Picture this: delicious food, beautiful sights, waking up in a different bed every morning. There are so many flight tickets, and you don’t know where to put them. And you get a paycheck from the likes of National Geographic on top! If this sounds remotely like you – in which case I am very glad you stopped by this article – you must be among the world’s most famous travel photographers.
From the bustling streets of Tokyo to the Himalayas and beyond, travel photographers go where few others dare. The rest of us get to fantasize and admire the results of their hard work in awe. And that’s exactly what we’re here for today!
The Best Travel Photographers in the World
To celebrate their accomplishments, as well as to shed light on what it takes to excel in this genre, we are going to look at the work of some of the best travel photographers around.
Join me and discover the magic behind some of the most incredible photos of the century from around the world!
Chris Burkard
A travel photographer of the classic globetrotting explorer stripe, Chris Burkard has shot award-winning pictures on every continent on Earth. With that said, his stunning aerial landscapes and breathtaking adventure photography of polar regions are his most well-known.
Thanks to a significant presence on various social media channels, as well as the occasional dip into filmmaking, Chris has managed to amass a gigantic following and dozens of accolades from prestigious publications and photography contests.
Ami Vitale
Ami Vitale’s career stands as a testament to her deep dedication to documenting and addressing global crises. As an acclaimed National Geographic photographer, writer, and documentary filmmaker, as well as the founder of Vital Impacts, Ami has consistently spotlighted critical issues affecting our world. Her journey began in conflict zones, where she observed firsthand how environmental degradation—from resource scarcity to climate change—intensifies human suffering and conflict. This early exposure shaped her understanding of the profound connections between human and environmental crises.
Vitale’s work focuses on the stories of individuals living on the front lines of war, climate change, and extinction who refuse to let cataclysm define their futures. Through her compelling journalism, she highlights stories of resilience and innovation, emphasizing the delicate balance between humanity and wildlife and the urgent need for conservation. Vitale’s work connects viewers to critical local conservation issues of global importance, underscoring our interconnectedness with one another and the natural world.
Alex Strohl
A landscape artist with a hot-blooded attitude, French-born, Montana-based Alex Strohl is one of the leading exponents of adventure photography on both sides of the pond.
His daring travel photography often sees him perform significant physical feats on land, at sea, or even in the air to get the shot. That has not just earned him recognition from the likes of National Geographic and Gentleman’s Journal. It’s also led to significant commercial work with some of the world’s leading outdoor and luxury brands.
Daniel Kordan
Young travel photographer Daniel Kordan has had the kind of career many of his peers could only dream of. A full-time traveler and shutterbug specializing in landscape shots, Kordan is an Instagram feed favorite and a rising star in the wider community.
His awe-inspiring nature photographs explore both the natural beauty of faraway places as well as the familiar sceneries of world-famous cities and architecture.
Sennai Senna
Speaking of photographers with a huge social media following, some would say nobody does it better than Sennai Senna. With over a million followers on his Instagram account alone, he’s a significant presence in the online travel photography scene, and for good reason.
Senna’s images are always full of life and fun to look at – it’s ‘easy viewing’, perfected, and excellently composed. Each trip takes Senna to a new location, and since he hardly likes to discriminate, there are few corners of the globe he hasn’t shot and written about yet.
Jim Richardson
Some travel photographers may start out as daredevils venturing off the beaten path wherever it may lead them but eventually fall so deeply in love with a certain place that it ends up serving as an inspiration for their work for years to come.
For Jim Richardson, Scotland is this place. He first began documenting its landscapes, people, culture, and wildlife almost thirty years ago for National Geographic, and he’s never stopped taking photographs and telling the country’s stories since then.
Benjamin Hardman
A young photographer with an already bright career, Benjamin Hardman specializes in one of the globe’s regions that’s the most difficult to capture in images – the Arctic and sub-arctic.
With a passion for showcasing the unique life and nature that lies hidden beneath the ice and snow, Benjamin continues to take groundbreaking shots out of his home base in Iceland to this day.
Johan Lolos
A master of both print editorials and commercial adventure photography, Johan Lolos is a versatile artist with a distinctive eye for light, expression, and emotion.
His images emphasize the human element in travel, both hardships and joys and everything in between. Wildlife, nature, and geography are also frequent subjects.
Emily Polar
Known for her candid and whimsical portraits throughout East and Central Asia, National Geographic Travel Photographer Emily Polar is truly a young master of the craft.
Her photography has a grounded yet adventurous feel to it, with lots of detail and vibrant colors. Local architecture and culture are subjects that Emily enjoys capturing to showcase the diverse beauty of the various places she visits.
David Lazar
Australian-born David Lazar is a veteran travel photographer with a passion for depicting everyday life and culture in faraway places, in particular, South and East Asian countries. He got his start during the early 2000s with a photo series of Thailand, Myanmar, and Japan, and has since traveled and shot pictures the whole world over.
His work typically combines intimate portraits showcasing the rich cultural traditions, fashion, and rituals of the local people with vast, inspired landscape shots of the beautiful places surrounding them.
Chase Guttman
A three-time recipient and the first American to be awarded Young Travel Photographer of the Year, Chase Guttman is more than just a rising star. Throughout his short career, he’s already distinguished himself through his personal style, which makes heavy use of drone-assisted landscapes and aerial shots with wide-angle lenses. In fact, Guttman authored one of the first-ever books on drone photography, which received critical acclaim from publications such as Travel + Leisure, The Telegraph, and Lonely Planet. He even won an Emmy Award for his use of drones.
Guttman was named a World’s Top Travel Photographer by Condé Nast Traveler, a World’s Most Successful Travel Photographer by American Express, a Rising Star by Instagram, and won the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Storytelling and Exploration—a lifetime achievement level honor. He boasts an impressively long list of prizes and accolades for his young age.
Annie Griffiths
Widely known as one of the first woman staff photographers for National Geographic, Annie Griffiths has made female empowerment and feminist issues cornerstones of her photographic journey through Ripple Effect Images.
Through award-winning portraits and landscape photography, featured in LIFE magazine and the Smithsonian, to name but two, she sheds light on important social issues plaguing many societies on Earth, large and small. She seeks to use her art to inspire positive change and is actively photographing for numerous aid organizations around the world.
Lisa Kristine
Like many of her peers, Lisa Kristine did not drop into this career out of happenstance. Instead, she has deliberately and consciously used her travel photography towards goals that she is deeply passionate about.
In Kristine’s case, that is chiefly to promote humanitarian causes in many of the literal hundreds of countries she has visited and photographed in. Raising financial support and documenting important causes, such as anti-modern slavery activism across Central Africa, has helped her establish herself as one of the most important travel photographers of the century.
Her work has been featured in publications like CNN, the Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Condé Nast Traveller, and countless others. That’s in addition to exhibiting her work at many high-profile events, the most famous of which is arguably an exhibit at the Vatican in the Pope’s attendance back in 2019.
Lucy Laucht
Passionate about capturing even the remotest places in natural light and with a human touch, Lucy Laucht has quickly made a name for herself through her emotional, raw, and often deliberately imperfect travel photography that emphasizes the sheer beauty and diversity of some of the world’s most fascinating places.
A Leica Ambassador, Laucht’s latest award-winning photo series has been turned into a book titled Il Dolce Far Niente. Shot entirely on film using Leica camera gear, it tries to capture the emotional sweetness and the beautiful landscapes of Southern Italy during summer.
Michael Yamashita
Among the most accomplished and famous travel photographers of his generation, Michael Yamashita deserves to be called a living legend. Active with National Geographic since 1979, he has shot over four decades worth of award-winning travel photos from all over the globe. Many of them are exhibited in some of the most prestigious museums worldwide.
These include his famous photo series exploring the travels of Marco Polo, shooting epic landscapes that lay along the explorer’s real-life route.
With a background in Asian Studies and a strong affinity for exploring remote landscapes throughout Asia, Yamashita has been called one of the major photographers helping to bridge the East-West cultural divide.
Jimmy Chin
A multi-talented star and self-described adventure athlete, Jimmy Chin combines award-winning landscape photography with a passion for outdoor and extreme sports, best known for co-directing the Academy Award-winning documentary Free Solo.
In his work, he mixes traditional photography, filmmaking, skiing, mountaineering, and unusual feats of athleticism in a unique cocktail of his own style.
What results are stunning images that capture natural wonders from an angle we rarely ever get to see.
Trey Ratcliff
Among the most famous travel photographers and photo-bloggers of his generation, Trey Ratcliff has defined what it means to be a 21st-century travel photographer for many.
With a huge following on social media, including millions of followers on his Instagram account alone, Ratcliff is definitely no stranger to publicity.
Through his vast, breathtaking landscape photography, which often features extreme perspectives and dynamic range, he has made a name for himself around the world as a source of travel inspiration. His images continue to be featured in some of the most prestigious outlets on the globe.
Sam Horine
Of the great travel photographers of today, Sam Horine was among the first to combine documentary-style footage of faraway places with digital self-publishing. That includes, in particular Instagram, of which he was an early adopter.
Horine’s work consistently takes him across the globe and is nowadays by and large commercial. He shoots for some of the biggest brands and names in the world, including capturing material for the tourist boards of many countries.
Melissa Hie
Indonesian-born Melissa Hie is living proof, though that you can not only approach travel photography from a totally different angle than the mainstream and get away with it. It can actually make you one of the biggest names in the business!
From the beginning of her still young career, Melissa Hie has specialized in travel food photography. In exquisitely-staged and always densely-researched photo series and blog articles, she examines and promotes the cuisines of the world’s nations.
Through her social media brand Girl Eat World and her blog of the same name, she aims not just to combine beautiful pictures with her passion for travel but also to educate on the diversity of culinary traditions in different cultures around the world.
Lisa Michele Burns
A travel photo-blogger with a penchant for wildlife and conservation, Lisa Michele Burns has made it her mission to capture the beauty of the world not just to move her audience but also to promote important environmental causes.
Burns is most known today for founding and running The Wandering Lens. Once a small travel photography blog, it is now a huge online presence where photographers from all over the world collaborate and share techniques, guides, and more.
If you’re on the lookout for a resource to learn more about travel photographers and the images they take, it’s one of the best places to start!
Gary Arndt
Since his impressive career took off, millions of people from around the world have relied on self-taught photographer and travel blogger Gary Arndt for travel tips and stunning images.
Arndt’s story is literally decades in the making, so it deserves a whole article of its own.
Suffice it to say that Gary has had the kind of success most others only dream of, turning a small idea into a huge business that nonetheless still allows him to do what he loves.
A real globetrotter, there are few places that Gary’s journey has not yet led to and whose insightful and entertaining moments and images he hasn’t shared.
Brooke Saward
One of the premier female travel photo bloggers worldwide, Brooke Saward, whom you may better recognize as the face behind World of Wanderlust, is a real star on the scene.
With an eye for the needs of her broad readership, Brooke’s blog was one of the first to cover the entire traveling experience in pictures.
Tiny moments like checking in at the hotel and Instagram-friendly highlights like peak views both get equal attention. That makes her blog a real treasure trove of info for those who would like to know what it’s really like to go on that very special trip.
Joshua Cripps
A master of landscapes, Joshua Cripps has made a name for himself as one of the most talented travel photographers on the globe.
His striking images often feature steep cliffs and gorgeous mountains, in particular in and around the Sierra Nevada, the place that stole his heart and inspired both his travel fever and his love for photography.
Kiersten Rich
You might better know Kiersten Rich or Kiki, as she often introduces herself to her readers as The Blonde Abroad. Rich’s popular solo female travel blog has grown to a gargantuan size over the last ten years or so, turning her into a major voice in what is nowadays a burgeoning scene of women solo photo bloggers.
Passionate about photography herself, it wouldn’t be too long after the blog’s initial rise in popularity that Rich’s images would become a major part of the appeal for her audiences.
That’s how she turned to Instagram, where she has built up an equally impressive portfolio as on her own site. That’s in addition to a regular photography-themed rubric on The Blonde Abroad, which openly discusses her choices of gear, technique, and post-processing.
Take Away
In the end, there are about as many travel photographers as there are ways and places to travel, which is to say, a whole lot and then some.
There is absolutely no need to try and see your mirror image in any of the people we featured today. The reasons why you travel, and the reasons why you take pictures in the first place may be entirely different, and that’s okay! You may not even describe yourself as a ‘travel photographer’ yourself strictly speaking, as – you may have noticed – plenty of the people we surveyed today choose not to do either.
What matters is that you take their work at face value and use its fine qualities, the stories of travel and adventure and the photographic technique that they used to immortalize them and to fit their creative vision, in order to inspire yourself. With that, good luck and till next time!
