Is travel photography supposed to be fun?

I got back from Washington D.C. last Wednesday. I haven't blogged about it since then because I've been too tired. For that matter, I had plans to shoot some travel photography videos during the trip but I was too tired for that as well.

Several people have asked me if I had a good time. I know they mean well and it's a usual thing to ask, so I say, "yes". The truth is I didn't, nor did I mean to. For me there is a difference between a trip meant for fun and a work trip. I take some trips as vacations (though I'm always shooting during them anyway), but for a dedicated travel photography trip there is rarely any fun involved, especially with business money backing it and knowing I must perform to recoup it. There is just nothing about it that is fun really with the sole exception of when everything comes together and you can create some great photographs. That euphoria lasts until the next shutter click and then it's over.

In D.C. I walked almost everywhere. In fact, I think I walked more than on any other trip I've every taken, and if you were to know some of the things I've done before to get a photograph you would know that's not a goal to aspire to. I shot from sunrise to sunset every day. Most days I took a Subway sandwich back to the hotel for lunch and took a shower while my memory cards were transferring then it was back to it. Most nights I was in bed at 11 with memory cards or backups still transferring.

It was HOT in D.C. for those days. Luckily, I had great weather other than that though. It only rained the morning of the day I flew home, and I think I used it to my advantage during my shooting that morning.

A couple of days into it my travel injuries came back like they always do. My right calf hurt for several days. The middle toes on my left foot are still very sore. I couldn't move them for several days. The longer I walked on them each day the more the pain went away. Then there's the pain in my left ankle that first appeared after my kamikaze photo walk all the way around San Francisco, across the Golden Gate, through Sausalito, and back up the San Francisco hills to my hotel. That was several years ago. It comes back like travel's version of Santa Clause, just without the shiny bows.

I got some great material though, including some of a particular subject one of my editors had pointed out for me. It's really not covered by any of the major stock houses, and I'm hopeful that those images will pay for the trip themselves and sales from the rest will be profit. It's impossible to say though. The truth is it's entirely random. Of course, that's never mentioned in the photo books but it's reality. You create the very best pictures you can, but the reality has been for me that my best pictures by any aesthetic or technical standards rarely produce well. More often it's the totally unexpected or run-of-the-mill shots.

Out of all of pictures on my first trip to D.C., when I was an aspiring pro but still very much an amateur, I took one shot that has been licensed more times than any other during my still young career. I doubt it has produced more in total revenue, but it certainly has been licensed more times. There's nothing wrong with the shot, but if you were to ask me to assemble my top 1,000 photos I've every taken, irrespective of financial gain, that shot would not come close to making the list. I tried going back on this trip and making the same shot. I hoped to update it to a digital version from the original scanned 35mm transparency. It wasn't there. I thought about going back and trying again the next day, but why? Whatever magic that particular frame had has already come and gone as far, at least with me behind the lens.

I don't mean to give the impression though that traveling to D.C. for a few days as an American photographer is much of a hardship. It certainly isn't, not when you're in your own country. I don't believe your senses are quite as awakened either. Working in another country is always harder but more exciting as well.

I was reading Joe Morahan describe a photo safari trip to Africa in Rangefinder magazine today. I've never really known if all travel photographers work as hard as I do, or if I was just being stupid. I felt a lot parallels in Joe's statements though:

A photographer's day begins long before snrise and ends well after sunset. To paraphrase the old Irish proverb, "You can sleep when you're dead." Well, I was close; I was dead on my feet. But the beauty of Africa defies description.

The trip was an opportunity of a lifetime. The costs are high, and Africa's fragile political landscape is constantly changing, rarely for the better. As a result, there is no time to waste. Shoot, shoot, shoot--plan the shoot, shoot the plan. When not shooting, I was ready to shoot--you just never know what you will see next in Africa.

...How long does it take to cull, edit and prepare a month's work? A long time if you have 22,000 pictures to review. But what a trip it must have been for those relaxed campers. I now see in print what they were viewing live and I hope I captured the essence of the safari experience

A few days in D.C. is no comparison with a month in Africa of course. I identify with him though, especially the strenuous days and the feeling of not really experiencing any of a trip until you are back home. And with editing, it took me a year-and-a-half to edit my last trip to Europe and that trip was my honeymoon! I guess when you spend more time touching your camera on your honeymoon than your wife you are either mentally unstable, have an incredibly understanding wife, or... maybe both.

I shot a few thousand images during my short D.C. trip. With each day I shot more and more on "Continuous High" mode on my Nikon DSLR, otherwise known as "machine gun" mode. Just trying to guarantee I got the shot I wanted, often stretching what is possible when hand-holding a camera. Culling through my images this weekend I found that I shot 4 panoramics of exactly the same scene, each about 12 shots each. In all, I shot nine panoramics at that same location plus medium, wide, and telephoto shots all within a matter of a few minutes. I don't even remember all of it. I knew I shot a panoramic or two, but nine? In retrospect, I know what I was thinking. I will shoot panoramics on a tripod around home but when traveling I often shoot them handheld. If you don't pause completely between each shot you'll have one or more frames blurred, screwing up the whole pan in the process. I've done this often. So, if it's worth shooting once why not shoot it four times? Over the years this has been one of the hardest lessons for me to learn really. In short, "Shoot it to death and ask questions later."

Looking back through all the pictures it's like I'm just know seeing them, where I'm not rushed and can study them. As I edit through the images, with each great shot I breathe a sigh of relief, but it's really all the missed shots and missed opportunities that I spend any mental cycles on. The shots that I got I don't really care about. Instead I think about the locations I didn't get to, when I should have gone to the trouble of hauling around a tripod but didn't, or when I should have hauled around my 70-200 2.8 but didn't, or when I should have gotten closer or gotten lower or held the freakin' camera more steady.

Most of all, I think about the next trip, and how I'll plan and shoot it all so much better the next time. As a travel photographer I think that is where the fun comes in--anticipating the next trip.