentioning in this blog and even in some of my eBooks is sending your photographs to sites like 1X.com. Not just the main section, but the critique section, to see what people think.
I should clarify before I finish with this point that by body of work I mean at least 50 or so images which are truly exceptional and worthwhile. It should take you about a couple of years to produce those. Please don’t expect anyone to take your work seriously if all you have in your portfolio are random snaps from family holidays or a bunch of images from your first “eye-opening” trip to India or Thailand or wherever.
How do I earn a living as a travel photographer?
There’s no simple answer. The industry is changing a lot and it’s changing quickly. I’d say that if you’re still in the process of accumulating that body of work, then chances are, by the time you finish, even more major changes will take place and at that stage any advice I give you will now be useless.
I don’t know all the answers either and I could say that making money with travel photography is difficult and blah, blah, blah, but you probably already heard that (or should have heard). I can only say what I’ve learnt from my observations and here they are:
Having an online presence has been the most important thing for my “career” as a travel, documentary photographer. These days it really seems that if you’re not online, you don’t exist. Simple as that. If you are, nothing is guaranteed, but at least you’re giving yourself a chance.
Getting published, getting into magazines is great, it feels wonderful to see our work in print, but don’t expect much from it as far as finances go. You could classify it as “making a living”, but only in countries where you might be able to get around on $15-$25 a day.
Don’t expect to make a living solely from your travel photography for at least those couple of years that you are shooting your portfolio (or sometimes ever). I worked a whole lot of shitty jobs to fund my early trips. I shot weddings (which are very painful for me) an odd portrait here, a corporate job there. None of those things excited me, but they got me the cash to travel to where I wanted and allowed me to shoot what I wanted.
In short the rule is this: Make money any way you can, get yourself to the destination you so desperately want to photograph, shoot great photos there and then look for ways to get them out into the market place. I’ve mentioned the following before on this blog. At first you work for your photographs (and work damn hard for them) and then they start to work for you. But only if you get them out there.
Can you look at/critique my photos?
Firstly, let me mention that if you send me photos via email, I will be very pissed off. A lot of the time when I travel (which is most of the time) I have a really crappy internet connection and I have other priorities as far as email goes, no matter how wonderful your photos are. The exception is, if you want to ask a really specific question about no more than a couple of images. Just make sure to compress them and keep them at no more than 150kb each.
Also, be specific. If you have hundreds of photos on your Flickr account of friends, pets and random crap, I am not going to sort through all of that. How about this, you create a small gallery of no more than 10 of your very best images and send me a direct link to that? That will give me enough of an idea on where you’re at and I’ll give you some general thoughts on that work.
If you want me to be specific, be specific with your questions. Be specific about what image you want feedback on and no I won’t have the time to tell you what I think about each and every one of them.
Finally, don’t get angry or down on yourself if I don’t say something like “Wow! Great work!”. This is what your mum, dad and best friend are supposed tell you. I assume that if you’re asking for critique, you want an honest answer. Unless your work is really great (which is rare for those who are starting out) I’ll try to offer constructive criticism. But remember, it’s only my point of view, I might end up being a moron and you, a genius who sells their work for a million dollars one day. If you don’t want critique or my “ruthless” opinion, don’t ask me to look at your work.
What’s my story?
It’s still being written. 
But, if you’re really interested, you really just could have done some digging around on this blog. HERE is one post with a (similar title) where I talk about my own journey.
Whatever happened to being inquisitive? When I am interested in some photographer’s work, I google their name and I look for stuff on them on the internet. If you do a search for “Mitchell Kanashkevich interview” around the internets, you might just find answers to some of the questions you have.
Well, that’s about it, now feel free to contact me with whatever specific questions you might have. One “bonus tip” – if you plan to send any emails to magazine editors or anyone busy and short on time, you’d better make sure that you follow the rule of being specific and to the point, or your email will not have much chance of getting a reply.
I think it’s about time that I make some FAQ page too, that would save me a lot of time answering the “What lens did you use?” question. Hmm, it’ll come.
P.S. When you get a response from me, it would be nice to acknowledge it. Like a “thank you I received your email” or something. I’m surprised how many people never do that, only to send me an email a month later, with another question. Not cool. If I’ve put in the effort to write something, it would be good to know if it’s at least been reached the person asking the question.
Thank you for your honesty. One thing with the internet age everybody wants quick answers. Nobody can be bothered to “look up” things. It has never been easier to look up things. I remember borrowing a ton of magazines at the library to get to read as much about photography – now the internet has everything.
Good luck to you! Enjoy your stay at the Philippines! I’ll be able to go “home” next year. You photos made me miss home lots!
Thanks for the comment. Agreed. Even when I was starting to get real serious about photography, which was in mid 2000s there wasn’t that much out there. Now there are blogs, eBooks. The information is at your fingertips, it’s almost instant.
I remember I was so happy to find a FAQ section on one of my favorite photographer’s websites back in the day now. He really just hinted at some things, but that was enough for me to get out there and try those different things, to learn an immense amount from that.
I like to get quick answers too, but as I say, people have to be more specific. This post is sorta like a “Help me help you” sort of thing.
I’m really glad that what I’ve posted on this blog has stirred some emotions in you. The Philippines are indeed a great place (well actually many of them:)) Not without challenges, but special nevertheless.
Thank you by the way for all your ebooks. I bought them all. Best photography ebooks I’ve bought really.
It’s just great, Mitchell, that you are willing to answer questions like this at all!
Though you are already writing eBooks and countless posts on your blog, so you should not be shy to refer to these first. Everybody should have studied your ebooks first, before they even think of asking you further questions. Just saying, because I feel you are very generous towards these enquiries.
Listen everybody, please read Mitchell’s ebooks, they will help tremendously in improving your photographic skills!
All the best, Mitchell,
Thomas
Hehe, thanks for the plug Thomas.
I will be referring to this post in the future.
These emails are pretty manageable when it’s one or a couple a week, but things get less manageable when it’s one or a couple every couple of days and you need to get other stuff done.
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I can attest to your generosity, not just with time but with advice too. Even when I had a whole list of questions
And yes, it is much appreciated! As is this overview. I might actually send it to my mum, dad and friends as they don’t understand the time it takes and one pretty snap does not a portfolio make lol.
Hehe. Thanks Ilse.
Actually meeting people in real life is different, the rules go out the window. It really becomes an exchange, as it was when we chatted. It was a pleasure and in the end it was great because it was a start of a new friendship. If you brought over a thick portfolio for me to look at, I would get a little freaked out though. 
Damn, there goes that plan
Just kidding, the pleasure’s all mine. Especially when there’s watermelon juice involved!
You sound little bit like a self-centered arrogant prick. I would be surprised if after this post anybody ever asked your opinion again. But thanks anyway for supporting the photographic community.
??? You’re so sweet. Well Ron, life’s tough. You’ll come across some “self-centered arrogant pricks” sometimes. Deal with it. If you live in a world where you think people owe you their time to answer questions which you didn’t even care to think through, you need to be shaken up a little. I’m just being honest with this post. I think better that than to be fake nice and simply ignore people, as I could have done by erasing your “insightful” comment.
good job mitchell
some people just dont understand how its like to get tonnes of email about you
I’m glad you’re the kind of guy that keeps down to earth and don’t behave like a superstar. It is nice to retribute to others what we received from our masters =)
I also would love to be a pro travel/nature photographer, and I feel I’m having a good evolution through the years, although in Portugal it is almost impossible to work 100% on those themes. Often the ones who do that have an established career with around 20 years of activity and good contacts.
Being online is the real deal! Since I’ve built my new website I’m having 5 times the visits I had before.
I totally agree with you that critique shouldn’t be given by family and friends. Having a base of followers that you never met is something to be proud of, and it really makes me happy, meaning that my photos are appealing to someone strange.
Just a final tip about used gear. I’m posting my data on my blog images. When someone clicks on an image and it opens the data is shown below the photo. Maybe you could do something like that. It probably would ease the questions.
This is getting long. Take care, enjoy Philis and bring up some more cool images =)
Thanks Ruben. The bringing up of data is a good idea, but it could also get time consuming (especially for long picture posts) and sometimes I don’t want to take the technical route too much.
I agree, about feeling proud and happy that essentially “strangers” read the blog. And as I said, it’s a huge compliment to be asked the questions too, it’s just about finding some middle ground to make things work for everyone.
Actually Ron, your comment is the one that could have been a bit more constructive (understatement
.
Mitchell, I loved your post. I think it is great you take the time to explain this. And I learned from it too. Very useful. Sure hopefully you’ll save some time dealing with general questions – but you are still trying to reply to them. That is patience in my eyes, not arrogance.
Mitchell, these are very important, basic points that many people, including myself, tend to forget sometimes. So it’s good to be reminded – I appreciate the time you put towards sharing your experiences, opinoins and knowledge both on your blog and, aside from it, with each individual who contacts you via email. Even though my travel blog hasn’t got many visitors outside my circle of friends, I do receive from time to time the odd email from a stranger asking me for advice on how to plan a round the world trip. The most frustrating moment was when this guy asked me ‘how did you manage to save for your trip?’, I answered with a link to a blog post where I kind of described how I did it, and he replied back ‘ok, I suppose I have to read all that stuff now…’
Well, now seriously, I hope I didn’t piss you off with my email the other day
Emanuele. No way, I didn’t get pissed off. The images were small enough, even for this crappy connection to handle and your email was like the model email for anyone who wants to get a concrete, specific answer to a concrete specific question.
Funny about the dude asking how to save.
Hey Mitchell,
Some great points in there but the one I appreciated the most is the fact that the industry is changing so quickly that many of us who have been in travel photography for years have no idea where we’re headed. Finding your own path and sources of income seems to be the order of the day. When I first started one’s career was in editorial magazine work with the occasional foray into commercial travel. I think those days are long gone as fees fail to rise and rights grabs become the order of the day. It’s great to see you breaking out of the box and forging your own path. I think that’s one of the greatest lessons you are teaching your readers by example – to think outside the box and follow your own path. Great work.
Thanks for the comment Paul. Thinking outside of the box is pretty important. There are people who do it much, much better than me and I’ve taken some things from some of them, but the point is that – no you can’t rely on the system of the past, or that perhaps it’s really not the best route for some. Hope to see you around here (on the blog) sometimes.
Mate I read every post! And while I don’t consider myself hugely nationalistic it’s still great to see another Aussie doing well in such a tough field. And your Seeing The Light eBook was really beautiful. I recommend it to everyone I know.
Hi Mitchell sir,
yes, I also mailed you two,three time and you also have to respond. On how we will know you are busy right now in your project. thanks for this post.
wow i m going to paris soon!
hours later!!!
i m so excited!!!
Great post Mitchell. Aspiring photographers should read some parts of your post twice because here is the truth and the real life of a travel photographer. I know what it is like. I could have written the same text but I haven’t
. Excellent. You did well.
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Great Photos……I like your blog. Please consider adding yourself as a follower to Travel Tales
Mtn do
Hi Mitchell,
this is one of the most “crystal clear” post I have read from whom I am following! no wonder this is a great guide to someone like me who are just struggling to decide to shoot flowers or culture!I take this as my inspiration milestone and shoot what I love to shoot ! thanks a lot
best rgds
Dinesh Hegde
Mitchell – You took the words right out of my mouth. Thank you. Now I can just send all those email queries I get asking the same questions to this post. But then, I guess they would never come back to my blog. I try to keep your blog a secret, otherwise I loose too many readers. Seriously, this advise is spot on. Well said.
Mitchell – this is good advice. I fully appreciate your honesty in this post, by telling the photographic community how it is rather than how some perceive it to be, you are doing us all (professionals/ wannabes/ enthusiasts ) a big favour.
And for the record I am not a pro just a passionate photographer with a lust for travel.
I fully embrace the concept of mutual support and ‘playing it forwards’ within the photographic community. It’s great that there are other photographers like yourself, who are kind enough to share ideas and offer advice.
But, what some people tend to forget, is that you are a working professional photographer who is self employed. Time is money, and the fact that you are giving of your time is taking money from your pocket.
So thank you Mitchell – and to others like you!
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Great honest post. Thank you Mitchell!
Hi Mitchell,
I stumbled upon this post as I google ‘starting over aspiring photography’
. I’ve been toying with the idea of being a travel photographer, “toying” being the operative word. As such I have taken time off from my corporate world to explore my love for travel, photography, and writing. Having had 6 months to do a whole lot of exploring, and take tonnes of photos, my wondering stop at “what’s next?”
I’m glad I arrived at this post. Your post is refreshingly honest. Some are points that I have heard before, but it’s always nice to be reminded that tenacity is what gets you where you want.
Thank you again, and I look forward to explore your blog.
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Hello Mitchell, a great read. I know exactly how you feel. In my line of work I get people asking how to do what I make my living doing and it is definitely annoying. Thanks for your honest answers and insight. I am just starting to look at your pics and read your blog. I really like your pics of people. Great expressions. Thank you for sharing.