How to Fund Your Adventures With Travel Photography

     Stockholm, Sweden's chic riverside capital, has to be one of my favorite places to visit as a photographer. Built on 14 islands connected by 57 bridges, each neighborhood possesses its own charm and distinct character.

Boulevard Strandvägen in Östermalm, Stockholm Sweden. 
Copyright © 2011 Marianne A. Campolongo. Buy a print here.

      Gamla Stan, Stockholm’s beautifully preserved old town, is a place out of time. Its charming streets and crooked alleys are filled with shops and cafes housed in pastel-colored buildings that shine in the summer sunshine. Despite several trips to Europe, it’s still hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that people actually live and work in buildings that have been standing for hundreds of years. At the Royal Palace, an impressive baroque fortress on the north of the island, I snapped some photos of the Royal Guard, resplendent in their bright-blue uniforms.

Bicycle on a cobblestone street in 
Gamla Stan. Copyright © 2011 
Marianne A. Campolongo. 
Buy a print here.

      

As I enjoyed the sights and sounds of the city, I brought my camera with me everywhere I went—knowing I could sell my pictures on stock websites such as Alamy later and fund future trips.

I love this view taken as we headed into Gamla Stan on a Hop On Hop Off boat on Lake Malaren. The trip was a boon for fine art photography. This photo has been exhibited three times now, most recently in a solo show in Armonk, New York in the summer of 2017, and in group shows in August 2016 at the Upstream Gallery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York and at the Yonkers Public Library Gallery in 2014.

Beautiful view of Gamla Stan seen across the blue water of Lake Malaren.  
Copyright © 2011 Marianne A. Campolongo.  Buy a print here.

     Part of my trip to Sweden included a four-day cruise through the Baltic Sea to Estonia and Russia. The trip began and ended cruising through the Stockholm Archipelago, a collection of about 20,000 islands and islets along the Swedish coast—lush and green and dotted with distinctive red, wooden vacation cottages. All along the islands’ coasts, sailboats, kayaks, and canoes were tied up to wooden docks, or sailing amid the breath-taking scenery. 

     Cruising along the Baltic Sea was a wonderful experience. Despite the white nights, the sun still rises each day in an incredible burst of color. When I first got up on deck to snap photos of the sunrise at 4:30 am on our last day, the sky was so light that I thought I was too late. Then I began to see color along the horizon. Soon the sky was ablaze with this intense orange. The colors changed over the next while. It was a truly dramatic sunrise. 

A stunning orange sunset in the Stockholm Archipelago. 
Copyright © 2011 Marianne A. Campolongo.  Buy a print here.

Östra Älgögrundet fyr ( lighthouse ) along the 
Swedish coast in the Stockholm Archipelago. 
Copyright © 2011 Marianne A. Campolongo.
Available to license at Adobe Stock

There were many lighthouses, my favorite photography subject, both on the islands or seemingly floating on their own in the middle of the Baltic Sea. The lighthouses looked impossibly tiny from the high deck of the cruise ship, until I saw the Vallersvik lighthouse perched near a two-story house and had a better sense of their true scale.  One way I sell the photos of these lighthouses is through fine art websites. Seeing the photo below on one of those sites, the daughter of the family who owns the cottage on the island with the Vallersvik lighthouse messaged me and invited me to call in for coffee and to dive off the deck of the lighthouse the next time I was in the area. 

The green and white striped Vallersvik lighthouse aka Vallersvik fyr, which I hope 
to visit one day. Copyright © 2011 Marianne A. Campolongo.  Buy a print here.

     The Stockholm Archipelago is dotted with lush islands and summer cottages. Returning to Sweden to stay on one of these islands has been on the top of my bucket list, even before I got that message.

       I have sold many images from my trip to Sweden, both as stock and fine art, with those from the Stockholm Archipelago being my best sellers. My most profitable photograph so far is a canvas print of moored boats, vacation cottages, and a gazebo reflected in the still waters of the Baltic Sea. This goes for $285** on a UK website that sells canvas prints of photographs. 

Cottages and pleasure boats Stockholm Archipelago on the Swedish coast. 
Copyright © 2011 Marianne A. Campolongo. Buy a print here

     Stockholm is the ideal place to visit for someone like me who loves being on the water and snapping photos. Next time, I plan to rent a cottage on one of the islands of the Stockholm Archipelago, and hope to drink a coffee on the deck of that lighthouse.

⇨ A NOTE ON BUYING PRINTS:

    Fine Art Prints of my work are available in many sizes and on various media to fit all types of budgets. The print sale mentioned in this article was for a medium-large print on canvas sold by Photo4Me, which sells my work throughout Europe and offers free UK shipping. (The British pound was worth considerably more when I made that sale, so the exchange rate worked in my favor.) The "buy now" link under the last photo takes you to my Photo4Me website - all the other "buy now" links take you to my US supplier, Fine Art America/pixels.com, which ships worldwide. Feel free to contact me through my website if you have any questions. Those emails end up in my priority box.  

  Author’s Note:  I am a frequent contributor to International Living where this article was first published. It is posted here with their permission, in a slightly updated version with additional photos. 

  COPYRIGHT NOTICE: All photographs in this article are Copyright © 2011 Marianne A. Campolongo and may not be downloaded, reproduced or otherwise used without first securing a license. You can find these images available to license via my Alamy portfolio, on Adobe Stock, and on my website www.mariannecampolongophotography.com 

Contact me through my website if you have any questions.  

Is This Travel Photography?

I'm often surprised at where my stock photos show up. A few years ago when my daughter was young, she wanted to attend the Show Biz Expo in Manhattan. I had just started experimenting with stock photography and had heard about Shutterstock's On the Red Carpet program, where they help you get a press pass to events in return for the exclusive right to license the images you take for two years.

Although I license many more commercial photos on shutterstock than editorial photos, I've done pretty well with editorial there - and have licensed photos from that shoot a total of 42 times. Two of the photos have ended up in books.

One, this photo of a line of actors queuing up for auditions, which I've licensed 29 times and which still sells regularly, ended up in a book on acting. No surprise there. 

Roxanne Martinez of Kaiser Back Institute performs ashiatsu massage.

So why am I writing about this in a travel blog? Does the Walt Disney Castle give you a hint? I discovered last night that another one, a photo of ashiatsu (foot) massage, is in the new 2012 Fodor's Guide to Walt Disney World (on page 121). 

It was an interesting sight at the Show Biz Expo so of course I took a picture. You never know how those unusual photos will be used - so they are worth taking.  
Check out My Shutterstock Gallery Here to see more  
(please use the orange gallery link if you're interested in buying or selling your photos- thanks!)
Here are the two books: 

    

Mapping The Places I've Been: You Should Try It!

Since this is a travel blog, or at least since it started out that way, it seemed like I ought to add this map that shows all the places I've visited (well over 200!) and a few I've pegged for future travel.

Glacier National Park, Montana

Burano, a beautiful island near Venice.

I found the interactive map on tripadvisor. com. It's a fun way to spend half an hour revisiting your favorite travel destinations. The interface takes you through places all over the world, and you can pin the spots you've visited. I'm not sure how the algorithm works. It started me out with some of the world's most celebrated travel destinations such as New York City and Paris, but each list that came up also had some small towns - like Niantic, Connecticut where my family has had a cottage since 1969. I had pinned over 200 places, yet San Francisco, CA, Vienna, Austria, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, and Oahu, Hawaii- some pretty major spots-still hadn't come up, but I was able to add them manually. So far, I've found 257 places in 14 countries that I've visited.

On the way to Paris

The map includes dozens of small towns-I counted at least 10 I'd been to on Cape Cod-as well as little lesser-know towns around the world, like several quaint spots I've traveled to in France. When I hit 250,  I hit "done" and added the biggies I'd missed, but I'm sure if I'd had more time I would have hit 300.

It's fun. You should try it.
(See the link below my map). And feel free to paste your map in the comments section - it'd be interesting to see where people have been.

Here's my map along with a list of my 20 favorite spots:

1. New York City, NY, USA
2. Venice, Italy
3. Paris, France
4. San Francisco, CA, USA
5. Antigua, Antigua and Barbuda
6. Glacier National Park, MT, USA
7. Yellowstone National Park, WY, USA
8. Grand Teton National Park, WY, USA
9. Edinburgh, UK
10. Newport, RI, USA
11. Mont-St-Michel, France
12. Florence, Italy
13. Oahu, HI, USA
14. Saint-Malo, France
15. Versailles, France
16. London, UK
17. Rome, Italy
18. Saint Augustine, FL, USA
19. Caen, France

• View my profile
• Create your own travel map or travel blog
• Great vacation rentals at TripAdvisor

Pitching Travel Articles & Photos to Magazines in the UK and the US (Print is not dead)

A Swedish pal from one of the photo forums that I subscribe to was asking about how to find English-language magazines for an article that she wrote about surfing in Ireland.  A fellow photographer wrote back with links to a book with markets in the UK. It's funny, I never think of pitching articles to other English-speaking countries and this got me to realize that such an effort makes sense, especially for travel articles and travel photographs.

For markets in the US, I have always counted on Writer's Market  (and Photographer's Market too). Both give you a year's subscription to an online database that keeps everything quite current. I usually buy them every few years for the guidelines and for setting out the different types of magazines. A quick online search will help insure the info is not outdated once the book is more than a year old. Call me old-fashioned, but  I like having a book that I can mark up and annotate. For me, print will never be dead.

It's interesting, the book that the UK Photographer/writer suggested, The Freelance Photographer's Market, is available for purchase at Amazon in the US (click on photo below) and in the UK. It has greeting card and calendar markets too. Here's the link to the same book on the Amazon UK site:
Freelance-Photographers-Market-on amazon UK
Or you can click on the photo below to link to the US site. 

The one bad review complained that it was all UK markets, but with the Internet today I'd think that's a real plus. In fact, it opens up a whole new world of markets for you.

So, if you want to search US markets, the books above are a safe bet. In the UK, I'd trust my Photo forum buddy. I'm going to give it a try soon and will report back on this site.  

The US books mentioned are also available on the UK site.

If you decide to purchase any of these books or even just want to take a look, please use one of these links.
Thanks.

Time Travel

Mississippi Bayou, 1939.  Photo by Marion Post Wolcott. Makes me think of Tom Sawyer & Huck Finn. All photos in this post were taken by photographers commissioned by the Farm Services Administration or the Office of War Information.

     Since this blog is about travel photography, I thought that traveling back in time to look at photos taken by photographers traveling across the US back in the 1930's and 40's to document rural America and the World War II effort throughout the US, certainly fit in with the blog's theme--and these are far superior to any I have to offer. 

     I love the old Black & White Photos by the FSA photographers--Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and Gordon Parks, who, among others, have inspired me since I first learned about the Farm Services Administration's photography project back in high school. I didn't realize that there was also a small treasure trove of color images such as those shown here.

Cincinnati, Ohio circa 1942. Photo by John Vachon.

A member of the Stock Imaging Forum--from Sweden (gotta love how the web makes the world so much smaller-thanks, Kathleen!)--just posted the link to an article on the Denver Post's Photo Blog and I felt that I just had to share it. All of the photos posted here are from the FSA or the Office of War Information and were commissioned by the Government, between 1939 and 1943. They are the property of the Library of Congress.

      The color in these images is wonderful, as is how well they capture America at that time. The quality of the transparencies is really great after all these years. I didn't realize that color film was that sophisticated back in the 1930's and 40's. 

 So Carolina. Photo by Alfred T. Palmer

Our government was really enlightened when it hired so many wonderful photographers to go out and document America during the Depression and World War II

Be sure to check out the rest (there are 69 shown full frame size-just a small sampling of the 1,600 color photos taken by the FSA/OWI during that era ) on The Denver Post's Plog Photo Blog
 
 Plog Photo Blog 
and even more from the Library of Congress (see link below)

Tennessee, 1943. Photo by Alfred T. Palmer.

I can't help wondering if this photo was the inspiration for that famous poster of "Rosie the Riveter" 


The detail in the photos is truly incredible. 


You can download full-resolution copies of these and the other FSA/OWI photos from the Library of Congress website: The Library of Congress  They have 1,600 color photos alone from this era. It's an amazing resource.

A Lawyer Who Makes His Living Selling Travel Stock Photos

Just read an article in microstock diaries about an Australian lawyer who gave up his law practice a few years ago to travel around the world shooting travel photographs - a dream for many. It was of particular interest as I left the practice of law here in the states some time ago to spend more time with my daughter, first working as a freelance writer and eventually as a freelance writer and photographer.

I'm not in a position to leave my family behind,  hit the road with my D700 and travel like Holger Mette but I found his story encouraging. The article says that in the last 6-12 months he's been able to fund travel costs of roughly $18,000/year with a portfolio of 2000 photos in microstock. (He also has an editorial portfolio at macrostock agency Alamy- I searched the site and as of today he has around 750 photos there).  It seems that 2000 photos online is the magic number at which returns per photo start to inch toward $1/month.

Alamy has traditionally been a good outlet for travel photographers--both for emerging photographers as well as seasoned pros. I found it interesting to note that the micros were working for travel too as they are often seen as an outlet for slick commercial images and lifestyle photos. Mette says that he plans his travel "around what I want to shoot and when... I try to avoid shooting what I think will sell rather than what I would like to creatively or editorially." Like many photographers, especially those who have left other jobs to follow their muse, he values the freedom that shooting stock photography gives him and does not expect his income from photography to replace what he made as an attorney.

What I found particularly encouraging is that he shoots what he wants and shoots travel rather than lifestyle and still gets a respectable return per image. In fact, it appears that his people photos (unreleased) end up on Alamy as RM editorial images, so his photos on the micros are mostly of places--again not exactly the type of photos that are supposed to do well on the micros, and yet apparently they do.

The stock photography market has been in a state of flux since well before I entered it in late 2008 and the general wisdom seems to be that you should have some photos in both camps--macro and micro--especially if you are new to the business. Mette's experience seems to bear that out. Something to think about. Here's a link to the article:

Lee Torrens' Article about Holger Mette

Photo Copyright © Marianne A. Campolongo.

Turn your vacation photos into fun and funky postcards

Continuing with the California theme this month, here are some of my vacation photos that I turned into fun and funky illustrations.