S7 E75: Q&A Part 1: The Craft (Re-Release)

Get the show’s transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:28.3] YD: Welcome to the Travel Media Lab Podcast. I’m your host, Yulia Denisyuk, an award-winning travel photographer and writer, entrepreneur, community builder, and a firm believer that every one of us can go after the stories we’ve always wanted to tell with the right support, encouragement, and structure. 

I’m on a mission to help women storytellers everywhere break into and thrive in the travel media space. If you’re ready to ditch your fears to the side, grow your knowledge and confidence, and publish your travel stories, you’re in the right place. Let’s go.

If you are a newer listener to our podcast, you might not have had the chance to work through our whole library yet. Over the last seven seasons, and by the way, I can believe that we've being at it for seven seasons already. We've recorded a variety of interviews and in-depth episodes on a range of topics in travel media, and that's why over the next few weeks I wanna share with you three very special episodes from our extensive archive.

In this episode, we're going to do something interesting. Over the years of being in this career, I've received so many questions about the various aspects of being a travel journalist, photographer, and writer. So I decided to share some of these questions, and of course, my answers with you on the podcast.

In this first part you're about to hear, I'm going to address questions on the craft of being a travel journalist.  And in the second part, which we'll share next time, we'll discuss questions on the business of being a travel journalist. These questions have come in from all sides of our community, from the people who follow me or the Travel Media Lab handle on Instagram, the attendees of the various workshops and events that I've done, and of course our very own Travel Media Lab community members such as our past program students and our current Circle members.

If you enjoy today's episode, if you've wondered about these questions yourself, then chances are you'll want to attend our upcoming info session for my Travel Journalism program. We're reopening enrollment for this program, uh, which is called Intro to Travel Journalism very soon.  During the six-month program, students have access to our amazing support inside the Circle membership, so for the people who will be joining our program this fall, they will get to experience really the best of both, the foundation of travel journalism knowledge that I give in the program, plus the ongoing support inside our membership for them to actually apply all of it because it's not enough to know, you have to actually apply it.

And I always talk about that.  And most importantly, stick to it, right? And they'll have that support for a whole six months. So that's a really great way to, to get your footing, um, in the industry. 

I will be holding a free info session about this program on Friday,  November 18th at 11:00 AM Eastern time and there will be a link in the show notes to, to sign up for the info session. So if getting your stories published and travel publications is something you dream about, if you wanna work with tourism boards, if you want to create some of these stories that you're really passionate about,  don't wait. Visit travelmedialab.com/infosession to register today for a free info session and see if the program that I'm about to start enrolling for is right for you. All right, now onto this episode. 

[DISCUSSION]

[0:03:32.5] YD: I am so excited to dig into this very experimental way to record and share these episodes with you, so thank you so much for listening today. The format for this episode on the craft of being a travel journalist and the following one on the business side of it, will be the same.

We have 10 questions that people from our community have submitted to me or have asked me over the years and I’m going to answer each of these questions one by one. Just to note here that these questions have come in from people who are interested in or already are on the path to being photographers and writers.

You will see sort of different aspects of it, some questions will be about the photography, some questions will be about writing. Many of these questions are about pitching, understandably because pitching is such an area of – let’s say, concern to many and by the way, pitching is something that we spend a lot of time inside our program so that when people come out on the other side of it, they have a much better understanding over there, much less afraid of it and they do a much better job of it. 

All right, 10 questions, I’m going to read each one of these out and then I’m going to answer them one by one, let’s go.

[0:04:57.1] First question, how do you start making travel photos? How do you know what to photograph before even reaching out to someone with your work? 

This question is an interesting one and I chose to start with this question because in many ways, this is the foundation of everything that you're going to do in travel journalism from my perspective. Whether it’s a question about how do you start making travel photos or it’s a question of how do you start writing travel stories, the answer for me is the same. 

How do you know what to photograph, how do you know what to write about? Well, it’s about your own passion, it’s about your own curiosity, it’s about what interests you because when you write about what interests you, when you take images of what interests you, these will be much better stories and your passion and your curiosity for the subject will show through.

I often, well actually, always advise anyone who is asking me about how do I start, where do I start? I advise them to start with themselves and to build a very good foundation of understanding what is it that you want. What kind of work do you want to produce, what kind of stories do you want to tell? 

That is a huge foundation because that is going to help you start building a niche your own very specific niche in this space which is important because the sooner you can formulate your own niche, the space in which you want to live let’s say, the type of work that you want to produce, the sooner you can start doing that, the easier it will be for you to carve your own space in this industry. 

That’s where I would start. If you’re asking me, “How do you know what to photograph before you even reach out to someone with your work?” start with what interests you. Start looking at other people’s work through that lens. Start looking at magazines, start looking at other photography and noticing what in that work that you're looking at, what drives – what connects with you, what are you drawn to? And start making some conclusions about that. 

Maybe you want to do stories about food, maybe you really love stories about food and so maybe that’s where you start or maybe it’s architecture or maybe It’s sustainable travel. Whatever it is, that’s where you start, you start with yourself and your own passion and your own curiosity about the world. 

[0:07:33.7] Question number two: What are the two types of lens that you think every photographer should have? What lens do you use more in your work?

Well, that is actually quite a broad question because every photographer should have the type of lens that is best suited to the type of work that they do actually because you know, lenses have different goals, different lens work better for different types of photography, so it really depends on what kind of work that individual photographer does. 

For me and for the travel space in general, what I have found is that a really solid zoom lens, a lens that can go quite wide and up quite wide but then also zoom in quite far is enough in many cases, is enough for the type of photography that I do which is travel photography. 

What is travel photography by the way, well, we’ll touch on this in the following question but yeah, I think one zoom lens, one good zoom lens would be enough for travel photography and sometimes, a portrait lens as well but it kind of depends on the assignment but if I have a big assignment coming up for example.

Most of the time, I just travel with one lens, the zoom lens that I mentioned before, and sometimes, when I have a big assignment coming up, I will bring my second lens, which is a portrait lens. 

To answer what lens do I use most in my work, it’s two, it’s one is the Sony Zeiss 24 to 70 millimeters zoom lens and then the second one is Sony Zeiss 55-millimeter prime lens and one of them, the zoom I use for capturing all kinds of elements of the travel photography and then the 55-millimeter prime, I use that for portraits mostly.

With those two lenses, I have basically covered all the needs that I have while I’m out there traveling and I want to travel light, I don’t want to carry too many lenses so that’s why I think these two are just enough. 

[0:09:44.9] Question number three, when photographing on assignment, do you try to keep to one particular visual style or not? I love this question.

The answer is, yes and no at the same time and here is why. Because, I believe that your visual style is not something that you consciously try to keep to. Your visual style is something you produce over time because you’re drawn to particular kinds of images yourself. For example, for me, over time, I realized that visually, my style is filled with lights, golden light type moments, very airy, very light, very spacious feeling, that’s my visual style.

Not necessarily because when I started in this journey, I said, well, I want my images to be light and airy and spacious and golden light. No, it’s just because, over time, as I look at my work, I see that this is what I’m drawn to. 

I understand that this is where my sort of visual passion lies and that’s what I tend to produce but when I’m out there on assignment, you know, I guess you could say that I do keep to that because if it’s – let’s say, 8PM at night and it’s dark out and I’m going to go out and shoot at 8PM at night because that’s just not my style, right?

Night photography, I’ don’t do night photography but you will find me out there during golden hour of course, whether it’s sunrise or sunset, because that’s the light that I love to see in my images and that’s when I will be shooting. 

However, it doesn’t always work, right? For example, if you’re on assignment with a tourism board and tourism board has a – usually has a very set schedule on the trip and you know, there are other people there, it’s not just you and sometimes you can’t shoot at the best conditions, at the best light conditions.

You try to and of course, you have these conversations with the tourism board and say, “Hey, you know, I’m here on a photography assignment, I need my light, I need to be here and here at let’s say, 5PM when the sun is setting” But it’s not always possible. 

Then, we sort of have to work with what we’ve got and that’s where I think the skill in the craft shows, that if you only have to photograph in the best light conditions then of course, it’s easy to come up with great images but it’s harder to do that when light conditions are not ideal.

So, sometimes we have to work with that. It’s sort of a long winded way I guess to answer this question so do I try to keep to one particular visual style, not necessarily but over time, I have figured out that I do have a particular visual style, which is again, light filled, airy, spacious images and I do try to stick to that but sometimes it’s not possible when you’re photographing something in gloomy weather.

Although, let me tell you, gloomy weather is amazing for capturing people because that’s just exactly the soft, diffused light that you want on your subject when you’re photographing them. 

[0:12:53.7] All right, moving on to question number four. How would you go about finding and contacting the right people and institutions in this career?

This is I think, another broad question because it depends on what we mean by the right people and the right institutions. I’m going to sort of look at it at a couple of different lenses. If you're talking about the right people being the editors at the magazines that you want to work with, then actually, nowadays, it’s quite easy, meaning that, the magazines are becoming much and much more accessible now than they were five, six years ago when I was starting out.

Back then, it was very difficult to know who the right people are, what their email addresses are, what do they want in their stories and in their magazines because they never published pitching guidelines. Nowadays, and I’ve talked about this on this podcast before, you guys have probably heard me say this but I’m just so amazed and I welcome this shift of magazines more and more magazines putting up their pitching and submission guidelines up for everyone to see.

Places like Condé Nast Traveler, places like Afar Magazine which used to be such dark boxes or you know, you just never – you just didn’t know if you weren’t already part of that club, you didn’t know what they wanted in their stories, what they were looking for, who the people, who were the right people to contact and it’s changing now.

All you have to do now is to Google how to pitch Afar Magazine, how to pitch Condé Nast Traveler and almost the first link will be their own submission guidelines and they give you a map. They give you a blueprint to follow, they tell you exactly what they want, they tell you exactly who to contact, they even put in the email address so it’s just wonderful. That’s one approach or one lens to look at it through. 

The other lens, if you're talking about the right people and institutions being, let’s say, tourism boards, let’s say travel brands perhaps that you want to work with, one of the best ways to find those people is at conferences. Travel conferences, travel media conferences, where they already congregate and that’s exactly where they already are going to meet people like you who wants to contact them, right? 

I won’t say much more on this subject here because just one episode ago, last week, we had our amazing community member, Hannah Foster-Roe who is now a travel writer who has been published in so many wonderful magazines, she came on the podcast and talked extensively about this experience of going to a travel media conference. It was her first one and she shared a lot of insights with us there. Go check out that episode to see how you would go about doing that. 

[0:15:52.3] All right, question number five, would you normally pitch before you go or is it easier to pitch after? 

Great question and that is a question that I get often and that is also something that I talk about often so you might have heard me talk about this before. I recommend everyone to pitch after you’ve’ come up from a trip and in fact, a lot of editors don’t’ like it when you pitch them before you go. They want you to go, they want you to get the experience and then they want you to pitch. 

There are many reasons for why that is, one of the reasons why I recommend that you pitch after is that your story and your pitch is actually going to be much better after you’ve gone and you’ve done the experience that you're talking about. 

Sometimes our angles shift, sometimes our ideas change, sometimes we think we might experience one thing when we go but after we do it, we understand that it was actually something different, so that happens as well. Especially if you’re pitching somebody for the first time. If you’re cold pitching somebody, I would not recommend you do it for something that hasn’t happened yet. 

Now, there is an exception to this that if you already have a great relationship with an editor, you’ve done some works together, they trust you, they know sort of what you can deliver, then you can have those conversations and I have for sure, you know, I have sent emails to editors saying, “Hey, I am going here in a month. I am planning to do this kind of story, this is sort of what it’s going to look like, would you be interested in this?” 

Then they give me a tentative yes, because again, they still want me to go and produce the story and then we talk in more detail, right? But if you have that relationship with somebody already, then it is absolutely okay to approach them but I wouldn’t do that for a first time ever. You are trying to break into a new publication and, by the way, the one thing to never ever ever do and this is not coming from me, this is coming from editors that I have spoken with over the years. This is a huge pet peeve and they are getting emails like this believe it or not, “Hey Editor X, I am going to New York next week. Is there anything you’d like me to cover?” that is just a never just a good idea because in this situation, what you’re doing is you are asking the editor to do your own job for you. You are the one who should come up with the story in New York and pitch that story to a magazine and make sure that it’s well-crafted and well-suited. 

But in this situation, you are asking them to see what kind of story they would want from New York that they could then perhaps assign to you, right? That is never a good idea and again, that is all with a caveat that it all depends on your relationship with the publication, with the editor. The better the relationship, the deeper the relationship, the more informal these conversations can get. 

Sometimes, they will send you an email and say, “Hey, we need a story on Egypt, what do you have?” Right? It just all depends on that relationship but hopefully my longwinded answer here makes sense. 

[0:19:00.0] Next question and this one is coming from our past class students and current circle community member, Kim. Thank you so much, Kim, for submitting this question. What does a pitch look like? How is it structured for best results? 

So we go into an enormous detail into the pitching process inside our program in terms of travel journalism that I mentioned at the beginning of this episode and we actually look at the actual pitches that I send out and we take them apart and you know, look at the intro, the paragraph itself, everything but I would say here that the pitch is your best first impression and it’s your best foot forward. 

It should be your best foot forward when you are approaching a publication because a pitch is something that they will judge, the editor will judge your work upon, right? Your writing abilities and your skills and so a pitch has to accomplish two jobs in my opinion. It has to communicate the idea that you are proposing and it has to be well-written in your voice because again, that is how they judge if they would like that voice in their magazine. 

Now, when it comes to making sure that you communicate a well-crafted idea, this is where I think a lot of people overlook the importance of that part. You have to sort of put yourself in that editor’s shoes and think, “Would I want this in my magazine and why?” That’s the question that they go through when they receive these pitches, right? If you can answer that question for them, “Yes, you want this in your magazine and here is why” then there you go. 

Then your pitch is almost there, right? How do you do that? Well again, we go back to the submission guidelines. They lay out everything in such a great detail. BBC Travel is an excellent example of that. They take it apart so much and we’ll link to the BBC Travel submission guidelines here so you guys can take a look but they take it apart so well and they give you examples of photography pitches that you might want to send and writing stories pitches that you might want to send. And the best way to ensure that you get the best results with your pitches is to follow the pitching guidelines. And if you want to know more about pitching process and everything like that then look into the program that we have and the info session that’s coming up as well. 

[0:21:33.2] All right, question number seven, do you pitch to individual editors at one time or do you pitch to several at once? And someone else has asked a similar question, can you pitch the same story to various publications? 

So it’s interesting this question because in my opinion is that no, I don’t recommend pitching the same – actually sorry, this is two questions. This is two slightly different questions, so we are going to address each one of them. The first question is do you pitch to individual editors at a magazine at one time or do you pitch to several editors at the same magazine at once? 

For this, the answer is very clear, you pitch to individual editors at a time and I’ve spoken to editors over the years and that is also what they say. They don’t like it when you send the same pitch to several editors at the same publication and again, we go back to empathy and putting ourselves into their shoes. They are busy people, their inboxes are very crowded. 

So when you are sending the same pitch to two different editors, first of all you’re creating sort of a confusion, right? Well, which one is going to take a look at it? They are both busy and now they are sort of this weird awkwardness of which one. They don’t like it, okay? So just don’t do it, just send it to one editor at a time at a publication. 

Again, if you look at the submission guidelines, most of the time it will clearly say this editor is responsible for this section, this editor is responsible for that section so you don’t even have to guess, right? You will already know which editor is the appropriate one for you. 

Then the second question here was, can you pitch the same story to various publications at the same time? This is where it gets a little bit interesting because my opinion is that no, I don’t recommend it actually. I don’t recommend sending the same story out to two different publications or three at the same time to see which one picks it up first and there are two reasons for that. 

One is that you might find yourself in a pickle where let’s say you pitched it somewhere and pitched it somewhere else and then both publications take it at the same time, so then what do you do? I’ve actually had this situation happen to me and after that happened I said to myself, “No, I am not going to do that. I am not going to pitch the same thing to various publications at the same time.” 

By the way, the way I came out of that situation is that one of the publications got the original pitch and then the second publication got a slightly modified angle that was different enough that I was able to make it work for both of them but I didn’t like the situation and I said, “No, I am not going to do that anymore.” 

However, so that is reason number one and the second reason why I don’t recommend it is that because you probably when you pitch a story especially if it is a story that is very close to your heart, you probably know where you want the story to end up, right? You probably have some sort of a dream publication where you want to publish it. 

So the way I approach it is I pitch it to my dream publication first and then if that doesn’t work out, then I sort of go down the list, right? So in that scenario, you would want to sort of follow the order and pitch it first somewhere, where you really want it to be and then pitch it elsewhere if that doesn’t work. 

However, we recently had a conversation with an amazing travel writer, Jessica Poitevien and her episode is going to come out soon and it is a really excellent episode so I really look forward to it and we’ve discussed this very topic, pitching to multiple publications at once and she had a very different take on it, which I absolutely loved actually. 

She said, “Yes, I am pitching the same story to multiple publications at once.” She said, “I am not beholden to any one editor or any one publication. Whoever wants it first is going to get it because I am a freelancer and I need to be hustling to get my stories out there and I have the power and I control my ideas, so you know, I am absolutely okay with sending my pitches out to multiple publications at the same time.” 

I love that perspective, you know? I think there is actually nothing wrong with that. It is amazing. I think as with so many things in this career, it is not black and white, right? It is not black and white, it all depends on your own sort of personal level of comfort and how you want to approach this pitching path, okay? 

So there you go, you just heard two different perspectives on this, so you decide which one you want to take yourself. 

[0:26:05.9] All right, another question from our dear circle member, Kim, how often should you follow up with an editor without being annoying? 

I love this question. So my rule of thumb is you follow up three times and then you move on and yeah, if you haven’t heard from them three times in a row, then you move on somewhere else. However, this is also hard because sometimes, they just drop the ball on you. The editors drop the ball on you and then months later, they come back and they say, “Well, I wanted this story” you know? That sometimes happens too. 

So it also depends on how deeply you want it in this publication, right? If you’re let’s say pitching New York Times Travel and you follow that within three times and you haven’t heard from them, maybe you follow up two more times and in another month or something, right? So it also depends on how much do you want it in this publication. 

Without being annoying part is all about I think of how you do it, right? You can follow up with them, you pitched them on Monday and then you follow up, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, well that’s very annoying, right? But if you pitch them, you follow back in a week or two, haven’t heard back, followed up again in a week or two, haven’t heard back. 

Follow up again in a week or two, haven’t heard back, right? So there is different ways to do it and that’s where I think the annoying part comes but again, I think you guys already know this, my favorite answer is it depends. It really depends on how much do you want this story and this publication, so maybe even more than three times to follow up will be good in some cases. 

But a general rule of thumb is three times to follow up and if you haven’t heard back, you move on because again, you got to place that story somewhere else, right? 

[0:27:51.2] All right, question number nine, if you are rejected for a pitch, do you continue with the piece anyway and seek to get it picked up retrospectively? If you are rejected for a pitch, do you continue with the piece anyway and seek to get it picked up retrospectively? 

I think if I understand this question correctly is asking if you get – if your pitch gets rejected, do you write the story anyway and then try to find a home for it somewhere. I think that is what I am understanding from this question and the answer to that is no. Don’t write the story until the pitch gets accepted somewhere and that is what I always recommend because I don’t want you to put in time and effort into writing a piece that hasn’t been picked up anywhere, okay? 

If you are rejected, if your pitch is rejected, what you need to do is you need to take that pitch somewhere else and keep taking that pitch somewhere else until you get a yes and when you do get a yes, then you write the story, okay? That’s what I’d recommend. 

[0:28:51.4] All right, finally the last question of this series of Q&A on the craft of being a travel photographer and writer and journalist, the last question is, “Is it much easier to write when one is a native English speaker? I doubt any editor will hire a non-English native speaker, will they?” 

Well my friend, I have good news for you because I am not a native English speaker as well. English is my third language actually and you can absolutely do it. You can absolutely do it and I wanted to end this conversation, this Q&A with this question because, to me, this question is an example of limitations that we put on ourselves. 

It is the limitations that we put on ourselves when we think, “Well, an editor won’t hire a non-English speaker. An editor won’t hire somebody who hasn’t been published before. Condé Nast Traveler will never want to work with someone who hasn’t been published before” right? These are all the things that come to our heads. 

I know you guys have experienced these, I know you’ve thought these things and these are all examples of limitations we’ve put on ourselves because we are afraid, because we think for whatever reason, it is not for us. We don’t deserve it for whatever reason and I just want to say that you can accomplish in this career and in any career as much or as little as you can imagine and give yourself permission to accomplish, okay? 

Now of course, there is caveats with everything. You got to have the right support, you got to have the right structure. You got to have the knowledge, right? You have to kind of know what you are getting into and the good news that you can find all of those things and I am not even right now talking about our program, okay? 

[0:30:43.6] I am not even right now talking about our program, there is so many different things that exist on the Internet nowadays where you can find a lot of support. You can find that knowledge, you can find blog posts, you can find podcast episodes like this one that give you some of that knowledge, right? 

You can find YouTube videos, you can find whole communities of people who are trying to do the same thing that you are. So with that, I absolutely wholeheartedly believe that with the right structure, with the right support, with the right knowledge, we can do anything. We don’t have to go far, look at our students. 

Look at our amazing circle members, they have been published in Condé Nast Traveler, in Time Magazine, in Huffington Post, in other places without any prior work in this industry, without any bylines, without any articles, they have published their stories and I am so, so proud of them. So again, you can accomplish as little or as much as what you can imagine. 

So please, don’t put any of these expectations and limitations on yourself. Editors will hire non-English native speakers, absolutely. Why not? Your perspective is valuable, the more diverse your perspective, the better, right? So the answer to that is a resounding yes, they will hire a non-native English speaker. 

Okay. Well, I hope this was informative to you and I hope you enjoyed this episode and we will be back next week with a conversation on the business side of being a travel journalist. Thank you so much for listening. 

[END OF DISCUSSION]

[0:32:09.3] YD:  Did you hear something that resonated with you in our episode today? Maybe you were listening and you're like, "Oh, I've had this question before. I felt this way. I've wanted that." If you've resonated with anything that I had to share today, then maybe our Intro to Travel Journalism program that's going to be enrolling very soon is right for you.

If you're interested in learning more about this program and how we plan to support you for six months inside our membership, the Circle,  join us for an info session that's gonna be happening on Friday, November 18th, 2022 at 11:00 AM Eastern, where I'll take you behind the scenes of the program and show you really the blueprint for getting your stories published and kick-starting your travel journalism career.

The link is in the show notes, but you can also go to travelmedialab.com/infosession to register today.  Thank you so much for listening to our show today, and I'll see you very soon

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