In trying to capture the perfect image of a bird, photographers often focus on the vibrant, attention-grabbing males. The bright orange belly of a Baltimore oriole, the gleaming crimson feathers of a summer tanager and the royal blue plumage of an indigo bunting are naturally eye-catching.

Comparatively, the more muted yellows and browns of these species’ females can just blend into the background. Among casual observers and avid wildlife photographers alike, female birds “are often overlooked and underappreciated,” writes the National Audubon Society in a statement. For 14 years, the bird conservation nonprofit has held a photography contest showcasing the best in avian images.

But year after year, members of a female-bird-focused group called the Galbatross Project watched as the winning photographs tended to neglect females. “In species that have different feather patterns between females and males, we would usually see the males represented, because often they were the ones that were brighter or bolder,” says Purbita Saha, senior deputy editor at Popular Science and a founding member of the Galbatross Project.

That’s why, three years ago, the so-called Galbatrosses helped create a new category in the Audubon Photography Awards contest: the Female Bird Prize. Judged by members of the Galbatross Project—which includes birders, writers and scientists—alongside a professional photographer, the category calls attention to birds that are frequently ignored. This year, the organization received about 900 submissions for the Female Bird Prize, out of 9,000 entries across all eight contest categories.

By highlighting images of female birds in the contest, Galbatross Project members hope to start a conversation that extends beyond the lens. Even in science, they say, data on birds can ignore females. Sometimes, this bias spills over into the conservation realm, leaving female birds less equipped to survive.

Take, for example, the golden-winged warbler, a species that has faced one of the steepest declines of all songbirds over the last 45 years. In the winters, these birds fly to woodlands in southern Mexico and as far south as Ecuador. There, females tend to settle in lowland forests, while males gather farther up in the mountains.

In a 2019 paper published in Biological Conservation, researchers found that the lower-altitude areas populated by females were twice as likely to be lost to development—between 2000 and 2016, the rate of deforestation was about 4 percent in the male-dominated areas and 8 percent in predominantly female areas. Despite this, the focus areas in conservation plans were “heavily biased” toward regions with mostly male warblers, per the paper.

Males and females of other species, such as the red-winged blackbird, a common denizen of lakes and marshes, also use habitat in different ways. The male blackbirds tend to perch atop cattails, while the females spend more time on the ground, foraging and hopping around on lily pads.

“By understanding what females need from their habitat, you get a better picture of how you can conserve a bird species in its environment,” Saha says. “So, if you’re only focused on [conserving] one part of the habitat that the males are mostly using, you’re not going to be preserving that bird for the future.”

In the 2019 study, researchers also looked at conservation plans for 66 migratory bird species that breed in North America. One-third of these birds had been reported to have different habitat needs between the males and females. But the researchers found that only 8 percent of conservation recommendations took these differences into account.

“The scientific community tends not to view males and females separately as much in studies about conservation,” says Joanna Wu, an ornithologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a co-founder of the Galbatross Project. “We tend to say, ‘Oh, the ovenbird needs this type of habitat; the snowy plover needs beaches.’ But we tend not to think below the species level.”

So, Wu began to wonder what other information scientists might be missing out on by lumping males and females together.

Building off this question, Wu is studying female bird mortality in her PhD program. And across the board, female birds tend to have a lower survival rate than their male counterparts, she says.

The reason for this trend isn’t completely clear, but based on existing research, she says it could stem from the cost of reproduction—hatching eggs and caring for young can be physically taxing—or genetic differences between female and male birds. Females also move around more as juveniles, which could come with increased survival risks, such as more exposure to predators.

To understand some of these disparities, Galbatross Project members are trying to call more scientific attention to female birds by advocating for mindful data collection. Birders and scientists alike use a platform called eBird to record their observations and see what species others have found. After spending time counting and identifying birds, citizen scientists enter their “checklist” of observed species into the database.

On the eBird desktop website, users can mark whether a bird they observed was male or female. But on the mobile app, such an option doesn’t exist, unless someone manually types a note to accompany their data. Wu and Saha say they would like to see a feature added to the app to allow users to easily mark a bird’s sex.

“My lab and a lot of researchers use these big, citizen-science data sources all the time, and we can’t really scrape sex information from it, because millions of records are collected with just species data,” Wu says. “It’s a huge deficiency in the quality of data that we have to work with.”

Wu says she has contacted eBird staff on multiple occasions, asking for an update to the app that will allow this information to be collected.

“We log all feedback and take community input into consideration when developing new tools and features,” writes Jenna Curtis, an eBird project leader with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, in an email. “So even though something may not be possible on the app today, there’s always a chance you’ll see it in a future release.” Right now, the only way birders can add age and sex information to checklists submitted with the app is by retroactively editing their list on eBird’s website.

Even if the app gets an update, however, the data will still have some holes. No observer could discern the sex of every bird—in practice, finding and identifying female birds can be tricky. Adult females can, in certain cases, look very similar to juveniles of either sex. And for some species, male and female plumage is identical to the human eye.

Still, this doesn’t make it impossible to identify a female. Birders just have to go a little deeper, making inferences based on the animal’s context and behavior: Are there two birds in a pair, and could it be safely assumed that one is male and the other is female? Is the bird performing a specifically female behavior for the species, such as incubating eggs or building a nest?

Getting this information is hard. It adds another level of patience and observation to birding, which can already be an exercise in waiting around. But to Saha, taking note of female birds is rewarding.

“It slows my pace of birding down in a way where I’m being a little more holistic,” she says. “It kind of surfaces this point that birds are not just a member of their species—they’re individuals. They have individual variation and personalities and behaviors.”

“And by understanding those, we can really find something special, even in quite common birds,” she adds. “The winner of the Female Bird Prize this year is a Baltimore oriole, which is a bird that people love to see out in the wild, but it still is a pretty common, regular bird, at least here in the Northeast in the spring and summer.”

The Baltimore oriole isn’t the only common bird honored in this year’s contest—a tawny northern cardinal with her bright orange beak, a dusty-cerulean eastern bluebird and a brown wood duck with a white ring around her eye are all included in Audubon magazine’s shortlist of recognized images in the category.

Some of the birds featured in the photos are difficult to identify as female, unless you know what to look for. The female bushtit, for example, is recognizable by its light yellow eyes, whereas the males and juveniles have brown irises. Meanwhile, in some of the species, such as the red-necked phalarope and belted kingfisher, the female bird actually displays more color than the male.

Emphasizing female birds in photography can help bring them wider recognition and appreciation, which is the Galbatross Project’s aim. “I think it really draws people’s attention,” Wu says. “And photographers are just really keen to try their hand at this new skill.”

Saha says she would love to see other bird- and wildlife-oriented photography contests recognize images of female birds as well. With their zoom lenses, practiced patience and eye for detail, photographers are uniquely positioned to put a much-needed spotlight on these overlooked creatures. “We could see so much more when it comes to female birds and their unique features, just by having [photographers] out there, getting those photos and taking video of their behaviors,” she says.

Amos Badertscher, a photographer who documented hustlers, performers, and others eking out a living on the margins of his hometown of Baltimore, died on July 24 after a brief illness. He was 86. 

The news was confirmed by Clamp, a New York gallery that will open a previously planned Badertscher exhibition in September.  

“Amos Badertscher devoted his life to his photography,” said Brian Paul Clamp, the gallery’s founder, in an email to Artnet News. “He was passionate about telling the story of his years in Baltimore and the people he loved and remembered. Badertscher was also deeply protective of that legacy.” 

Born in 1936, Badertscher lived an upper-middle-class life in Baltimore, with a sense of privilege that would later inflect his portraits with a precarious power dynamic. He picked up a camera in the late 1960s, inspired by a faculty member at the prep school where he taught. By 1975, the artist tapped into his inheritance to pursue his craft full time, and began taking pictures of friends and people he met in gay bars.  

“There must have been something dangerously lacking in my upper-middle-class psyche because I did not find nudity, even youthful male nudity shocking, abusive, emasculating, pornographic or subversive,” Badertscher once said. “To photograph the naked body is, for me, the ultimate dimension in photographing the person.” 

Amos Badertscher, The Abandoned Bed Room [Bedroom] (1998). © Estate of Amos Badertscher. Courtesy of CLAMP, New York.

Badertscher repeatedly turned to the streets and underground venues of Baltimore for his work, photographing strippers, drug addicts, and drag queens, among others. Often his subjects were poor and homeless; some came from broken homes or were battling AIDS-related illnesses.  

He would make prints of his portraits at home and fill their margins with handwritten anecdotes about the people depicted therein. The resultant artworks regularly straddled lines of desire, sympathy, eroticism, and—according to some critics—exploitation.  

But Badertscher’s creations have seen renewed critical interest in recent years. In 2020, Berlin’s Schwules Museum staged a well-reviewed survey of his work—the artist’s first major institutional exhibition outside the U.S. Next month, the lbin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, will open a retrospective, and the Clamp show will follow in September. A printed collection of Badertscher’s work is due out in 2024. 

“With the death of Amos Badertscher, America has lost one of its greatest photographers,” said historian and curator Jonathan David Katz, who co-organized the Schwules show. “Walking into Amos’s Baltimore home was as close as I can imagine to seeing King Tut’s tomb for the first time. There were thousands of amazing photographs, each unforgettable and unprecedented. The first thing you saw was their formal sophistication and otherworldly beauty but then the emotional arc hit you like a ton of bricks.”  

“This was a history I never knew but can now never shake,” Katz said. 

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Travel photography is one of the broadest genres in photography.

It involves taking pictures of landscapes, people, culture, food, nature, architecture, and more, documenting the experience and overall atmosphere of different places and destinations. 

Creators who have a passion for photography and exploring the world might want to pursue the career of a professional travel photographer. It offers the opportunity to capture breathtaking landscapes, explore diverse cultures, and gain unique experiences while sharing them with a global audience and getting paid for your adventures. Read further to learn what is required to start as a travel photographer and discover essential ways to monetize your work.

How to become a travel photographer

Starting a career as a travel photographer might sound like an immensely difficult and expensive challenge. However, with passion, dedication, and a strategic approach, it is entirely possible to pursue this goal. By following these simple tips, you can take your first steps toward your desired profession.

1. Find your niche

Travel photography is indeed very broad. You must narrow your options by identifying preferred subjects, techniques, and styles. Think about what excites you the most about this niche, whether it’s landscapes, portraits, street photography, nature, or adventure. Develop a unique style and experiment with different techniques, compositions, and post-editing to make your images visually distinct and reflect your creative vision.

• Study the works of other photographers to find inspiration

Take a look at the works of your colleagues who already sell photo art online. Analyze their compositions, use of light, storytelling techniques, and the way they capture surroundings in their travels. Doing that can help you understand what makes an eye-catching travel photo and help you discover different ideas and styles. 

You can also note where photographers travel to take these photos; it’s important to keep up with popular and unknown destinations, as well as the latest trends in travel photography. This will help you stay relevant and expand your creative horizons.

• Start building your portfolio

Creating a solid travel photographer portfolio is essential for demonstrating your skills and attracting potential clients. If you are a beginner creator who might find it financially challenging to travel across the globe, remember that there are other affordable ways to build a portfolio. Start with exploring nearby cities or countries and capturing their unique features. Look for interesting angles, details, and moments that reflect your unique vision and style.

After you’re satisfied with your images, carefully select the best of them to organize in a portfolio, highlighting your versatility and talent.

• Find ways to promote your work

To benefit from your photography adventures, you must learn how to promote your work to gain visibility and attract clients. You can start with social media—share your best photos consistently, engage with your audience, and don’t forget to use relevant hashtags for broader reach. 

You can also create a website to showcase your portfolio, run a travel blog, and share contact information with potential clients and associates. Joining online photography communities, participating in contests or exhibitions, and networking with other photographers can also help you get noticed. 

Essential skills needed to become a travel photographer 

Becoming a travel photographer also requires specific skills to have fruitful work trips and create eye-catching visuals. These skills include:

1. Planning

Travel photographers need strong planning skills for productive trips with great photo shoots. This includes researching destinations, scouting locations, and determining the best times for capturing specific events, natural phenomena, etc. 

Without effective planning, you might face unexpected challenges, such as bad weather conditions, cultural conflicts, or traditions you might accidentally violate. Having a well-thought-out plan allows you to make the most out of your time and opportunities.

• Quick reflexes

The best shots in travel photography aren’t always planned or staged. You have to learn how to capture fleeting moments and dynamic scenes.

Reacting swiftly to changing situations, movements, and expressions allows you to seize the moment and take outstanding photos. But to do that, you have to be alert, master your hand-eye coordination, and be able to adjust camera settings when necessary.

• Adaptivity

If you want to make the most out of your photography travels across the globe, you have to be adaptive. This means that you have to adjust your shooting techniques, composition, and gear according to your environment and circumstances. This also includes being flexible in your creative approach and being open to unexpected opportunities or challenges that may arise during the journey. This will help you capture extraordinary images even in less-than-ideal circumstances.

• Open mind and social skills

It’s important to react to cultural differences with an open mind to connect with locals, understand their way of living, and show it through the camera lens. Having strong social skills is just as critical. It involves being approachable and respectful of different cultures and traditions. When people trust you, they are more open to you taking pictures of them and their surroundings, resulting in more authentic and intimate portraits and better storytelling.

• Visual analysis

Strong visual analysis skills help travel photographers quickly come up with ideas for great pictures, evaluate scenes, notice appealing compositions, and work out potential stories. It also helps spot interesting patterns, lines, textures, and colors in the environment. To improve your visual analysis, consider learning basic composition principles, such as the rule of thirds, leading lines, and symmetry.

How can travel photographers monetize their work and maximize their earnings?

Understanding how to leverage your travels and earn income by selling photos is a crucial aspect of this profession. Many individuals prefer to assess the pros and cons before starting a new career, and potential earnings can significantly influence this decision.

So here’s how to sell your photos as a travel photographer.

Stock image selling

You can sell your images through stock photography websites like Depositphotos, where individuals and businesses can purchase your automatically licensed files for commercial, editorial, and personal purposes. This can help you not only earn your first check, but also gain recognition. If people like your visuals, they can check out your profile and look for you on social media.

You can also sell prints of your work through online marketplaces or your website. Art collectors, interior designers, or individuals looking for unique decor are often interested in such visuals. 

Freelance projects

You can work as a freelancer for travel magazines, websites, tourism boards, or commercial clients. For instance, you can get paid by traveling to specific destinations, documenting various cultural events, or creating promotional content, e.g., about vacation places.

Workshops and tours

Once you’ve gained recognition and become a professional, you can generate income by organizing photography workshops, tours, or mentorship programs. This way, you can share knowledge and experience with beginner photographers while earning money and helping upcoming talents.

Photography trips are also a great way to earn income and take other people on an adventure. Your role, in this case, would be planning and organizing the trip, choosing locations, and taking care of visas and documents if necessary.

To sum up

If becoming a travel photographer sounds like a dream job, don’t let the potential challenges deter you. With the tips mentioned in this article and some dedication, you can build the necessary skills and start exploring the world through your camera lens.

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