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As a new digital nomad, traveling and accommodations can be a significant expense.

especially when your income from content creation is still growing or you have not achieved financial independence yet. Even in low-cost Southeast Asian countries, accommodations play a crucial role in your budget. Rent for accommodations typically accounts for roughly half of the expenses, but it can be more.

So lowering costs would be an excellent way to begin mitigating the risk.

If that’s you and you also have camera equipment, then you can do what I did after I lost my last business, which was do hotel photography in various hotels and not pay at all while building a portfolio.

Let me show you how…

Let’s start with the basic equipment you need to pull this off:

1. Camera

   Contrary to popular belief, as long as you have a decent DSLR or mirrorless camera from the latest generation, you'll be fine.

   There's no need for super-high-end items.

   I still use my Canon 5D Mark IV that I bought back in 2017 and haven't switched to mirrorless.

2.  A super wide-angle lens for interior photography so everything fits in the frame and we get the real estate photography look like this:

   I use a Canon EF 11-24/4L USM lens. This is an expensive one but there are also plenty of more affordable ones out there.

3. A tripod. Yes, there is no way around it because, without it, you can’t do bracketing shots or “flambient photography”.

   I use this one: K&F Concept 200cm Stativ

4. A flashlight (optional for high-end results)

   I use this one: NEEWER Z760-C TTL Blitz Speedlite

Photo: Karuna Villas, El Nido

Utilizing a flashlight, you can easily achieve these "window pulls" and improve the overall lighting in your pictures, which will render the interior looking more balanced and expert. There will also be more accurate colors.

The Basics Of Hotel and Real Estate Photography:

To capture stunning hotel photos, focus on good lighting and composition. Use natural light whenever possible and frame your shots to highlight the room's best features, ensuring the space looks inviting and spacious.

I recommend Nathan Cools YouTube Channel Nathan Cool offers excellent tutorials on real estate photography, providing practical tips on lighting, angles, and editing to make your photos stand out.

The Method

1) Research:

Lets say you want to go to Bali for the sake of this example. Choose your dates and wait for the the results to populate on the first page.

You have to look for places that look beautiful but don't have the best pictures of them. You do not want to go to the most expensive or least expensive ones. You have the best chance of winning somewhere in the middle.

One of the things that surprised me the most when I started out doing hotel photography was the number of places that had really bad photography.

As you can see, the picture above is not good; it has blown-out windows and bad overall feeling, but it is a nice room. You can tell that this would look awesome if only they had had a good photographer!

Luckily, they have you now

2) Book the place.

Yes. Don’t even reach out. Just book it; you heard me right.

3) Shoot your room: 

Once you are there, before you put your luggage in the room, the first thing you will do is do the photoshooting of the room.

4) Edit the photos (or outsource that part)

This is the most tedious part I personally hated, and that is also why I did not continue as a hotel photographer. You really have to enjoy that part too to make it as a pro hotel photographer, I think.

5) Talk to the manager

Since you are a guest, they will facilitate whatever wish you might have 😁

Say hi, make a friend and tell the manager:

Then shut up.

What happens next if the photos are really good is that in 50% to 70% of the cases, they will say that would be awesome and because of the law of reciprocity, they will at least want you to stay for a few nights for free and if they don't, that’s ok too, since you gained experience. It is a win-win situation anyway.

Thanks for reading, as always

Cheers, Roman!

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