As a millennial, I am the last generation that grew up in the "live your dreams" era of America. We were taught that if we went to college and worked hard, we could be anything we wanted. I believed what I was told, did the work, and skipped my way down that path. In August 2008, I turned 21, graduated with a shiny new degree in fashion photography, and moved from my California home to New York City. I had completed all the steps and was pursuing the career I'd been working towards since I was 14. It was finally my time!

Immediately after graduation, I packed up my portfolio and arrived in New York. But a couple months later, news of the Great Recession was everywhere, and it felt like everything I was working for was crashing down. Even in the best of times, photography has never been an easy field to get into, but as I tried to set out on a career, magazines were closing all around me, print media was struggling, and the whole industry appeared to be falling apart at the seams. I had reached the end of my plan, but soon realized I needed many more steps.

Through school, I was told that the best way to break into commercial photography was to start as a photo assistant. What I was not told was that photo assistants are almost exclusively male, and it took awhile to realize that path was not going to work for me. While some aspects of photo assisting are physical, it was nothing that I couldn’t do. However, as a young woman, no one would hire me. This has still not changed, and I have continued to almost always be the only woman on the photo team.

I started looking elsewhere, and finally found a full-time job as an office manager for a photo agency, which illuminated the changes in the world around me: budgets were getting slashed, layoffs were abundant, everyone who was already established in the industry was clamoring to keep the jobs they had, and no one was moving up.

A year later, I was laid off too, and prospects felt even worse. I only got a response for one out of every 30 resumes sent. I once spent a week picking out an outfit for a dream job interview at a fashion magazine. I sat in the lobby for two hours waiting, and the interview lasted barely three minutes. I cried the entire subway ride home. I considered leaving New York altogether; I kept thinking, at what point do I just call it? This is supposed to be the time of my life, but I was miserable, lost, and alone.

Finally, I landed a job as a studio manager for a commercial photographer, and it was that job that taught me how to run a business. I started with an incredibly low salary, but I didn’t care - I was so happy to just get a job. I got a raise, and then another, and eventually started making over $50,000 for the first time. I was so used to stretching my dollars for so many years, that feeling OK spending anything at all was a difficult change. However, soon after starting, I had to accept the hard realization that shooting fashion was no longer my ultimate goal, even after spending so long working toward it. I stopped shooting altogether for a year or two, and focused on enjoying life, and my career in production.

Before long, I started dating Brandon, my now husband. Neither of us had traveled much before, but from the beginning of our relationship, traveling was at the center of it. One of our first dates was a road trip up to Big Sur, despite barely knowing each other. I had previously only traveled on school or family trips, and the idea of being able to just book a flight was so foreign to me, but Brandon and I started taking every chance we could to travel somewhere new. From the beginning, we always took photos together, and traveling and shooting became a big part of our lives — without thinking that it would be something we could ever monetize.

Traveling began filling me with passion again, and we started shooting more and more. We had both always been interested in film, but knew absolutely nothing about what went into creating videos. In the spring of 2015, we went to Hawaii and haphazardly filmed our first travel video together on my old photo camera and a phone. The process got us both hooked. We bought new cameras, we learned about stabilizers and frame rates and drones, and we spent our entire summer filming everything we could. Brandon was working in finance but hated what he was doing, and despite being well-established and making good salaries, we both felt like our careers were going nowhere. We realized we were working just to afford travel, booking our flights almost a year in advance. So we decided to make a change.

That June, we sat out at the Brooklyn waterfront, sipping wine out of plastic cups, and mutually decided to travel full-time and see if we could somehow make it sustainable through creating photo and video. We gave ourselves a full year to learn, plan, build a website, and formally form a company as Away Lands. We started saving as much money as we could, and set a goal to save up $25,000 between the two of us. We had previously booked a trip to Thailand and Bali, but with our new plan we decided to utilize our upcoming trip to create our first real video. That video was posted in March 2016, and we were immediately hired to shoot a tourism commercial in Vermont. We couldn’t believe that our plans were starting to work!

It was at this time that I started focusing on Instagram as well, and I had no idea how many opportunities that would open up for us. I had dabbled in blogs and social networks and building followings on early internet sites since basically the dawn of time, but I never set out to be an influencer. I always loved creating, and as my following and Brandon’s following started to grow, we embraced it for the opportunities Instagram began bringing us.

We moved out of our New York City apartment in September 2016 and took off for two and a half months across Southeast Asia. I emailed thousands of hotels and asked if we could make videos for them for free, as a way to sustain our travel and build a portfolio, and enough of them agreed. We came home just before Christmas, and started getting (very low, at first) paying projects by January.

In the nine years since we’ve left New York, we have travelled to over 50 countries - from Greece and Italy to Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, and South Africa to Fiji and the Maldives. We’ve gone from filming just the two of us on my old camera to building out a real cinema rig, and now sometimes directing on sets with 50 or more people.

A lot of commercial photographers scoff at social media, and hate the changes the industry has made. Yes, a lot has changed, but I am proud to be a part of this new media world. It is no longer the boys club I tried to enter in 2008; social media is often female-dominated and led in a way that photography never has been before.

We had no idea what was going to happen when we left New York, but I don’t think either Brandon or myself dared to visualize what being successful would look like. Making money the first year or two was very slow, and took an incredible amount of work, but we have now surpassed the salaries we made in our previous lives. I graduated from college and entered the workforce at a time when the whole country was in financial turmoil, and tried to make my way in an industry that was in a free fall. Now, I feel like I created my own dream job. Not only do I get to create my own shoots, but I have the chance to appear on-camera in them and still have creative control. And then to make a living while doing everything I've ever loved? It’s a dream I never thought could be possible.

Focusing On The Type and Quality of Work Above All

The photography space is saturated, with the improvement and accessibility in digital cameras and the massive rise of social media, it is easier than ever for everyone to call themselves a photographer, but in the end it is the work always stands out. 

I always loved shooting people, but I never wanted to shoot weddings, events or newborns in baskets and close to 20% of photographers specialize in portrait photography. My long-standing love of fashion photography and art movies combined with my passion for travel creating a specific niche despite the breadth of our work - lifestyle travel photography with a cinematic lean. With a forever goal of photos that look like movie stills, with movement and natural motion and an authentic but curated reality. 

The right clients started finding us: hotels, tourism boards, lifestyle brands; people who didn’t just want a photographer, but wanted a full visual story.

Building a Brand That Actually Worked

Before we ever landed a client, I treated our business like a brand - according to studies "a business plan increases the chances of growth by 30%."

1. We launched a polished website - photography and film portfolio first, with a blog that continues to grow (Hi!!)
2. We filed business paperwork - before we made a single dollar, we set up an LLC and a business bank account. This was the smartest decision we ever could have made, and setting this up so early made a huge difference in buying our house in LA years later
3. We continued to build a portfolio - all of our first trips were 100% financed by ourselves, and whenever we had breaks in projects we booked travel to places like Oman, South Africa, and Bora Bora to continue to build out our portfolio and experience.
4. We built an Instagram with intent - social media has CHANGED since 2016, but focusing on the quality and originality of work will always be successful in the end. 
5. We prioritized storytelling - both visually and in words. The more honest we were, the more people connected.

Diversifying Your Income - The Secret to Stability

Photography or social media alone won’t always pay the bills, and relying entirely on client work puts your business at risk every time a contract falls through or something like Covid hits unexpectedly. 

So we built a business with layers:

• Client shoots - photo and video work for hotels, tourism boards, brands - these are everything from full production commercials with 100 people on set to projects where it is just the two of us going out on our own, shooting and being on camera, and doing everything in between
• Photography and video licensing - especially travel footage and drone work, or editing existing work into new campaigns
• Affiliate marketing - one viral Tiktok can make a shocking amount of money if people want what you have linked to
• Blog advertising - a well SEO optimized blog can earn money for years and years after you've put the work into it
• Sponsored content - social media ebbs and flows massively, and while sometimes being #sponsored can be incredibly lucrative, if often cannot.
• Digital products and courses - over the years I've launched presets, a Photoshop course, digital prints, and other ideas to varying success
• Modeling and on-camera work - my childhood self would be so proud. After years and years of experience on camera, we found ourselves getting hired sometimes just as talent - we're even on billboards in LAX and JFK! 

Investing in Gear - With Intention

You don’t need to constantly buy the newest or most expensive camera or drone (and there is always a new one coming, just look at DrDrone.ca) for the ever-changing line-up, but the idea that "it isn't the gear, it's the photographer" is a fallacy. Gear isn't everything, but it is also very important - you do need gear equipment that lets you execute your creative vision and continue to expand your skills and ability. 

In the beginning, I rented lenses. Bought secondhand. Waited for sales. But I also made a list of what mattered most to me: low-light capability, portability, and gear that could survive being crammed into a backpack on a tuk tuk in Vietnam. I upgraded slowly - camera bodies first, then lenses, then drone, then audio. Every piece of equipment had to pay for itself within six months.

Now we shoot on Canon mirrorless camera, DJI drones, Sigma Art lenses, and a collection of tripods, gimbals, and filters that have been fine-tuned for how we travel and what we shoot. Gear matters - not for ego, but for efficiency. The right tools don’t just make better images - they make the whole workflow smoother, faster, and more successful

Constant Improvement Is Non-Negotiable

Photography is a craft. You don’t just learn it once.

I’ve spent hundreds of hours on Skillshare, YouTube, Masterclass, and 3 a.m. Reddit threads. I’ve watched tutorials on gear I don’t even own yet. I’ve reshot the same location ten times just to try new angles.

I test new techniques when the stakes are low, so I’m ready when it counts. I take risks with lighting and movement. I ask for feedback, even when I know it might sting.

If you’re not evolving, you’re falling behind.

Building Trust with Clients

Clients hire people, not gear, and repeat clients are the core of almost every successful business. Marketing yourself, making a connection, bidding on a project, producing a shoot, and everything that goes to getting a new client feels never ending - but finding clients that trust you to deliver on the work, and that you trust to work with, makes a life of freelance functional. Responding to inquiries is paramount: 46% of customers expect a response within four hours

When I worked on photo sets in New York and was responsible for hiring all freelancers, choosing who to hire came down to essentially: who is good at the job we need them to do and who do we want to hang out with all day, or all week, or travel with for an extended period of time. 

Not only do you need to consistently deliver the work and keep clients happy with the final product, you need to be good to work with. Life might not be a popularity contest - but running a business most often is. 

Word-of-Mouth Is Everything

It is not a secret that most jobs are made through connections, people are rarely reaching out to hire your blind. Your information is passed on from one agency to another, from one side of a large company to another area, from a friend to a friend. 

Even with how big social media feels, the photography and media industries as a whole feel incredibly small - someone knows someone who knows everyone. A bad experience can travel through stories and come back to you for the worse. Treat every job like everyone you know will hear about it. 

• Respond to queries and be easy to get ahold of
• Follow deadlines as much as humanly possible
• Treat people kindly and with respect, from the lowest assistant to the highest CEO
• Deliver high-quality work - consistently
• And just be someone people want to be around

Reading Contracts and Pricing Like a Business

With social media having no entry requirements and skewing towards a young workforce, corporations can take advantage of the inexperience and put clauses into contacts that are exploitative, overreaching, and have no business being there, and they bank on people not reading or understanding them. A default contract full of legalese will often include unlimited usage in perpetuity, ownership of work, and a removal of the chance to re-license or be properly compensated for the usage of your work. 

Sometimes when you point these things out, they will immediately remove them all - but how many people will just sign a contract without even reading it? It's exactly what the legal department of a large corporation wants you to do. 

Understanding what you should be charging and negotiating for makes all the difference. 

Passion Needs to be the Catalyst

At 4, I took my first acting class. At 10, I signed with an agent and was going on auditions (I didn't have parents who could do it full time so this pursuit didn't last long.) At 11, I started learning to code and how to build a website. At 14, I saved up for a year to buy my first digital camera. At 15, I took a film photography class at the community college and a Photoshop class at my high school. I was lucky that combining my lifelong loves into one business was a possibility, but it wasn't luck that made me pursue it, it was drive and passion. I have said for the past 1o years that "I feel like I created my own dream job", and that still feels true. 

Especially in the rise of travel blogger Instagram in 2016-2020, I saw so many people who just wanted the idea of the lifestyle, without a driving vision or passion for the creative that goes into it. Accounts built followings, but so much felt like "paint by the numbers" of getting the same shots in the same places with the same ideas. 

And there will always be more skilled, more creative, more innovative, more skilled, and just better photographers than me, I am constantly blown away by the work that other people do, but 20 years later, photography is still what I want to do at every turn. When we travel on our own, I always have my camera and will get up before dawn to get the photos I want, even when there are no obligations. When I'm home, I still love putting on an audiobook, going through past shoots, and editing for hours. 

And that is the core of what has led to being able to live 10 years of this crazy, incredibly, stressful, exhilarating, wildest-dream-living, nonstop, beautiful life.