Dreaming of a road trip from Northern California down the Baja Peninsula, the winter of 2021 was the year. At least for myself. Surfing, spearfishing, saturated sunsets, wild coyote spotting, and cactus… lots of cactus. Looking back, this assignment was a dream come true. Why? Who can beat chasing waves, eating tacos, and swamped motors? Okay, we could have gone without the swamped motors, but this trip was surely one for the books. A huge thank you to the plethora of companies for making this dream a reality.

The Route:

Choosing a ridiculous route, our team—Andrew Muse, Kristin Riegel, and myself—started in San Diego, made a HUGE circle back to San Diego, and then departed the United States for Mexico’s iconic Baja Peninsula. Our loop looked a little something like this:

travel photography, road trip — Exploring Highway One on a vanlife road trip. Photo by Dalton Johnson

San Diego to Bishop
Bishop to Lake Tahoe
Lake Tahoe to Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz to San Diego
San Diego to Cabo
Cabo to San Diego

If you are looking for an epic road trip, this route offered everything from mountains to surfing, river to lakes, and everything in-between. If you have the time, the vehicle, and finances to make this happen… you should do it!

What was the project?

This project was multi-faceted to say the least. Embarking on this road trip, the list of deliverables were piling up and the days were dauntingly long. At first, the team had some hesitations around the size of the project, especially since wifi was a huge unknown. Thankfully, the wifi throughout Baja was sustainable and capable of sending files… occasionally. The end result was a variety of photographs and videos for a multitude of brands:

travel photography, vanlife — Taking full advantage of any and all light with Andrew Muse in Lone Pine, CA. Photo by Dalton Johnson

What I learned along the way:

It takes a village, otherwise logistics become a nightmare

The core group of this project was three; Andrew, Kristin, and myself. With that said, the outside help was uncountable. Everything from local help, my parents (shout out and a huge thank you), to friends made this trip possible. The smallest details, like your entry FMM to enter Mexico or vehicle insurance can easily slip through your fingertips!

Travel photography looks like a vacation, but you are ALWAYS working

From the outside looking in, travel photography is a dream. As a travel photographer, you get to hang out in cool places, do all the adventurous things, and see the world… for free. Right? Well, not exactly. The reality is, if something is happening, you have your camera to your face photographing. If nothing is happening, you are jocking for position to get the next shot, or, you are importing content, cleaning gear, etc. Yes, you get to be in the places, but you rarely have the opportunity to do the activities. For example, this was a 40(ish) day shoot. In the end, I got to play (surf, rock climb, snorkel, etc.) for six of them. That is less than if I worked a 9-5 job!

Additionally, our days were long enough that I fell asleep at the computer working 5% of the nights we were on the road. Take a second to think about that…

Editing on the road is harder than it seems

travel photographer, paddleboarding, vanlife — Paddleboarding on the Owen River along Highway 395 in California. Photograph by Dalton Johnson

To start, I thought we were going to be able to edit the majority of the project while on the road. I am writing this article in July, six months later, and am still editing images/cutting videos from the trip. Now, all of the client work was delivered long ago, but the remaining work that will go into my archive for future license, social media, etc. is just about finished. Was I naïveté? I’d prefer to say ambitious. However, for projects like this in the future, I will utilize an editor and a digi-tech.

NOTE: I have done two larger projects to date and the use of an editor and digi-tech make life manageable! If you are a content creator for large projects, do yourself a favor and do this!!

You need down days

This might be obvious, but how do you manage weighing the opportunities of the here and now, versus the opportunities of tomorrow? You just can’t, especially on a traveling project where weather, swells, etc. determine the outcome of a project. With that said, down days, or really down hours, are critical for the crews sanity

Vanlife and Photography mix well

My favorite take away (obviously I am biased) is that the ever growing #vanlife and #photograherlife mix very well. For the past five years, I have been living on the road, building a career as a photographer. Overall, making money has been sustainable, however the shoots are a production, start to finish in one to five days. Typically, these shoots are totally curated and finishing off with restaurant meals and hotel rooms. Baja wasn’t that. In fact, this project was a 40(ish) day marathon of daily content creation. We shot 24/7, often with multiple cameras, racking up the GB’s (gigabytes).

Now that the project is done, I can honestly say that I do think the blend works well and for those van-curious creators, I would suggest it! Just remember, editing is going to be a pain! So, go get yourself an editor.