I’ll just let you introduce yourself – who are you? Where you currently live? And I know you’ve touched on varying genres so what you would label yourself as?

Okay, my name’s Jon Reid. I’m a travel photographer. It’s a difficult genre to define because travel photography can mean all sorts of things – I find myself shooting portraits, shooting architecture, shooting landscape. But basically, what I’ve come to realise shooting travel photography is that it’s a picture of something that defines a place. You could go take a photo of the sea and it’s a very pretty landscape, but it won’t work as a travel photo because it could be any coastline, anywhere in the world.

Then you throw in a defining feature and it’s still a pretty landscape picture but all of a sudden it’s telling you something about a place, and that’s what makes a travel photo.

You’re living in London now, yeah?

Yeah, sorry – forgot to mention that. It’s where most of my clients are based, [UK] and Australia. So I actually get paid in Australian dollars and live in the most expensive city in the world, which makes no sense, except that I’m progressively earning less.

[Laughing] South African originally?

Yeah, I actually moved to London to focus on photography professionally. When I moved here, whatever came my way I’d take but I quickly realised, and you’ll hear any photographer talk about what their passionate about, whatever they’re doing; I hear wedding photographers tell me how passionate they are about taking photos of weddings but if I said to them, “if you love weddings so much then go and shoot for free”, very few would do it, you know? But whenever I had a break I would travel and take photos and I realised that even if I didn’t get employed in that field, I would figure out a way to earn enough money some other way, so that I could still do ‘travel photography’.

I’ve spent time exploring [your website] Nomadic Vision, can you give us an insight into how it started? What it represents?

Yeah, I was branching between two forms of photography; travel photography and just sort of narrative portraits – but I found the reason I was doing that was through people saying “you can’t actually do travel photography as a career”. So I just launched nomadic vision as a website to develop some sort of online presence and a roadmap of where I’ve come from so I could always look back and see what I’m weak at and what I’m doing well, but as a personal project. Then I had a commercial photography site too but just found that every opportunity that came my way happened to come from my personal site. I eventually scrapped the commercial site and if you look through Nomadic Vision, it’s not overly commercial. Most of the work I put on there, I don’t list what clients it was for or anything like that – It’s just my interpretation of what I’ve seen.

You’ve briefly mentioned where you came from – have you always done photography, or did you study photography as a potential profession when you were younger?

I had a long term, long distance relationship that was quite serious and what I was doing was actually saving up for an engagement ring but the relationship didn’t end up working out. So I had all this money but didn’t know what to do with it so decided a camera would be a good idea. At that stage, what I was doing quite a lot of was; I had a friend that, do you know what a game ranger is? It’s basically someone that takes people on tours through nature parks.

Err, yep.

So he was a game ranger and knew a lot of places in the area. I come from quite a wild area so he would take me around, and I would see things that would amaze me. I come from a town that’s quite underrated and I would see things and wish that someone else could see them too. And when I got my camera, the point was just to try and show what I was seeing.

So is this outside Cape Town? Durban?

I’m from a town called East London.

Ha, I had actually read that. Ironic.

It’s a town that, back in apartheid days; they’d split South Africa up into white only areas and black only areas, or they actually segregated black people into separate groups. So right on the border of East London was a massive area, almost the size of England. What apartheid meant was that they put all the resources towards the white areas and didn’t send any resources to these designated areas. So as a byproduct, nothing happened – the area was called the Wild Coast because there were no hotels or any sort of development at all, and east London borders that. So it was great for photography, to get out into nature and that kind of thing. Sorry, you didn’t need to know that! [Laughing] basically I live next to a big nature area.

Before we delve into your travels, I’ve really enjoyed your ‘Year of London’ series - can you give us an insight into that?

Yeah. So with that, I was at the end of a long photographic year and pretty burnt out but on New Years Day I took a trip into London by myself. I had my camera with me but didn’t have a plan at all. It was quite empty and happened to be the most incredible light in the evening so I started taking photos of London. There was no brief or anything like that – I was just; I could go out, see something that I thought looked good and take a photo of it and found that despite being drained, the ability to do what I wanted to actually filled me with energy and I thought, ‘why have I never done this?’ I live in London, I’ve got a portfolio of all sorts of cities from around the world and hardly any photos of London and so I started this project in my spare time. But yeah, it was more from that.

So you were out shooting on Christmas morning last year? Was the little one confused as to where you were?

No, I’ve actually got pictures with him.

Oh, so he actually came?

Yeah, [laughing] he’s dressed in all sorts of layers; was so warmly dressed that he couldn’t move. We’d plop him on the floor and he was just, stuck there. I could drop one of those photos if you want!

Yeah, we’ll have to get you to forward those!

He’s ten months old, so he’ll look at the pictures and have a good laugh one day but I don’t think he’ll have any memory of it.

Alright, let’s get the obvious ones out of the way – favourite place? Least favourite place?

Yeah, I think I can do that – my least favourite place that I’ve been was probably Naples. It has incredible sites and is worth visiting but was so chaotic and just out of control when I was there and to use public transport to get around; if you think London buses are bad, Naples are just unbelievable. I know you’ve mentioned the Amalfi Coast?

Yeah, just thought it was interesting to find somewhere as chaotic as Naples an hour’s train ride down the coast from Sorrento, Positano, basically the most beautiful place in the world.

For that specific trip, I arrived sick and was sick all the way through the Amalfi Coast. I had to specifically photograph the Italian food but couldn’t even taste it! I think that obviously added to me not fully loving it [laughing]. I’ve actually been to some terrible places but not to cover them, just passing through. I’m trying to think; there’s a Spanish port that connects with Morocco, I got trapped there once during Easter where there wasn’t any car rental service. They had sold me the car rental, but when I got there they had shut down. That was a bad place! The Lonely Planet Guidebook said ‘there’s no reason to come to this place’. But in terms of places that I’ve actually worked, Naples is probably my least favourite.

And then favourite places to photograph – I love Italy in general, and Salzburg has probably been my favourite city but the place I’ve gone back to twice and will probably go back to in the future is Iceland. It’s a place that’s so quiet; you know that feeling when you walk into a library, it’s quiet and if you talk, you feel like you almost have to whisper, that’s what Iceland is like. It’s so bizarre; the scenery is like another planet. So it’s just completely different to anywhere I’ve ever been to.

Now you’ve almost answered this but, Murphy’s Law – Have there been times where you’ve come completely unstuck or something’s gone horribly wrong?

Umm, yeah almost every trip something’s happened [laughing]. Ironically, one of the skills of a travel photographer is problem solving. Once you’re in front of something beautiful, or something interesting it’s not difficult to take photos of it but often getting there on time and intact proves to be the most challenging aspect of it. That specific trip that I told you about in Spain, I flew into the English point of Spain, one little English town and you cross into the Spanish border. You don’t know what it’s called?

Err?

A bunch of monkeys, a big rock?

Gibraltar?

Yeah, Gibraltar! So I went to Gibraltar and that was all good, crossed the border and took a bus to the place I was supposed to pick up the rental but when we got there the whole town was shut down, you couldn’t even book a hotel. We worked out we weren’t going to be able to get our car so went to the bus station but the next bus was close to 9:00pm. This was about twelve o’clock so we had to wait nine hours and there was nothing to do! No food or anything in the bus station. So we eventually got in the bus and it was going to be around a three hour journey to where we were going but wasn’t a bus that read out the destinations as it got there, they just expected you to know when you needed to get out. We realised just as the bus left our stop that we should’ve gotten out so the driver stopped for us in the middle of the road. Just dropped us in the middle of some Spanish road and we walked along in the dark until we reached a petrol station and they called a cab for us. The cab took us to our hotel, so we were sorted then. But that was just the start of the trip! The end of the trip we were in Barcelona – we checked out of the hotel and they said to us “are you sure you want to check out?” so we said “yeah, definitely”, and checked out, went to the train station, saw a massive queue, asked what was going on and were told “oh, haven’t you heard – there’s an ash cloud so no planes are taking off”. Our flight was cancelled; the next train was in three days time, that we could catch. So we had to travel over ground from Barcelona to London.

I remember being in Bali around the same time – the flights leading up to ours had all been cancelled but it was finally clear to takeoff the morning we flew back into Australia.

Yeah, you are fortunate!

I don’t know if you travel like me, but you spend all your money whilst travelling. To the last cent, so if something goes wrong there’s nothing really you can do.

One thing I love about your photography is that you tend to immerse yourself in the experience and create more of a narrative than other travel photographers – Spanish Bull Run in Vejer? Surfing Queensbury Bay in South Africa? Trekking to the top of Pulpit Rock in the Norwegian Fjords? Any of those you can elaborate on?

Man, every one feels incredible – it’s hard to pin point one day. I’m not naturally a hiker. I’m someone who enjoys outdoors but not necessarily climbing mountains but that hike to Pulpit Rock in Norway was probably the best thing I’ve ever done. It was in autumn and I don’t know if you’ve been to Norway before?

Spent time in Oslo and managed to get up to Bergen but was the wrong time of year and expeditions through the Fjords had finished.

We were there at the same sort of time as you were where everything was shut down so during that hike up to Pulpit Rock and back down we saw about two or three other people. If you go there in summer you can barely find a free place on the rock. So it was really quite cool to experience that.

Has anything ever been too gnarly for you to attempt?

The Bull Run that you saw! I knew I was going to do the run but leading up to it I was pretty nervous – that was probably; it doesn’t seem very scary but it’s not like the one in Pamplona where you almost know what to expect. I didn’t know what was coming, that was just an unknown Spanish town so I thought ‘maybe this could be a little more sketchy than usual’. It turned out the bull that came down the road was completely docile and barely charged through [laughing]; it wasn’t interested in mauling anyone, and was just one bull! Was quite anticlimactic.

But yeah, we’ve been in situations in Morocco where it was flooding, people were actually drowning as we were touring around. In Marrakesh, one of the nights it was flooding and they put these temporary tents up in the square for people to eat under. We were eating and you could see all the electric points exposed and that kind of thing. We were actually more concerned about the food, but whilst we were eating this whole structure blew over and with all the electric wires flying through the air.

In Thailand I rode an elephant that just had a mind of it’s own. As we were riding it we realised that you take for granted that tours are regulated and under some sort of control, and realised that the guide had absolutely no idea how to control it so it was just doing it’s own thing. When I got off I felt like I needed to kiss the ground. You realise how small and insignificant you are when you’re on top of something like that.

You tend to see more and more people heading to these incredible place but spending all this time taking it in through the lens of their camera or iPhone – Do you balance photographing what you see while also taking in the experience? Is that a conscious process, or?

No, I don’t. I go on a lot of self-funded trips where the purpose is to find a market for the photos after the trip and for those I make a point of actually enjoying the trip. But on the ones I get sent to for clients I feel like I see the world through my camera, I barely take a chance to look up and just appreciate certain things. I remember being in Spain and walking around on the beach, feeling miserable. I had this massive, long lens on my camera and my tripod. It was so hot that I could barely touch the tripod, and all the tourists and people on the beach were looking at me as this weird creepy guy with the long lens on the beach. I was feeling completely miserable but then realised – ‘I’m in Spain, I’m on the beach, the sun is hot, this is brilliant, this is what people pay to do’. So I have to remind myself to enjoy it.

I really wasn’t expecting that. The women are generally open to getting their kit off on the Spanish beaches though, right?

[Laughing] Quite seriously though, I’m not actually allowed to get any nudity in shots and on the Spanish beaches it was just so difficult. You know a long lens will compress a whole crowd into; you could see hundreds of people in the shot and there’s no way that I’m going to be able to spot if there is nudity in that! The other thing they don’t allow is children so I can’t get any nudity or children. Perfectly safe really.

For those interested in the kit/tech side of things – have you got a preferred camera to shoot with, or any other equipment that you couldn’t travel without?

Yeah, so most of my work is done for Expedia and they actually found me by searching for ‘travel photographer’ and ‘Canon 5D Mark II’ – at the time that was the only SLR that was shooting video so they found me based on the camera that I used. Now I use the Canon 5D Mark III and it’s crucial for the work that I do because for every photo, I take a ten second video clip. I actually just added to my website today, a section called ‘Film’ so you can actually see the whole trip has been put together by Expedia, I’ve just provided them with the footage. So I travel with that, and I find a wide angled lens to be crucial because with the kind of work that I do, getting that whole shaky camera look wont work so I have to keep it as steady as possible which means I’m mostly on a tripod. But then if I’m not, like if I’m hand held, a wide angled lens just blocks out all that movement. Then I also use a slider on top of my tripod; using a wide angled lens, it just enhances that movement. So yeah, wide angled lens, crucial! A shift and tilt lens is crucial for me too because with photos its easy enough to fix distortion in Photoshop but a lot more difficult with video. Everything that I do for video means I try and get it as close to perfect as possible because it’s a lot more difficult to do the edit.

Ummm, and then secondly [laughing], I always take two pairs of really good running shoes, and they have to be different from each other! If you wear the same pair of shoes twice in a row, it hurts the next day because your foot gets used to the shoe. So changing it somehow helps, so I just change between each day and it solves that problem.

Jon’s secrets!

I cover about 15-20km a day on foot with a 20kg backpack so that’s why it’s a crucial bit of kit for me.

Alright, let’s wrap things up – You’ve mentioned Expedia, are you able to intro your upcoming trip through South America? What we can expect? What you can expect?

Yeah, okay – so Expedia are doing a destination guide around the world and basically, it’s to provide people who are using their website more information about where they’re going. So if you could imagine a guidebook condensed into about a five-minute film focusing on the main attractions in the area. So I’ll be going around South America to the main tourist attractions and covering it from that point of view. I get sent to a lot of places but then they also give me the flexibility to discover things, so it’s about a 60-40 split between what I discover and what they send me there to do. But yeah, a lot of what I cover is a fixed tourist point like if I was going to Paris, it would be the Eiffel tower but then, I also want to try and tell a story about the culture and food and that sort of thing so I’ll make a point of experiencing all that too and then beyond that, I never know. Most of the trips that I’ve been on; they don’t end up as guides, they’ll just end up as a web gallery showing what you can expect to see so I don’t actually know if something’s going to get produced as a video guide or not but I shoot everything as if it’s going to be. So In South America I’m going to seven different countries, I’ll work about 10-12 hour days every day and for 50 days in a row. I’m actually taking a massive gamble on flying from Santiago in Chile to La Paz in Bolivia because the altitude goes from 800m to about 4500m and people suffer altitude sickness in La Paz so there are oxygen bars where you basically go and pay to suck on oxygen for the whole time you’re there. I’m taking for granted that I’m not going to get that because I’m giving myself no recovery time at all, so that’s going to be quite interesting.

…...

Thanks man, really enjoyed that – as a conversation not just an interview.

Thanks man. Yeah, I’m happy to talk about that sort of thing. Generally I don’t have an outlet where I can just mention what I do, that’s one of the most frustrating things about being a travel photographer. When you travel with someone it’s a shared experience but when you’re travelling solo, you still have these great experiences but because there’s no one there to share it with you sometimes feel like it doesn’t really happen. So I keep making mental notes of places that I want to go back to just to enjoy.

www.nomadicvision.com