Right? It is - I think we all sort of know this, whether in theory or through experience, but I thought I’d recount a couple of recent experiences which really drove this home for me:
In the last 18 years or so, as I’ve travelled the world in search of new and interesting images, I think I’ve worked with a truly vast array of guides, fixers and travel companies both local, regional and international. Now, this was a necessity - I chose to never use one of the many companies offering “travel photo tours” as I have always found them to be too superficial, mostly inflexible, extremely expensive and ultimately, geared for people looking to add ready-made images to their portfolios - and, to make things worse (for me anyway) they are usually “led” by another photographer who assumes, by definition, to know more than you do. Not falling into this category (and not having upwards of £7,000 for two weeks to spend), I have always gone it alone.
Now, this option generates churn - it happens. Sometimes you work with an awesome partner and build a relationship which will last for years, sometimes you miss and end up with a complete fraud who ruins your plans and, of course, the entire range between these two extremes. Also, we evolve - our requirements change, availabilities vary and a lot of the time you end up having to organise backups. Overall, through many trials and failures, I’ve gotten to the point when I can pretty much identify a consummate professional very quickly and, mostly, accurately.
But, first things first: what is a professional (at least when talking about travel guides)? Is it someone who does this full time and for who it is their sole source of income? Well, it is that, for sure, but that does not mean they are actually “true” professionals (this by the way is true for many professions) - as a matter of fact, in my experience, this is usually not the case. “Professionals” can more often than not be arrogant, inflexible, unwilling to listen, all “qualities” which not good travel companions make. Actually, most of the times I’ve had really successful trips it was with smaller operators who were passionate, interested, willing to invest time and energy to listen and understand and this is what, to me at least, is “true” professionalism.
Of course, this is not an argument around terminology and semantics - I’m not saying that all large organisations are useless and that you can only trust the small ones - not at all. I’m simply making the argument that neither size nor claims of professionalism is a guarantee for the latter.
Actual snapshot of me researching my last trip
But I digress. What I wanted to do here is to relate to you my recent experiences in planning an insanely complicated trip. Bit of really key background here: this was a trip I had organised back in 2019 in exhaustive details with one of the really large specialist operators out of the UK. With the help of a really good agent we planned what looked like an amazing trip for 2020 - and then Covid struck. Come 2023 and a new request appeared for images from that location and I tried to resurrect the trip. Easy, right? Well, it proved to be anything but.
Agent came back with: 50% of hotels were no longer operations, 80% of custom activities we no longer something they could (or be interested in) offer, no willingness - anymore - of accommodating my needs for flexibility in travel mode and, oh yeah, their prices had gone up by almost 25%! Obviously this made the previous trip (which, by the way, had taken me 2 months to organise) an impossibility - queue the Mission Impossible theme music.
Now, the timing for the trip was, admittedly, more than 10 months away BUT within 2 weeks airline fares went up by almost £100 (and kept going!) so, unless I wanted this trip to end up costing thousands of pounds for transport alone, I needed to start from scratch - and this is easier said than done.
Normally, I would search for a local company to help with at least some of this, but - and herein lies today’s post - despite promises, discussions, calls, meetings etc with some really large international companies claiming to specialise in that part of the world, the result was a big fat zero. Reaching out to some of the largest names in specialised travel led to itineraries vastly different from what I wanted, meaningless “substitutes” and, of course, truly exorbitant prices - I even got one asking for £1,500 per day per person for a specific part of the trip (plus costs). Funny story here: there was this one company who asked me for a non-refundable “deposit” of $2,000 just to look at my requirements. If their proposal ended up being garbage, my $2,000 would be gone. Amazing, ey?
My attempts to find local guides etc were also met with varying levels of success - the language difference is simply too insurmountable for a lot of them and there’s only so much help Google Translate can be. After all, when you cannot be 100% sure what it is you’re telling them, how can you be sure what they’re responding to? So, with very few notable exceptions, this was proving challenging to say the least and time was rapidly running out.
So, after a couple of months of failed attempts I decided that I would do something I hadn’t done for years: build everything myself, piecing together work from different independent contractors (each responsible for only one small piece of the puzzle), direct arrangements with my subjects and even companies I wanted to visit, with all the logistical nightmare and risk falling on my shoulders. And it was through this process that I discovered three things:
First, everything is infinitely easier in a more developed country - what I did in this destination would almost certainly never have been possible in most other countries, including some in Europe.
Second, true professionalism comes across from the very first interaction - it’s not just speed of responsiveness and clarity of communication, but also in treatment of the other person. This is important because it allows for a true cooperative relationship to develop
Finally, in more developed countries you can simply reach out directly to the people you want to work with and chances are you will get a response and sometimes, this can be 100 times better (both logistically as well as financially) - of course, finding the right contacts is not easy, but then again, few things worth their salt ever are
In the end, it took me just over a month to create what I know will be an absolutely amazing trip. It’s too early to give out details right now (so, watch this space), but please find some experiences below:
I have managed to organise a whole-day, inside-track shoot in a truly secretive and highly protective industry, including previously very restricted access. Very few photographers have ever had the chance to do this and, while it is not cheap (it’s probably one of the most expensive single shoots I have ever organised) I feel it’ll be completely worth it. It was organised by tracking down an expat who knew a local who was friends with someone within the industry - you get the idea - but all these private individuals worked on their spare time to make this happen.
I have tracked down (through an insane snooker of contacts) the last descendant of a really old family who will not only honour me with allowing me to photograph him, but he will also organise the shoot to happen inside an old location, normally closed to outsiders. Now, this wont be the first time someone has photographed that person, but we will do it completely different
I reached out to a massive conglomerate in what I felt was a futile attempt to contact someone in one of their smaller companies and gain access to their workshops, only to be contacted by a senior manager who, not only helped me navigate their massive hierarchy (actually he did it all for me), not only organised everything, down to the last detail, for me but will be present during the shoot to help me with translation and insight. Oh, and he got me in touch with their CEO who is now working with me in getting access to more industries.
Through Google Translate I was able to speak to the head of a religious order to gain access to a highly restricted location at a highly sensitive time, so I will be shooting inside a truly unique location.
Of course, not everything was a success:
I was completely unable to organise access to a specific workshop. Loads of other, similar ones, aimed at tourists, are available, but the one I wanted was going to be absolutely awesome (and I have not given up yet but I’m mentally preparing for a failure
due to costs, it was not possible to organise a very specific shoot. I could have settled for what is normally available to visitors (which is, by the way, what every single other company offered as an “alternative” and I’m sure there are photographers who would be insanely happy with this) but it just seemed “less”. What I was hoping for ended up costing $4,000 for 45’, so not something either me or my client could afford.
These are just the highlights of course, but as I’m putting the finishing touches on this entire plan, I cannot but be grateful for the kindness, sensitivity, professionalism and willingness of normal, every day people, either independently or as part of large organisations to help. It is humbling and has given me a new appreciation of the people of this world. And while I’ve been fortunate to be able to organise some of these things either cheaply or for free, it makes me think: these are the people who really deserve to be called “true” professionals in every sense of the word and they deserve to be compensated very well.
Just a final note: the trip, as it stands at the moment, it looks like it’s going to cost around £6,000 for two people, all included (with general allowances for food etc etc). The cheapest offer I got from any of the “professional” companies was £7,800 (excluding international flights) and the most expensive was - prepare for this - £23,500 for two people (including international flights). And none of these plans included exactly what I truly wanted - certainly not the way I have built it now.