Co-founder of Lonely Planet advises aspiring travel photographers

Last month, the Boar interviewed Tony Wheeler, the co-founder of Lonely Planet, about his role in setting up Warwick’s new postgraduate course, the Wheeler History of Travel Writing PhD Programme.

After the interview, I mentioned to Tony that the Boar Travel section was running a travel photography competition, the ongoing 2023 Boar Travel Photo Competition, and asked whether he had any tips for aspiring travel photographers. Tony was kind enough to share the following advice:

“Do all the standard tech things – the exposure, the framing, the angle – but also look for some different angle, some different perspective. Particularly if it’s some standard (seen that a thousand times) shot. I always remember a cover Lonely Planet did for the Paris city guide over 20 years ago. OK it’s the Eiffel Tower, just like thousands of other ‘it’s Paris, it’s the Eiffel Tower’ shot, but also completely different.”

Lonely Planet Paris Cover. Source: [Wheeler]

“My other advice would be to go somewhere different. Once upon a time I sold quite a few images through Getty and most of them were quite OK photographs, but they sold because they were somewhere different, somewhere you did not find a heap of choice. So, I did very well with Saudi Arabia and with North Korea. The Arch of Triumph in Pyongyang, North Korea is a much easier sell than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.”