The Space Between: Rarely Discussed Aspects of Travel
Paris - 2025
I’ve always considered myself a frequent traveller and a travel photographer, though the term can be a bit misleading. I don’t make a living directly from the images. Still, those photographs, the ones I share on social media or here on my site, play a quiet but meaningful role in connecting people to my work, sparking conversations, and occasionally leading to income in unexpected ways. Travel photography isn’t my main source of revenue, but it’s an essential part of what fuels my creativity. I travel because it enriches my perspective, and that alone makes it worth every dollar spent, even when there is no direct road to increased revenue.
The Planning
Every journey begins long before the first plane takes off. Trip planning, for me, is almost a ritual, one that needs to fit around a full-time job, household responsibilities, finances, and life’s usual obligations. I aim to take at least two trips a year, which sounds either ambitious or modest depending on who you ask. Each trip requires careful coordination: saving, booking flights months in advance, searching for Airbnbs or hotels that balance cost and convenience, and piecing together the puzzle of train schedules, layovers, and overall journey time.
Sometimes, planning feels like it’s mostly for nothing. However, I know that’s ridiculous. A certain level of planning is essential. But how quickly it can go sideways makes me think I underestimated. Late flights, unplanned destinations, alternative methods of travel, unforeseen costs; I’ve lost count of how many tabs I’ve had open while comparing routes, prices, or photography spots, only to hit a roadblock that forces me to rethink the entire trip. But strangely, those obstacles are part of what makes travel so addictive. Each solved problem, each revised route, becomes part of the story.
The Journey
My favourite aspect of travel isn’t always what ends up in a photograph. It’s the moments in between. The early mornings when the airport is still waking up, or the quiet train rides through unfamiliar countryside. These are the spaces where anticipation builds, where my mind drifts from logistics to realization. Where I am, and what I am doing. How fortunate I am to be here, and how this exact moment, this exact spot, may be the only time I will ever experience it. It’s a provocative way to look at things. It can be scary to witness opportunities that could be literally once-in-a-lifetime, but it can also be enlightening. Knowing that opportunities may never be presented this way again allows me to appreciate it even more. And photography becomes both a reason and a result of being present in those moments.
When I return home and begin editing, I realize how much more those images mean. The photos tell a visual story, but the memories behind them carry a weight no body of work can fully translate.
Conclusion
Travelling from Halifax offers its own quirks. Being close to Europe geographically is a benefit, as it reduces flight time, but flight availability can be limited at times. However, it seems to be expanding its variation each year. Also, these flights are often overnight, but, truthfully, they’ve become my preference. There is something exciting about falling asleep (hopefully) over the Atlantic and waking up on a new day and a new country. Even if the sleep was complicated or uncomfortable, and the podcasts and Spotify playlists are depleted, arriving in a new airport always thrills me.
For me, the journeys might be months apart, but the anticipation, the planning, and the reflection stretch far beyond those brief escapes. In that sense, travel is a continuous presence every day.