Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeremiah Gilbert.
Hi Jeremiah, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I started taking photos in high school. My father was an artist, and I dabbled with drawing and painting when I was younger, but it was when I discovered photography that I knew I had found my visual creative outlet. This was back when the only option was film, so after a day of shooting, I’d develop my black and white rolls in a makeshift darkroom and see what I had captured. I only shot in black and white back then as I only knew how to develop black and white film.
When I headed to Tibet in 2006, I switched to digital and haven’t looked back. I’m happy for what shooting film with a manual camera taught me, but much prefer the digital darkroom. I also started shooting in color, though I still have a love for black and white. Travel also gave me a focus for my photography, which was more of a hobby before then. As I traveled more, I expanded my website, which included not only my photography but also writing about my travels.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, I decided to put together a collection of my travel tales from around fifteen years of exploring, which I called Can’t Get Here from There: Fifty Tales of Travel. The title refers to my wife being stuck in Beijing in early 2020 and there being a time I honestly wasn’t sure we’d be able to get her home. My most recent collection, On to Plan C, focuses on my return to travel in 2022 and is the first to include my photography as well as my travel writing. I plan on keeping that format for future books.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Photography is an oversaturated market, so standing out is not easy. I should probably be more active on social media. One also has to develop a thick skin as there is a lot of rejection along the way any time you submit your work for publication. The trick is to keep going. If one magazine rejects a set of photos I submitted, for instance, I just submit it to another magazine. I’ve been lucky to have one publisher for my travel books, and they have always been receptive to my ideas as each book has been different.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I feel fortunate that I can both write about my travels and include my photos. It’s often one or the other. I’m very happy that my latest collection has been well received with each reviewer complementing the photos. I was initially planning on keeping my writing and photography separate as I did with my first two books but feel now that they should be presented together. I’m also very proud of this book. While my first two focused on past travels and tended to be more observational, this one focuses on current travels and is more experiential, including bits of dialogue and humor. I wrote it during or just after trips rather than relying on notes and journals. I wanted to bring the reader along with me with both the writing and photography.
Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
For travel photography, have a good grasp of the fundamentals so that they become second nature. This includes compositional elements along with settings such as aperture and shutter speed. You don’t always have time to think about your settings when trying to capture an image on the go. I tend to previsualize shots, which helps me determine the primary lens I’m heading out with and my base settings. Also, find some travel photographers you admire and try to figure out how they took their photos. What angle did they use? Did they blur the background? Did they introduce motion? Then, practice before heading off.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://jeremiahgilbert.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jg_travels/
