Bella Falk: Making Travel Photography Pay
In this episode of the SheClicks Women in Photography Podcast, Angela Nicholson is joined by award-winning travel photographer, writer and documentary director Bella Falk. Bella is the creative mind behind the acclaimed travel blog Passport & Pixels and has carved out a colourful, multifaceted career that merges storytelling, photography and ethical travel. With images published by National Geographic Traveller, BBC Travel and Lonely Planet, and over 30 travel industry awards and finalist recognitions under her belt, Bella brings an insightful and inspiring perspective to this conversation.
Listen to another episode of the SheClicks Women in Photography Podcast
Angela and Bella begin by exploring Bella's early fascination with photography, shaped by an early interest in art, encouragement from her parents and hours spent in the school darkroom. Bella's love for storytelling and travel led her to study English and later work in television, before developing her unique blend of visual and written narratives that characterise her current work.
The conversation covers everything from the joy and challenges of solo travel to the realities of freelancing across different creative industries. Bella shares the highs and lows of her work as a travel photographer and documentary filmmaker, offering a candid look at the difficulties of navigating border closures, tight budgets, and shifting commissions during the pandemic.
A passionate advocate for responsible travel, Bella discusses the impact of tourism on local communities and wildlife, highlighting the ethical dilemmas faced by modern photographers. She explains why she’s careful about who she works with and how she uses her work to support small and ethical tourism initiatives. Her recent collaborations, including a shoot for a grassroots African tour operator, illustrate her desire to give back through her creative skills.
Bella also reflects on the role of photography competitions, her methodical image organisation, and her drive to balance writing, directing, photographing and travelling. Listeners will gain a better understanding of what it takes to pursue a portfolio career as a creative and why variety, passion and tenacity are key ingredients for success.
This warm and wide-ranging episode is packed with stories, insights, and practical wisdom from someone who’s made it her mission to document the world, while staying conscious of the footprints she leaves behind.
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Episode Transcript
Bella Falk
Angela, everybody is there all the time. Click, click, click, with your phone, with your camera, everything goes on social media. I think we kind of have to rein it in a bit, and we have to think a bit more carefully about what impact we're having on the people in the communities that we're visiting.
Angela Nicholson
Welcome to the SheClicks Women in Photography Podcast. I'm Angela Nicholson, and I'm the founder of SheClicks, which is a community for female photographers. In these podcasts, I talk with women in the photographic industry to hear about their experiences, what drives them and how they got to where they are now. This episode is with Bella Falk, whose childhood love of photography dovetails perfectly with her passion for travel and led to a colourful life as a travel photographer, documentary director, writer and creator of the acclaimed travel website passport and pixels.com She's won or been a finalist in more than 30 travel industry awards, and her work has appeared in National Geographic traveller, BBC travel and Lonely Planet, amongst others. Hi, Bella. Thank you so much for joining me today on the SheClicks Women in Photography Podcast. It's really lovely to see you.
It is lovely to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Oh, you're very welcome. So can we kick things off by hearing about what first piqued your interest in photography when you were a child?
Bella Falk
Well, goodness me, we're going back a few years, maybe more years than I care to admit now I don't know if I have an answer to that. I was quite artistically minded as a child, and I did then go on to do art GCSE and art a level. And you know, in the mediums that you can choose to use when you're doing art, photography was one of the options that I chose. And at school, I would bring a camera into class, and I would take pictures, and I joined the photography society, and I did a dark room club, and I think my parents kind of encouraged all of that. So, you know, birthdays and things I'd get given pinhole cameras and various other little kits and bits and bobs. I just think I enjoyed the creativity of it. And obviously, I'm quite a creative person, so it just fed into that I was never very kind of good artistically, in the kind of flare of art like, you know, there are some people who can just splash paint around and make something beautiful, and I'm not very good at that. I was sort of capturing things in in a in a different way. It was sort of more definitely what I was better at, I think. So.
Angela Nicholson
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I think I feel quite the same actually. I mean, I loved art at school, but photography, I just find that somehow an easier process. I suppose it just it works for me. So neither of your parents was a photographer.
Bella Falk
No, my parents liked to take family photos, like obviously many parents do, and my mother would make photo albums. So there's lots of old you know, this was obviously the air of printing them out and sticking them in. So I know I remember that happening between the ages of about 11 and about 25 I was so self conscious about the way that I looked that I refused to have my photograph taken. So I would always then prefer to be on the other side of the camera, almost as a way of getting out of having to be in the shop. And so there might have been something in that as well. Yeah, that is a good way of getting out of a lot of photography, isn't it, or getting out the photos just I'll do the photography. Yeah, and did you start to combine photography with travel? Well, I started travelling on my own straight after school. I took the proverbial gap year, and I went to South America. And at that stage, I just had a sort of point in squirt camera, as I would have called it, a compact. And really enjoyed using it. Came home, made albums. But I think I found it frustrating, because the pictures were never as good as I wanted them to be. So after I got back, that's when I got my first film, SLR, and, you know, was leaning much more into, you know, how can I get the images that I can see other people are doing? Because what I'm getting with this little thing is not enough. It's not good enough. And you're just always striving to be better and kind of evolve and mimic, or, you know, try and do my best to mimic the professionals or the better shots that I could see, and, yeah, and it just kind of kind of grew from there.
Angela Nicholson
How did you feel about the move from film to the digital photography?
Bella Falk
I was very keen. I was, I'm always a bit of a later adopter. I didn't get my first mobile phone until long after everybody else had. I really resisted that change. And the same with smartphones. So lots of people had digital, you know, long before I did, and I was quite happy with my film camera. But there comes a point. There came a point with film where, you know, just the hassle of having to go and get the prints and the restrictions of only being able to take 636, photos before you then had to, you know, change the film, and that gets expensive. Obviously, digital is the shots are free. Basically, once you've got your card and and you can try and practice and as long as you want, and you get results instantly. So I know there's lots of people who are, you know, still very passionate about film, but for me, digital is just, you know, it's absolutely brilliant, and I would never go back.
Angela Nicholson
I'm exactly the same. I remember when I was thinking about buying my first digital SLR, I sat down, I added up roughly how many rolls of film I'd used over the last year. And as soon as I did that, I thought, I need to buy a digital camera, because it was gonna save me a fortune.
Bella Falk
Yeah, there's definitely, obviously, there's. The cost side of it, but it is also just, I love the fact that I can, I can take an image, and then I can see if I got what I wanted, and if I didn't, I can do it again. And, you know, you can play. You can be like, oh, I'll just try this. And if it doesn't work, you can delete it. And that that I think pushes your creativity as well.
Angela Nicholson
Do you enjoy editing your images?
Bella Falk
Up to a point, yes, I think when it's down to me, and it's like, I just want to play with this. And I just, I love when I come back from a trip, particularly if it's a wildlife photography trip, you know, going through and looking at the images that I've got, and it's a really great way to kind of revisit the destination and the things that you did. And even a year or two or five years later, you can sometimes go back, and it sort of brings all those memories back, which I love, I less enjoy. You know, when you're kind of on a deadline and you've got to submit, you know, particularly if you're working with a, I don't know if it's a hotel or something, and you've just got to give them, you know, 50 images to choose from, of interiors of the hotel, whatever that might be, that's sort of, that's less exciting, and it's just got to be done. And then it gets a bit it gets a bit boring.
Angela Nicholson
Are you really good at keywording your images and sort of organising them properly?
Bella Falk
No, I Well, I think I'm quite good. My Folder Structure is solid, so I can always find something if it's the destination, because I can, I've got a pretty good memory for, obviously, where I went. And when it gets harder, the further back I go, it's like, if I'm looking for a picture from Cuba. What year did I go to Cuba? Or that's that can be harder, but they're easy enough to find if you just search for Cuba in the file structure. I have tried to get better at keywording animals, because I shoot a lot of wildlife, and sometimes it's like, oh, where was that photo of the lion? And particularly if I can generally remember that that lion was in that location, but it might have been. I might have been in that place for five days, and I'll, at this point, I'll have a folder for every morning game drive and every afternoon Game Drive, or whatever. Otherwise you end up with folders with 1000s of images. So I, the last few trips, I've been quite good about keywording, and then it does really help. If you're like, oh, I want to find the Warhol baby photo. You can just put in warthog baby, and it'll just pop up. That is, I should do that more, but it's quite time consuming and a bit dull. I wish I was better.
Angela Nicholson
I'm investigating some AI assistance, I think, for keywording, fingers crossed, that'll that'll really help out soon. As you mentioned, you photograph wildlife. You photograph locations. When you're planning a trip, is it the location or the species that is the biggest draw.
Bella Falk
It slightly depends on the trip, I mean, because obviously, I'm doing a lot of this for work. Some of it, you know, it has a more financial, you know, motivation, if I'm honest, if people are going to pay me well, and it doesn't sound like a terrible time, I'll go or not just a terrible time. But I also, you know, I do like to be quite picky about who I work with, you know, in terms of sustainability and responsible tourism, I don't particularly want to work with big, giant hotel chains or anything like that. You know. I'd rather work with smaller organisations and and people who are who kind of need the help, I think. But then, you know, if it's down to me, it's either places that I've already been that I just love, like, you know, basically anywhere in East Africa or Southern Africa, or species that I haven't seen before, places that I, you know, have heard really great things about, but never been. I'm very keen to go to Japan and see the snow monkeys, for example. So, yeah, kind of sometimes it all. It can be just, you know, if I'm not really busy at that time, and then offer pops up, and I'll be like, Well, that sounds fun. So you know, I don't do a great deal when I'm at home. I don't have kids or anything like that, so I like to be away. If I sit around at home for too long, I start to get a bit twitchy.
Angela Nicholson
So how much your time, roughly, do you spend away from home?
Bella Falk
It can really depend, like so I was away a lot at the end of last year and the start of this year, I had four, almost back to back trips to to I went to Kenya, then I went to the States, then I went to Botswana, and then I went to Palau, which was a very random, and that was just an offer. I'd never thought of going to Palau. And then Nat Geo traveller said, Did I want to go? And I was like, Well, sure, great. So now, yeah. And it was, it was fabulous. It was fabulous. But then after I got back from Palau, I did turn a couple of things down, because I was, at that point, I was a little bit burnt out, and I was quite tired, and I just wanted to be in my space for a bit, and, you know, go to the gym and have my routine and see my friends and so on. But now I've been back since February. It's now mid April, end of April, and I'm, I'm going away again soon, so I'm quite pleased about that.
Angela Nicholson
Getting itchy feet?
Bella Falk
Umm.
Angela Nicholson
So it's most of your work commissioned. So you get a commission, and then you plan the trip and travel, or do you pitch ideas to people as well and then plan a trip around it?
Bella Falk
It's a bit of both. I sometimes, yeah, have ideas and pitch. So the Botswana trip sort of came out of an idea, and then it got bigger and bigger and bigger, because I just went, Well, if I'm going to be in Botswana, I might as well do this and this and this and this, and then pitching a lot and seeing what sticks and where you end up. And then other times, I might get a press trip invite, but the press trip invites are generally reliant upon a commission, so you'll get the invite, but they won't actually confirm your place on the trip until you've got a commission, so the pictures are then inspired by what's on the itinerary. And. Uh, you know, what do I think this publication might be interested in? And then you have to do it that way, which can be a bit frustrating, because sometimes editors can take a while to get back to you, and in the meantime, the PR is saying we need to put the flights, are you coming or not, and not like, you know, I don't know.
Angela Nicholson
Yeah, what is a typical press trip for you?
Bella Falk
Well, my dream. Well, the ones that I love, I love Africa, obviously, are wildlife. So I'm going, next month, I'm going with the Alberta tourism board to look at sort of ancient and modern wildlife in Alberta. So that means a few days of going to the Badlands to look at dinosaur fossils, which I'm actually really interested in and really excited about. And then once we've sort of seen the palaeontologists digging up some dinosaur bones, we're going to go to Jasper National Park, which I have been to before, and it's so beautiful. And we'll drive around and hopefully see some wildlife there as well. So that's really lovely. But then after that, I'm doing a Nile cruise, which I'm not really big into cruising. Again, they're not, you know, cruises are a bit controversial. Sometimes I think river cruising is possibly, you know, the on the sort of better end for me, in terms of the size of the boats and the numbers of people and so on. But again, I'm really interested in archaeology and palaeontology, and I've never done a Nile cruise, and it is one of those things that has always been on my bucket list to go and see, you know, particularly not just I've been to Egypt and I've seen the pyramids, but you know all those other bits of the of Egyptian history that are a bit further down the river that I've never been to.
Angela Nicholson
So do you ever go to a place and take photographs, come back and then pitch?
Bella Falk
I did that with Guatemala. Oh, a couple of years ago, I was working on a documentary about the ancient Maya civilization, and I was supposed to go on a shoot. This was during COVID, and just about a week before the shoot, I caught COVID, and they obviously couldn't go. So I was extremely upset about that. And this is a sort of I was working from home, obviously, and this was the time when you basically weren't allowed to leave the country unless you had a work reason. And so very upset. And then I was like, well, after this is finished. I have I've just got to go. I'm not going to miss all of the chances to see all these places and meet the people that I've been, you know, speaking to on Zoom for so long. So about another year of doing the edit and being allowed to leave the country. And then eventually I went to Guatemala on my own. It just again as a kind of look. I just need to get out and travel. And I chose Guatemala, partly for that reason, but also partly because I was thinking, What can I pitch that doesn't will be very photogenic, and maybe doesn't feel like it's been done so much before, and Guatemala felt like a country that I hadn't seen in the press that much. So I went, Yeah. And I paid for it all myself, obviously. And now since then, you know, I've done so. I've had so many commissions and sold so many images, and Guatemala was a really, really good choice for me, and I've definitely earned the cost of the trip back and then some. So, yeah, that was really good. But generally now, because, you know, I'm sort of known, and I get offers of work, I'm more often, you know what, I wait for the invite and then I go, because the travel is expensive, as you know, and photography doesn't pay very well, as you also know, and it's very hard to make the cost of the trip back if you're paying your own way.
Angela Nicholson
Yeah. Do you ever get commissioned purely for your photography? Or is it always a bundle with words as well?
Bella Falk
It's, so far, it's always been a bundle with words. I am in conversations at the moment about possibly going out to work with a hotel brand to photograph they offer. It's sort of hotels and tours and experiences as well. I did, actually, I did in October last year, the Kenya trip that was with a company that just wanted me to photograph and and video their experience, because that was a new company. They're called Walking Wild Africa. And it was this lady, she's, she's just a small, independent tour operator, and she didn't have much on her website in the way of content, and she wanted to revamp her website and start up and upping her social media game, so I went out there to do one of her trips and capture everything, and then just delivered her this big package of content, which then she's now using all over her social media and her website and whatever to so that now when people book, They can really see what what they're going to get.
Angela Nicholson
Yeah, that sounds like a really rewarding thing to do, you know, to take a small organisation and really help them show them what they what they do.
Bella Falk
Yeah, actually, I'm really glad that I did that. And no, because she's lovely and they're the company's lovely. In fact, she decided, after I did that, that she was going to donate all of the profits from those tours to charity, so that she does other things. So she's a, she's a travel agent, and so she makes her living doing that. And then these tours, she's going to, going to run a few a year, and they're all going to be not for profit. So, you know, it's really nice to have been able to help, and it's obviously a great shop window for me, because her website, even if I do so so myself and the web designer also takes a lot of credit, but the website looks absolutely beautiful now, and I'm hoping, hoping that that means that I can then show this to other organisations and be like, this is, this is what I can offer and help you with did the writing come as naturally to you as the photography? Yes, I think so. I mean, I, I was always a good student. I was good at English. Similarly, as a child, I would write stories for fun, because, you know, clearly I was, I was very cool. I. Had a very good and inspirational English teacher in secondary school. And, you know, was always encouraged. I did English a level. And yeah, being a writer was kind of something that was possibly something that I thought I would do. And I thought, when I thought I was going to go into journalism, you know, print journalism might have been an option. And I did at university. I did the student radio station and the student newspaper, and then my journalism path just sort of ended up with me being in in television rather than in print. But, you know, at the school age that was I could have possibly gone either way.
Angela Nicholson
Yeah, now you're also a producer, a director and an editor. How do you combine all those various strands of your business?
Bella Falk
With difficulty. It's just, it's like most freelancers in the creative industries, you know, I have a portfolio career, because you can't necessarily rely on one thing giving you consistent work all the time. TV, you know, was consistent for 20 years, but has now, you know, is also changing, and the jobs are getting shorter, the contracts are getting shorter or fewer. It's still a very, very competitive industry, and it's not an industry always that rewards longevity. So it's almost as though the older I get, the harder it gets. You know, young, new people with fresh ideas are coming in, and they're cheaper and they've got possibly more energy, and I'm still, I'm still quite energetic. So you know that that can be challenging. But I also love the photography, and I love the writing, and I don't want to just pick one, because, you know, I'm good at all of it, and I enjoy all of it, and I like the variety. So it's just difficult, really, to juggle in my diary, because you never quite know when something's going to happen. And I've got this at the moment where a TV company is saying, Oh, are you available on these dates? Because we think we might have something, but it's not confirmed. So then I'm trying to keep those dates free, but then something else comes up, and I'm like, Well, I want to accept this because it's a bird in the hand, but actually, the TV job is a longer project and will pay better and trying to kind of manage that is really hard.
Angela Nicholson
Yeah, it always seems to feast and famine as well, doesn't it, with those sort of things. You know, they all come along at the same time, or people start to approach you about something, and you really have no idea of the time frame.
Bella Falk
Yeah, yeah. Well, like, like I said, you know, I've had some quiet time here, which has been really good. I've been pitching. The problem is, as well with pitching, is that you pitch a lot of stuff, and then you might not hear back, and you don't know if it's going to land or not, and then suddenly, four or five people suddenly get back to you having not replied for weeks, and go, yes, and you're like...
Angela Nicholson
How soon can you do it? You said, when you first like travelling? You travelled alone when you left school. Do you still travel alone quite a lot.
Bella Falk
Oh yeah. Well, I mean, I don't. I don't have a partner, so I I don't have someone easily, on hand to grab, to go away with, and friends occasionally. But again, it's hard, people's diaries and hard and lots of my friends have got kids, so mainly I travel alone, or, as I say, press trips, and which tends to be small groups of other journalists all travelling together, which is quite nice. It's quite a sociable thing, but from photography point of view, so is better, because then, you know, you can wait for the perfect image, or you're not, you know, being hassled by the tour guide to get back on the bus or whatever. But it also has its downsides, you know, from a safety point of view, from a social point of view. So, you know, I'm kind of on the fence.
Angela Nicholson
Do you have any safety tips for travelling alone?
Bella Falk
Oh, goodness me. I mean,
Angela Nicholson
How many, should I say?
Bella Falk
You know, I wrote a whole blog post about safety in Guatemala, because it was one of the things that was really worrying me before I went. You know, you hear a lot about, oh, don't go to Central America. It's super dangerous. And, you know, and I'm blonde, and I was carrying all of this expensive camera gear, and everybody was saying, you're going to get robbed, and it's going to be terrible. And I was very anxious before I went. And, you know, and I had a great time, and it was totally fine. And I walked around with my camera out and took pictures of people. And I remember the first day I got there walking around with my camera, and I had it in my bag, and I was so nervous about taking it out, and I would just get it and take a picture and put it back again. And I was like, this is not gonna work. I can't do this for the next three months. You just have to kind of, you know, get used to it. But, you know, the safety rules generally, I'm quite a sensible person, and I'm not gonna do things like get raging drunk and get into a car with a stranger, or even, you know, I don't particularly if I'm travelling on my own. I'm not going to go out after dark on my own. I'm not going to hike on my own, you know, I do keep I do get my camera out, but I'm sort of quite aware of my environment, and maybe I've been lucky, you know, bad things do happen, but also lots of people travel and have a lovely time and nothing happens.
Angela Nicholson
So are you careful about telling people where you're going or what time you'll be back, and that kind of thing?
Bella Falk
When I'm travelling on my own? No, no, I just, if I'm in a hostel or whatever, I'll just go. But I do tend to book group trips, you know, I like, so I'll either travel on my own, so Guatemala did go by myself. But I also quite like sort of group tours. When you travel, you know, you go there by yourself, but then you have a group and a guide, which is not really solo travel, but you can go on your own. Or when I'm in a destination, maybe I will just join a data or something like that. Because, apart from anything else, just getting around, if you're on your own, sometimes you can be waiting hours for buses or just you don't even know. It takes so long to figure this stuff out. You're sort of like, I'm a bit like. I'm here. I want to do the thing. Yeah? I don't want to spend hours reading bus timetables or looking for the bus station. So I don't, yeah, but I would never tell the hostel reception, oh, I'm going to be back at this time. I don't think anyone does that. Do they? Maybe they do.
Angela Nicholson
I don't know, but maybe, maybe somebody does this tends to be advice when you're hiking through, I don't know, the Scottish Highlands and things like that.
Bella Falk
Yeah, I don't hike. If I do hike on my own, I don't go very far, and I don't go off the beaten trails, but I'm always so worried about getting lost. I'm not particularly great at navigating on my own, so certainly for hiking, I would go with a group or a guide.
Angela Nicholson
So you're going to be talking at the Amateur Photographer magazine's Festival of Outdoor Photography in London at the end of May. What are you going to be speaking about?
Bella Falk
I am going to be speaking about ethical and responsible travel photography. Okay, I'm not going to tell anybody what they shouldn't, shouldn't do, because I'm not an expert either. But just more giving you things to think about, because I think travel photography has evolved so much now. You know, from the days when travel photographers were quite few and far between and they would take, you know, a few photos on a roll of film, and then it might be published in a magazine to today, when everybody is there all the time, click, click, click, with your phone, with your camera, everything goes on social media. I think we kind of have to rein it in a bit, and we have to think a bit more carefully about what impact we're having on the people in the communities that we're visiting.
Angela Nicholson
It's also, it's not just your trip, is it? Because your work often encourages more people to go, and therefore, you know, so there's that kind of, yeah, come see this amazing, rare species, and then suddenly everybody's trampling all around it. It's quite a difficult balance.
Bella Falk
It is a difficult balance. And I don't, certainly, I certainly don't have all the answers, but I guess it's just to try and get people to think about it a little bit more, because I think maybe people don't even consider, you know, you're just it's just me. I'm just taking one photo. But then if 30 people have already done that that day, you know, it's a cumulative effect, as you say, yeah.
So which day you're going to be speaking?
Friday, Friday morning.
Angela Nicholson
Okay,great stuff. Okay, well, look forward to that.
Bella Falk
Me too.
Angela Nicholson
It's a really good time to go to Six from SheClicks. I've got 10 questions from SheClickers. I'd like you to answer six questions by picking numbers from one to ten. So if you could give me your first number, please?
Bella Falk
I'm gonna do this totally randomly. Nine.
Angela Nicholson
Number nine. Oh, this is a good one. What would your work colleagues on a project say are your best qualities? That question is from Liz.
Bella Falk
Oh, goodness me. Well, I'll tell you a story that the assistant producer who I worked with on the Guatemala documentary that I then didn't go on the shoot with. He went with a different director in the end, but when he was assigned to me, and when we and we did all of this by zoom. So I met him on Zoom, and we worked together via zoom for weeks before I met him in person, and he said to me, I'm so excited to be doing the show. I really wanted to work with you, Bella. And I was like, Oh, it's just trying to suck up to me, and and I said, I really, why is that? And he said, Well, I saw you in the office one time, and you were on the phone, and you were really going at someone, but in a kind of in a polite way, but in a very firm way. And I was like, and he said, Oh, well, you know, she's, she's, she's she's a badass, I don't think he said badass. I don't actually like that word, but, you know, she's, she's clearly somebody who gets stuff done, and she knows what she's doing. And, you know I need and you know he, I respect that, and he wanted to work with me because of that. So that's, that's one thing. Yeah, I certainly do get get things done.
Angela Nicholson
Great. Oh, that's nice. Tenacious.
Bella Falk
Yeah.
Angela Nicholson
Sound good. Sounds good. All right, can I have your second number please
Bella Falk
Four.
Angela Nicholson
Number four, you've won a lot of awards or been a finalist many times. Which recognition of your work means the most to you and why? That question is from Helen.
Bella Falk
Ooh. This changes, because sometimes, you know, I really enjoy being recognised for my photography. So probably the one, maybe the one that I'm proudest of, is winning Best Photography at the Travel Media Awards in 2020 which is, annoyingly, the one year when they didn't have a fancy awards ceremony because it was COVID. Yeah, I was nominated in 2019 and I didn't win. And I was nominated again in, I think, 2022 and I didn't win 2022 the year that I did win, yeah, no fancy awards do. I didn't get to go up on stage and accept my little glass thing. But then sometimes when I enter, because I enter the writing categories and the photography categories and the blogging categories, which is how I, how I end up with so many nominations, because I'm doing all the different things. And then if I get a photography nomination, but not a writing one, then I'm like, But what about my writing? So I yeah, I'm never, never quite satisfied.
Angela Nicholson
Okay, all right, can I have your third number please?
Bella Falk
I'm gonna go three.
Angela Nicholson
What is the most challenging project you've worked on, and why? And that question is from <arie-Ange,
Bella Falk
Oh, gosh. I mean, are we talking photography or television? Because television is always very challenging. Well, I guess it could be either. I mean, again, just because, I guess it's front of my mind, but that, that's my Guatemala documentary was the reason it was so challenging, obviously, was because of COVID, and we were trying to set up this shoot across three different countries. So it supposed to be filming in Mexico, and then Guatemala, and then Honduras. So we were trying to cross borders during COVID, um, which meant, you know, trying to. Work out, where are you going to get a PCR test, in, in Japan, in Honduras, before you cross back into, you know, and, and even just a lot of our budget got swallowed up ridiculously with before, when we went to Mexico, when you the rules where you got to Mexico, you had to be in quarantine for, I think, it was a week before you were allowed to leave your hotel. So that was, you know, paying for people's time, paying for hotels, our budget got absolutely decimated by that kind of stuff. And that meant obviously less money to spend on the filming and on screen. And that meant trying to work out the schedule, and how can we shoot everything that we need in fewer days? And then, oh my god. And then at one point, Mexico closed all of its borders, and then we were suddenly like, oh well, all of these stories we were going to film in Mexico. Let's see, can we do them in Belize them in Belize instead? So then I had to do a load of research about the Maya in Belize, and then come up with some proposals. And then, actually, then Mexico reopened their borders, and then the head of the Mexican archaeology authority died of COVID. No. So all of the archaeology departments and everything, all of the access we were going to get they were like, right? Nope, absolutely nothing's happening. Now we can go again. This is on and off and on and off, yeah. So that's again, why, when I, when we finally got it all sorted out, and it was 10 days before the shoot, we were actually going, and then I caught COVID.
Angela Nicholson
Gosh, yeah. Was there no point before that? You thought, let's just do it some other time.
Bella Falk
That's That decision is never up to me, you know, because the production company had the commission from the channel to make the film, and we were just, you know, my job was to just to get it done. As I said, like, tenacious. You just gotta, you just gotta find a way. And you know, they're pretty good about being realistic. So, you know, nobody's gonna go, No, you well, you give them the choice, don't you? Like, if you really want us to go to Mexico and do this, you're going to have to wait, because now the borders are closed, or we can offer you this alternative, but, yeah, you just got to keep going. So it was basically, I mean, that came down to a whole heap of logistics that more problems than normal, but it's logistics rather than the subjects or the method you were employing for the filming in that case, yeah, in that case, I mean, we had a sort of similar issue in actually earlier, just before I started doing that project where I made some films about some archaeological sites in Turkey. And one particular one, the actual archaeology team were from a university in the south of Italy, and when we were trying to film there, we obviously wanted to interview them, because it's their project, but because it was COVID Again, this was in sort of august of 2020, we couldn't get them from Italy. They, I think the rules were that they were not able to come. And so then we had this problem of, well, we got to find other people to interview, but they were not happy at all about us interviewing other people about their work. And we were like, well, you know, this is published work, and other archaeologists can comment on it. It's not like, we know, revealing anything secret that hasn't already been in the press. And we can understand that you want to be there to talk about your own thing, but we can't get you there. So what are we going to do? You know? And then they were like, Well, why don't you just come to Italy and interview us, you know, in our offices in Italy. But that wasn't like, the format of the show involved people actually walking around the archaeological sites. Then it got a bit political. Yeah. Actually quite a lot of politics in the world of archaeology. You have to be quite careful of.
Angela Nicholson
Okay, worth knowing. So, can I have your fourth number please?
Bella Falk
What have we not done? Five?
Angela Nicholson
Number five. Oh. Now this follows on from the other question about awards. How important to you are photo awards? And how do you decide which to enter? That question is from Philippa.
Bella Falk
I think awards are actually a really great way of getting notice if it's if it's a sort of smaller rewards thing. I don't tend to enter the big ones, mostly because a lot of them charge quite a lot of money to enter. And I have entered in the past, and after a while, you're a bit like, what's the point this? You know, I sort of, maybe I don't have the confidence to think that I'm actually going to win. So, you know, and I've been shortlisted a few times. The only paid one that I still enter is the Wildlife {hotographer of the Year, just because I am, you know, such passionate wildlife photographer, and because I'm just, it's a bit of a bee in my bonnet that I've got about that one. I just really want to get a photo in the exhibition. And I have been shortlisted five times, six times, and every time you get that email, you're like, oh my god, it's such a buzz. And I don't know, you know, I'm sure they must shortlist, obviously, people, because the more people they shortlist, the more it encourages you to enter the next year. And you know, then you're going to pay your fee. But it's also quite a reasonable cost. You pay 25 pounds, or 30 pounds, I think it is now to enter 25 images. So it's not that bad. There are other ones where you pay per image, or, you know, and you're paying, you know, 20 pounds an image or something that I just, you know, can it can add up really quickly.
Angela Nicholson
Yeah, that adds up quickly. But, like you say, Wildlife Photograph of the Year, that is a whopper of a competition. But it's the most fabulous exhibition and book as well. So yeah, if you're in there, then what a fabulous reward. I think it is one to go for.
Bella Falk
100% but the smaller ones, you know, the most the awards that I get nominated for are kind of travel media ones and UK ones. I was, I think I did get an image in the British wildlife photographer of the year book a couple of years ago. I didn't buy the book in the end, but that was, you know, it's nice. And Travel Photographer of the Year I used to enter, but again, that's quite an expensive one, so I don't any. More. And partly with that, I feel as well that, and this is totally justified. The people who win are generally, they based in these locations, and they're the people who can go out every day in whatever light, or they can wait for the perfect light, and they can get, you know, the incredible shots. And because I live in West London, which is basically grey and concrete, I'm going, my travels are quite I don't travel as much as people who live in these destinations, and you have to get very lucky to get in a really amazing, award winning travel image, you know, on a one week trip to somewhere, it can happen. But I think, you know, and I see the one the people that win, you know, these, these incredible local photographers, and absolutely, you know, great. They deserve it. They're going out every day, and they're, they're really honing their aircraft on their one specialist subject that they're doing every day. You know?
Angela Nicholson
So in their defence, somebody in London can take photographs in London that qualify as travel photography.
Bella Falk
Of course, you're absolutely right. You can, and I maybe should, but I don't know, because I live here, it just doesn't feel as though.
Angela Nicholson
Yeah and yeah, maybe not your kind of wildlife.
Bella Falk
No, but I say that to people as well. I say, oh, you know, you must get out and practice. And I do go to Richmond Park to photograph the deer. And I, you know, and I do occasionally go out with my camera, but I think also, because I travel so much and I, and then I end up coming home with 1000s of images to edit when I get home, the last thing I wanted to pick up my camera and go straight out again.
Fair enough. All right, so can I have your penultimate number, please?
Angela Nicholson
10.
Number 10, is there any place or animal you'd be very happy to never travel to or see again? That's from Marie-Ange. So a slight twist on the bucket list type question.
Bella Falk
Goodness me, for again, how do I don't know. I don't want to say it without without offending anybody.
Angela Nicholson
Well, maybe it could have been some experience in that place or with that particular animal, I suppose, rather than the place itself.
Bella Falk
Well, I went to Dubai a long time ago. I didn't love Dubai. I went to visit some friends. This was many, many years ago. But I'm again, I'm not going to say I would never go to Dubai again, because I'm sure there are parts of Dubai, if you can get out of the malls and the air conditioned cars and the shopping centres, and then, you know, I'm sure there's lovely bits of that area that are great.
Angela Nicholson
It's not in your top five. Shall we say?
Bella Falk
It's not in my top five? No, I certainly got a top probably got a top 25 I'm sure there are, there are. But I'm sort of also very much the opinion that, you know, one bad experience in one place does not then, mean that the whole place is terrible. You know, I didn't have, I haven't had particularly brilliant times in India. I've been twice. I find it quite I find it very chaotic, and the mindset of the Indian culture is just so completely different from my very British, punctual. This is how things work. Let's get to let's get stuff done. You know, mindset that I was filming in India on one occasion that I did find it incredibly difficult to kind of keep stick to my schedule. So that was really hard. But that certainly, no, I'm definitely not saying I would never go to India again, because I I've never seen a tiger, and I would really, really, really love to do that.
Angela Nicholson
That's quite a draw.
Bella Falk
Yeah, 100%.
Angela Nicholson
Okay, so your last number please?
Bella Falk
Two.
Angela Nicholson
Number two, you do so much, how do you fit it all in? It's a serious question. Do you compartmentalise the different facets of your business and how do you allocate time to the various projects? So we kind of touched on this, but I think this person is thinking on a day to day basis. This is from Philippa, by the way.
Bella Falk
Hello, Philippa, thank you for your question. I don't do much else. If I'm honest, I don't, as I mentioned, I don't have a partner, and I don't have kids, and I live by myself so and I've turned, I've somehow turned my hobby into my job, which means I now don't have any hobbies, so kind of all I do is work. And I know that might sound really sad, but you know, I have friends and I go out occasionally, but when I'm at home in my little flat, literally, all I do is I go to the gym for an hour every day, and then, apart from that, all I do is work. And I just, I'm not very good at kind of organising long, sort of thinking that far ahead. I don't sort of diarize anything. I just kind of do what's the most pressing thing. And if I haven't got anything pressing, I'll do what's the thing that I'm interested in doing next. I mean, if I haven't really got anything, I'm very, very good at procrastinating, but productively procrastinating. So if, if there's a thing that I have to do that I can't really be bothered to do, I'll do something else useful to get out of doing the algorithm, even my procrastination is product area. So yeah, I kind of, I just, I just, yeah, do whatever is the most important thing, and I'm also not very good at having things hanging over me. So if I've got something to do, I just I'm never somebody who's going to leave it until the last minute. I had a deadline, a writing deadline, to write about this hike that I did in Kenya last year for this one that I mentioned with this Walking Wild Africa. The art, the article isn't even going to be published until 2026 and the the editor said, Oh, you can send it to me sometime towards the end of the year. And I was like, well, I'll just do it now because, because then I don't have to think about it anymore. And I don't, you never know what's going to happen in the future, what is going to come up. And I don't want to suddenly get to near the end and suddenly be rushing to get it done. And I'd rather do it while it's fresh. So I. Kind of consistently keep going.
Angela Nicholson
Is there a risk, though, that something major will happen, maybe something political or something and they have to say, right? You're going to have to add that in to whatever you've written, because there's a change.
Bella Falk
Yes, possibly, then they might pull it, and I won't get paid until it's published. And, you know, I did spend a few days, or a couple of days writing it, but I don't know. I mean, I just, I wanted to get it done while it was fresh in my head. I think otherwise it would be harder. Otherwise, it would be harder in a year's time to even remember. I mean, have notes, but yeah.
Angela Nicholson
It might just be a paragraph change anyway, but.
Bella Falk
Yeah, well, I mean, they might put, you know, if Kenya suddenly, you know, has a civil war and you can't go to Kenya anymore, then they might not want to run the story. But hopefully that won't happen.
Angela Nicholson
When you're working on a project, say you're away, you know, working on a documentary or something like that, are you 100% focused on that? Or do you allow a little bit of time to think about the next project and start planning? Or do you work in very discrete bubbles?
Bella Falk
I do tend to be very focused on what I'm doing, which is almost, in a way, how I kind of ended up doing all of this other stuff on the side. Because when I was doing TV, 100% of the well, not 100% of the time, but as my full time job, you'd be so focused on that project that I would never have time to work out what the hell I was doing next. And also, I'd be so exhausted by it that after it felt after it finished, I couldn't even think about starting another one until I had a bit of a break. So then I would have these big gaps between the contracts when I'd fallen off the end of one and I hadn't found the next one, and then I'd be sitting at home being like, well, now what do I do? And as I said, I'm very you know, I'm a busy person. I like to be busy, and I say I procrastinate productively. So that's when I started my blog, and that's when I started doing all of this other stuff just as a way to fill the time between the TV contracts. And then it kind of just sort of took on a lot. Took on a life of its own.
Angela Nicholson
Okay, well, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast and answering all those questions. It's been wonderful chatting with you.
Bella Falk
Thank you so much for having me.
Angela Nicholson
You're very welcome. Bye.
Bella Falk
Bye.
Angela Nicholson
Thanks for listening to this episode of the SheClicks Women in Photography Podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. Special thanks to everybody who sent in a question. You'll find links to Bella's social media channels and websites in the show notes. I'll be back with another episode soon, so please subscribe to the show on your favourite podcast platform and tell all your friends and followers about it. You'll also find SheClicks on Facebook, X, Instagram and YouTube if you search for SheClicks net. So until next time, enjoy your photography.
