You may need some inspiration or be ready for an adventure. Your first thought is to pack up your camera gear and head out on an adventure. Then, you start to research and decide it's too costly. I used to think that I would never be able to travel and explore. I was wrong after finding a little ingenuity. Here are six ways to travel without going bankrupt.
Stay Close to Home
This one seems obvious: stay close to home. I am not talking about stepping out into your backyard, clicking a few photos, and returning to the house. Now, that will save you some money for sure! Staying close to home can mean taking a day trip to a location or even staying for a few days. We often overlook where we live. After some research, you’ll find many unique places just a few short hours or less from you. Locations such as parks, museums, fairs, and festivals can hold a treasure trove of subjects for great photos.
Budget Airlines
If you are anything like me, you like to go as far as you can once a year, usually in the winter months, to escape these crazy winters. When that happens, I must look at an airline to get to my final destination. The word “flying” always made me think a lot of money needed to be spent. Air travel is still expensive at times, depending on the final destination. In the end, a budget airline can save you money.
I have flown for several years, and my go-to is Southwest Airlines. I always look at other airlines I can access, like Allegiant and Frontier Airlines. I can access major airlines like American and Delta Airlines, less than a 10-minute drive from home, whereas Southwest Airlines is an hour-and-a-half drive. Yet, I still save money driving and flying on Southwest. An example is my recent trip to Los Angeles, California. American and Delta Airlines wanted an average of $550.00 for a one-way ticket. Southwest wanted $350.00, saving me $200 and only one layover in Denver!
Accommodations
Where you stay can dwindle the budget! I won’t lie; my accommodations are pretty crude. I recommend that most people do not do what I do: sleep in their vehicle. This is not only crude but also gets a little uncomfortable and requires more research. I don’t sleep in parking lots due to safety reasons, and it is usually too bright, so I can’t sleep. I want to find a campsite and pull in for the night. I typically rent a larger SUV to accommodate all my gear and myself. I spent eight years in the United States Army; I can sleep anywhere!
I recommend a hotel for the less adventurous. I like to use budget websites like Expedia or Priceline. You can find a great deal and even unique places on occasion. My go-to for these days is AirBnB. I am teaching a workshop in September at an abandoned prison in Missouri. I wanted to keep the cost low for participants. The hotel wanted $170.00 a night and $1,000 for two days for a small conference room to rent. I went to Airbnb and found an entire house to rent for a little under $500 for three nights that had room for six attendees! This saved my workshop attendees a good chunk of money! I was surprised everyone was interested in staying together for the camaraderie and a unique experience over a hotel!
Food
As we all know, nothing is cheap these days, and food is one of them! I don’t eat out three times a day on a trip to a restaurant. I love breakfast, so I get up early to find a local place. I’ll eat a big breakfast, and for lunch, I usually keep it cheap and go to the store to get stuff for sandwiches. I’ll also eat dinner occasionally or an omeal. They're like a military ready-to-eat meal, but way better! I won't say I don’t splurge once or twice on a trip if I can find something unique, like the Big Texan on my recent Route 66 trip.
Locations
Locations can drain your budget, too! Traveling to and staying at particular locations and your proximity to your final destination will dictate your final cost for expenses. Especially accommodations! Take, for example, my trip to Zion National Park in May of 2022. I had two locations for a hotel that were close to the park: La Verkin or Springdale, Utah. Springdale is four minutes from the park, costing, on average at the time, $285.00 a night. La Verkin, Utah, on the other hand, had an average of $190.00 a night. A difference of $95.00 a night saved me $190.00 over a four-day trip!
Time of the year will also come into play! If I am traveling to a warmer climate in the winter months. Everything from air travel to accommodations can be higher in price. Add in a popular location, and expect to pay even more. I chose White Sands National Park in New Mexico for a trip in February of 2023. February had the lowest number of visitors out of all the months of the year; I flew into El Paso, Texas. It was cheap, and I drove a few hours to the final destination. In the end, saving me money!
Keep It Short
Your trips don’t need to be a week or more at a time. I find five or fewer days for a trip does a few things. It keeps the cost down, and I don’t see myself with nothing to do due to planning too many days. I love four-day trips. I have two total travel days, one getting there and another getting back, with two full days of exploring. I may squeeze out another day to have three days of exploring. Keeping short trips will save you money and may even allow you to take an extra trip throughout the year.
In the end, being a savvy traveler will not only allow you to save money but also allow you to travel more! If you have that bucket list trip or workshop you want to attend, sit down, pull up your calculator, research, and crunch the numbers. You just might be amazed that you can take that bucket list trip! If you are already a savvy traveler, leave a tip in the comments. I would love to hear your tips, and maybe an old dog can always learn new tricks!
Nice article Justin and agree with your tips. Like you, I often pack a few ready to eat meals as well. My go to is Back Country, a New Zealand brand.
Thanks for reading! Glad you liked the article!
Very good article, thanks! I find combining budget airlines and location flexibility a massive plus - for example, on a recent trip to Georgia (the country, rather than the state) there were cheap flights to Kutaisi rather than Tbilisi (though I have visited Tbilisi before) which led to me renting a car and exploring Batumi, Chiatura and the utterly incredible Tskaltubo - not only was the trip much cheaper, but I ended up with some excellent (IMHO!) photos of lesser explored places.
Thanks! I think the best images are off the beaten path, and the world has so much more to be found!
Hey Justin
You picked a really great topic to do an article on! Where one travels to, and how long one stays, has a way way way way greater effect on how good one's photos will be than any gear-related decision, and yet there are a tiresome number of articles and videos about gear and so few articles and videos about travel and the logistics thereof.
I do a LOT of photography trips each year, many of them far from home. Each year I spend anywhere from 50 to 80 days afield specifically for wildlife photography, at least 300 miles from home. The majority of this time is actually over 1,000 miles from home. I am financially challenged, with my income falling dangerously near the official poverty line, and yet I manage to spend all this time away from home on extended photography trips. So doing these trips on a shoestring is a necessity.
I have figured out a lot of ways to do extended far-from-home photography trips for VERY little money. But I do many things a lot differently than you do. To be honest, I could never afford to do many of the things the way you suggest in the article, because many of your suggestions would be way way way over my budget. Your suggestions seem like they would be great for someone who has a half decent income, like $40,000 to $55,000 a year, or for someone who has limited time and can not spend many days out there. But for someone who truly MUST do things cheaply, and/or who has a lot more disposable time, then things like lodging and mode of travel would have to be done much differently than the ways you suggest.
Thanks! I would love to hear some of your tips! I try to write things I wish I could have read early on when I was starting, even now! I always enjoy your feed back!
Hey Justin!
One overarching tip is to allot as much time as possible for a trip. Things that save time are very expensive, so if you are short on time, you will be spending way more money on a per-day-of-shooting basis.
Flying to one's destination is just going to result in an expensive trip.
Flying typically means you must rent a vehicle when you arrive at your destination, and rentals are really really expensive. Gone are the days when I could rent a car for $9.99 per day. Now they want upwards of $40 or $50, which is a preposterous amount of money.
Flying also means that you can't bring a sufficient amount of comfortable warm camping gear with you. So tent camping, one of the most affordable types of lodging, is pretty much taken off the table when you fly to your destination. Flying also means that I can't take my real computer with me, and that means I would be stuck using a laptop or something terrible like that. When I drive my own car I can take my nice big 27" iMac with the 5K monitor, so I can work on photos correctly, and also use my computer to stream movies and football games while on my trip.
Hence, driving my car to my destination is something that enables me to save a lot of money compared to flying. It is not just the cost of gasoline vs. the cost of airplane tickets. It is that having my own car and all of my own gear along in the car enables me to save a lot of money because it enables me to tent camp comfortably and also means I never have to pay the outrageous car rental rates.
Hotels are also expensive, especially when you pay a nightly rate. I often stay in motels, but I look for ones that are independently owned, so that I can talk with the motel owner to negotiate a weekly or monthly rate.
One example would be Ninepipes Lodge in Montana. In 2021 the nightly rate was $120. But I went and met with the owner two months beforehand, to talk about a month-long stay in November. He figured that he could give me a room for the full month, Nov 1 thru Dec 1, for $1200. For an extra $5/day he would include the breakfast buffet, which was legendary for its immensely thick bacon, homemade "real" scrambled eggs, and famous breakfast potatoes. So for a total of $1,350 I got 30 nights in a really nice motel and a big big big breakfast that was high in fat and protein - I ate so much each morning that it kept me going all day and I didn't have to buy a thing to eat until I returned after sunset for dinner.
Other examples include a place in Tennessee that ended up costing a total of $384 for a total of 20 nights. It had a full kitchen and an extra queen bed, so friends could come stay with me and not have to sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor. That was back in 2010, but it was still a crazy bargain even at that time. Ditto for a room at the Super 8 in Gardiner, MT, for $40/night ..... right on the edge of Yellowstone NP! All these bargains happen because I talk with the owners and introduce myself and ask what kind of deal they can give me.
The best money-saving lodging tip I have is to rent a room or a suite in someone's home. This is kinda like AirBnB, but without the super-excessive airBnB administrative fees. I put an ad on Craigslist with a title that goes something like, "Wildlife Photographer Needs Room in Denver Area for 3 Weeks in November". Or "Wildlife Photographer Needs Room in the Phoenix Area for 2 Weeks in July".
These Craigslist ads have worked out wonderfully! Of course I get some scam and spam responses, but I also get several really good responses. Real people who call and are very interested in what I will be photographing, and who talk with me at length on the phone about my plans and my needs. I usually get 3 or 4 very legitimate offers, and then choose the one that is the best fit. I have done this many times, in different parts of the U.S., and never had a bad experience. I am always invited back, and the woman I stayed with in Denver and the guy I stayed with in Phoenix have both had me back again the next year, and not charged me anything at all, saying, "you're a friend now, not a customer, so you don't pay to stay here anymore."
Another type of lodging to look into is at a campground. I have learned that some tent and RV campgrounds have a few RVs on site that are owned bu the campground itself, and that they will rent out to people who don't have their own RV, but who want to stay in one. I found such a place in southern Arizona, and the rate was an extremely reasonable $140 / week to rent one of the RVs on site. They were both pretty nice RVs, and each had a fully functional kitchen, so I could cook my own meals, keep food in the refrigerator, etc. And I used the shower in the main lodge, which was just a 60 yard walk from the RV. $140 / a week and I get a kitchen and a real bed with a mattress and air conditioning and heat ...... count me in!
The thing about longer stays at a destination is that it is really the only way to get enough marketable images. The more days afield, the more keepers I get. It really is that simple. And a lot of the time, effort, and expense of a trip is getting to the destination and back home again. If I take a short trip, as you suggest, I am only spreading that cost and time out over a couple of days. If I go somewhere and stay for a whole month of photography, I am spreading the cost and time of travel out over 30 days, and at that point it becomes negligible. Always look at how many dollars per day of shooting the trip is going to cost. If you take a 4 day trip, and two of those days are traveling, then you only have two days of shooting, and so the cost per day of shooting will be absurdly high.
Another tip is to get a room with a kitchen so you can make your own meals. Of course many rooms in people's homes won't have kitchens, but make sure that you will be able to use the main kitchen to make meals. That's good for at least a savings of $100/week compared to eating at restaurants. And it surprises me how many hosts invite me to eat dinner with them because they want to hear about my adventures from the day and get to know me. They start out as hosts and quickly become good friends. When a host makes dinners and invites me to eat with them, I always reciprocate and do the cooking on a few of the nights.
And I thought I was good at budgeting for extended trips (3-4 weeks at a time). Thanks for the suggestions.
You're quite welcome, Kevin
I am curious - what are some of the areas you go to for photography trips? And where is your home base?