Tom Archer has been able to turn his passion for travel and the outdoors into a full-time career. In this video, he discusses his professional journey and the things that shaped his photographic style — sharing some quality tips along the way.
As we find out in this interview from The School of Photography, Archer is not only a successful landscape photographer — having amassed over 130K followers on Instagram — he's also a very accomplished wedding photographer, showcasing some really stunning imagery from that genre too on his website. His path to becoming a professional hasn't been a straightforward one, and this long, deep-dive interview has bits and pieces that a lot of us can relate to and more that we can learn from. Making money as a landscape photographer is quite difficult, so Archer's perspective is well worth a listen.
I especially appreciate this long-form, off-the-cuff style interview. It allows the viewer to get a better idea of the photographer's personality and photographic philosophy. Something he talks about, which has seen a resurgence in popularity over the last decade and is something that I would like to incorporate into my own photography is his use of people to add a sense of scale. It also allows the viewer to place themselves into his scenes — imagining what it would be like to travel there. Naturally, this method is very appealing to brands who wish to generate engaging content.
If you would like to learn more about travel and landscape photography, check out our "Photographing the World" series with Elia Locardi.
