When starting a travel blogger, you do not always have the budget to fly as many times as you wish. Using your personal trips could be a way to save time and money while creating a lot of content. But I advise you apply the below four rules with your family and friends :
Planning the trips
As you probably noticed, I like planning my work. I highly recommend it as it gives you some kind of structure for your trip. In your schedule, make sure you identify what are the activities that are professional and which one are personal.
The best is to plan ahead where you are going to shoot and show it to family and friends so they can tell you if they still wish to come with you or not. This is very important because they are not working for you so they can quickly feel overwhelmed if you keep asking them to help you take shots or if you cannot have a chat with them as you are shooting, which takes us to my next point.
Communicating the rules
By telling them in advance how it works, they are prepared. You have to explain to your family and friends what your shooting routine is so they can decide if they can cope with it or not. I went to Nice with three of my friends and I was the only one using this trip for my content. What I did when they agreed to go out with me was to try not shoot for more than 5 minutes continuously (almost the same length as when you visit the ladies ! ) I realized this was harder when the food came out and they were hungry because i would ask them to wait for me to take pictures before they could dive in, so frustrating !
The same way goes on activities that were not part of your scope but which you suddenly feel like shooting because sometyhing interesting happened. You have to make it even quicker and shorter, literally 3 pictures, and ideally with your phone.
Pacing the rythm
Anticipating some solo time
Try as much as you can to plan shoots when your family and friends are unavailable like early in the morning or one hour beforethey join you on a restaurant booking. This is what I did in Nice when I went to rosewood alone and had much more time to shoot and style my pictures. I had left in the morning when my firends were still sleeping.
To be honest this is m favourite option as I get the freedom of expressing myself as I want, I do’nt bother them, and I don’t have any time constraints. The same goes restaurant guests, they are trying to have a peaceful moment, so seeing a photographer doing her gymnastics around them is the last thing they need ! If you come early enough chances are the place would be empty so you can take nice decor shots !
Of course, this would no longer be a problem once you are a successful travel foodie blogger and you don’t need to be able on a budget !
One Response