My Life As an Adventure Photographer | Nat Geo Live

• Hello everyone, thank you so much for coming. My name is Becca Skinner, and I'm a National Geographic Young Explorer and an adventure photographer. Before I get started and tell you why, in this photo, I'm carrying 110 liters of camera gear across the coast of Canada, I just wanted to give you a little bit of background.

So, I'm based in Bozeman, Montana; it's so beautiful, and this is a little cabin that I stay at quite often. But most of the time, I'm on the road. And I know most of you have houses or apartments, and maybe you're looking out the door at a front yard or backyard, but my view often looks like this. This is my front yard or backyard.

I'm also based out of my bright yellow truck, named Happy. Very unstealthy, it's about National Geographic yellow, but this is my view a lot of times when I'm on the road. I was spending so much time on the road last year that I actually had a friend help build me a bed in the back of the truck; it's way more comfortable that way. So, you can see the two storage systems on the side, and then I have this bed in the middle, which my dog and I fit perfectly in that little nook, and obviously, a coffee device in the corner. (laughter)

And I would argue that this is actually more comfortable than my bed at home. So, I know I just said I spend a lot of time outside or on the road, but I just wanted to give you some statistics about how much time I actually spend outside. Last year, I kept track, and I slept outside for 242 nights, which estimates to be roughly eight months of the year. That means I was inside about 123 nights, which also means I only took about 123 showers last year, (laughter) which is not that much. But don't be dissuaded, I showered this morning. Please, still come talk to me after the show. (laughter)

But most of my showers looked like this. Being an adventure photographer means I get to see incredible places; my day is never the same; it just keeps me on my toes. As you can see, there's quite a diversity of images in this picture. But yeah, it's always different, and that's part of the reason I love this job. The only thing consistent is I drink a very, very strong cup of coffee every morning.

But 90% of my job is really fun, and right now, I'm working for a lot of outdoor companies, creating content. A few of these photos have not yet been published, so you get to see them first—so yes, quite diversity. Ninety percent of my job is really fun, and the other 10% is totally miserable—well, kind of.

Being an adventure photographer also means I'm dealing with the elements 24 hours a day, seven days a week, when I'm out in the field—not something you typically think of when you see beautiful images on Instagram. So like, this day, we were up at about 8,000 feet, and the winds were about 30 miles per hour. It got to the point where it was such a terrible blizzard outside that I could no longer see the people I was taking photos of. So, I hunkered down for about 10 minutes until the whiteout passed, and then we decided it was probably okay, we could go home.

Or there's days like this, where the elements turned me into a beautiful Lady Gandalf, (laughter) with an ice beard. On this morning, it is negative 20 degrees. I am wearing five jackets in this picture, and the condensation from my breath, because it was so cold outside, created this awesome ice beard in my hair. I couldn't pull it apart until it melted, which wasn't until about 11:00 in the morning.

And at these temperatures, you're also, I'm being very aware of frostbite. One of the people I was with started to get frostbite on her toes, so we turned around and went back because, also part of this job is knowing when to call it. Or there are days like this when it poured rain. Last year, I was on an expedition with this guy, Bertie Gregory, and we were filming for Bertie's digital series for Nat Geo Wild; it's called wild_life, and it just finished its last episode, so you can still watch it. Check it out.

But in this photo, we're about 75 miles off the coast of Vancouver Island, and we're the only people on the island. We waved at our float plane as they dropped us off, hoping that we had enough food and gear and that our sat phone was working. Bertie is building a wildlife hide, which is basically a wildlife blind; it breaks up your shape because we were on the coast, and we wanted to try and find coastal wolves for this expedition. We needed a way to break up the shapes, so we would sit in this hide, and this actually contributed to about one month's worth of my not showering because you can't alter your scent—wolves will smell you, or wildlife has pretty great sense of smell.

So, no showering was a strict rule for this trip, and I feel bad for our float plane pilot that had to take us home. But in situations like this, where it's pouring rain, you're starting to be kind of concerned about your gear. And that's a question that I get a lot: how are you dealing with your gear when you're out in the field in the elements for the whole time? And the truth is, it gets first priority in your tent, (laughter) you must have a good tent; you need to really trust your equipment.

But this is about a quarter of our gear. Actually, I'm holding one camera; there's a few more behind me that you can't see. This is a four-person tent, and in the spaces where two other people would typically lay was all of our camera gear. When you want to stretch out, you can't because there's batteries behind you, batteries beside you, and we had to start sleeping with batteries in our sleeping bags. It's not because I have a weird thing with batteries; it actually helps prolong the life of them. If they're not warming up and cooling, and warming up and cooling, you can just stick them in your sleeping bag, and your body heat helps keep them warm, and they last longer.

But I haven't always been an adventure photographer; I haven't always been on Instagram, which I will tell you about. I started Instagram in 2012, and at the time, it was just being used as a really casual way to share parts of your life. And no one was really using it for business or promotion.

So, part of a really fun part of pulling together this presentation is I dug through my images and found my very first Instagram photo, which I am so excited to show you. It's really compelling, (laughter) my dog. (laughter) This is my dog Vedauwoo; this is her sunbathing position. I saw her draped over this garden hose in the backyard, and I thought it was funny because she pulls her legs up like a T-Rex when she gets like that.

And obviously, pretty comedic. So, on my iPhone, I thought it was funny, snapped a photo, put like four filters on it because that's what you did, and then posted it to Instagram—so not a lot of forethought. Also, my favorite section of the bookstore, (laughter) again, though it was funny, took a photo with my iPhone, posted it immediately— not a lot of forethought.

So I had Instagram as an app, and I was also storytelling on the side, but it never really occurred to me that I could do both—that I could combine that effort because no one was really using it like that. In 2010, I had won a grant from the University of Wyoming to go document post-Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and how they were recovering, so this was kind of my first experience in the field.

That project led to a National Geographic Young Explorer's grant to document post-tsunami Banda Aceh, Sumatra, that was pretty decimated by the tsunami. And if anyone in the crowd is between the ages of 18 to 25, or if you know someone in that age that you think might be interested in the Young Explorers grants, they're such an awesome opportunity, and please come talk to me afterwards. Because it got my foot in the door with National Geographic, and it funded my first big field project documenting the tsunami.

I had a kind of similar idea for my Young Explorers grant on how Banda Aceh was recovering, and I feel like this photo really sums it up—in my entire project, into this image. I like to play a game with this photo called find the boat. Yeah, sort of in the middle. This barge had floated inland, and you can see the coastline in this photo.

So a couple miles it floated in and settled there, and instead of tearing it apart, the Indonesians decided, “We'll just build around it.” So you can pay a penny, and you can walk up onto the barge and look out over the city of Banda Aceh, Sumatra.

But really, really interesting. So, I came back from my Young Explorers project, so jazzed about photography. Like, this is what I wanted to do; I was living my dream. But there was this big jump in my head between what I just got to do as a grantee and being a full-time photographer, and I didn't really know how to make that jump.

So, I was working for the State of Wyoming as a grant writer, and I decided to save up a bunch of money, and that I would go travel. So, I ended up taking time off of that job and traveling to just shoot photos because that's the only thing I knew how to do and the only thing I really wanted to do.

So this road trip ended up being about 32,000 miles around the American West, just with my dog and I. This is on a small break. A mouse had climbed into my engine compartment, and at the time, I was sleeping in this vehicle. I was sleeping in the truck, and the entire night, I could hear it run across the dashboard, and it kept me up all night, so this is like 5:00 am in the morning.

Little did I know, my traveling around the West and creating these images, just because I wanted to and because I loved it, was creating this kind of visual diary on Instagram. I made the switch; I stopped taking pictures with my iPhone and posting them. Just taking photos with my camera and posting them there.

I had no idea that people were paying attention until I started to gather this audience. When I hit 20,000 followers, my mom wanted to get me a cake, (laughter) and I was like, “No, no, no. No, no, no, people don't do that, thank you though, very, very kind.” But I didn't really realize that people wanted to see what I was shooting until I started to gather this audience.

So, at the very end of 2014, I decided I would make the jump into full-time freelancehood, and it was like a major, major leap of faith for me. So, as soon as I publicly announced that I was going into full-time photography, I immediately panicked. I was like, “Oh no, maybe this isn't right.”

So when I panic, I go fly fishing, so I left for a week on a fly fishing trip in the backcountry of Montana. And when I came out of the backcountry, I had an email from someone, and I thought it was spam. It wasn't spam; it was from a fly fishing company that wanted me to shoot their entire campaign for that year.

When I finally spoke on the phone with them and asked them how on Earth they had found me, they said, “Through Instagram.” And that was my first freelance job; they found me there.

So, for most of the first half of 2015, last year, I got that fly fishing job in 2014, and then I didn't get another email for months. Again, panic. So I decided, “Okay, I would go on more trips,” because I knew that it was a gamble, but it was an investment in making more images—things that were compelling and things that I wanted to see. And I think it shines through when you're doing something that you really love.

And so, I started creating things like this—just totally diverse. Then it struck me partway through 2015 that I could kind of start leveraging the audience that I had built on Instagram to companies or for projects that I wanted to do. I wanted to travel, so I would send out notes to companies and say, “Are you interested in this expedition?” And that's how the expedition to Panama was born.

This is my friend Clare Fieseler, who is a fellow Young Explorer grantee and my favorite expedition partner. We had been in contact with this company called Oru Kayak, and we had proposed—it was Clare's idea—to circumnavigate this island outside of Panama called Bastimentos. You can see it up there with the little pin. It doesn't look that big, but it was a four-day trip.

And we had two objectives for the trip: one, do a social media story for Oru Kayak and, two, write a blog post for National Geographic Adventure. And there were only some problems to begin with. Problem number one, or complication number one, Clare and I had never worked together.

And this may not seem like a big deal, but sometimes your expedition partners or sometimes your friends don't make the best expedition partners. So, we had been talking about a much larger circumnavigation, but we decided we should probably make sure we like each other before we jump into a multi-month trip.

So we started having these Skype phone calls. At this time, we were in two different countries, and both of us were traveling really frequently. So this Skype conversation was the last one before I went to Panama. I obviously had a headlamp on, and I'm like standing on my tippy toes at the top of a peak because that's where I can get cell phone service. And Clare is in her room in Panama, and she doesn't get cell phone service on the island either, so we're like trying to piece together these Skype meetings.

Problem number two, or complication number two, we had never used the kayaks before. Just keep that one in mind. (laughter) Complication number three, we had no idea how much carrying capacity they had, which might not be that big of a deal thinking about it, but when you start adding things up—like, our self-supported gear—tent, sleeping pad, food, water, and then camera gear.

I don't know how many of you have a camera body with its various heavy, heavy appendages, but it starts to add up. So we had no idea how much would actually fit into the kayaks. Just a little bit of background on the kayaks: they start as a two by three box, and they unfurl into those large white kayaks that you saw Clare and I standing in front of—roughly about 16 feet.

They are really—well, the website and directions said, “Give yourself 15 to 20 minutes to put them together,” and so Clare and I were like, “Awesome, that's great, we can do that.” So we put it off until the last thing we did; it took us a little bit longer than 15 minutes. It took us about two and a half to three hours. They are a little bit more complicated than we initially thought, (laughter) so you can see it getting darker. (laughter)

The other thing that kind of put off because we didn't know the carrying capacity was the grocery list and knowing that we were going to be kayaking multiple miles a day. I had put together a last minute but very calorie-efficient grocery list with what was available at the Panamanian grocery store on the island of Bocas del Toro: cheese, peanut butter, apples, water, rum. (laughter) Calorie efficient.

So Instagram became this way to tell these little vignettes, these stories, and/or as I like to call them, learning curves, of what was actually happening on the expedition. Learning curve number one: Clare and I are in a rush to get out the door to start kayaking. We finally figure out that everything fits in the boats—win—the boats float—win number two. We finally start paddling, and it's been a year and a half since I've kayaked.

I was carrying 110 liters through a temperate rainforest in Canada; I had not been rowing. So, a few miles into the trip, I am hoping that my arms fall off to give me an excuse to stop paddling against the current. And I start to panic because the current is really, really strong on the ocean side, so it's pulling me one way, and I'm just digging with my left hand, and I'm starting to panic. Clare's a little bit away from me, so I’m paddling, and I yell, “Clare, how much further do we have to go?”

And she's paddling, digging with her left paddle, she's like, “I don't know, look at the GPS.” And I'm paddling, and I'm like, “You have the GPS!” And we both kind of turn and look at each other, stop paddling, and realize that we left the GPS. Yes, this is a circumnavigation! There's an island on one side, there's an ocean on the other; it can't be that hard, right?

Well, there are these mangrove entrances with GPS coordinates. The mangroves are so thick from the outside that in a lot of the places that we were going to stay, we actually could not locate where the mangrove entrances were. This is when we finally found one on the first night, we were going to stay at a fishing lodge.

And they just happened to be blowing through conch shells, and we were like, “Let's follow the conch shells; that sounds promising.” And we ended up there. So good! This is the Instagram post that we did with this: the best and scariest parts about expeditions are the unknowns. There were quite a handful on this trip.

Clare Fieseler tending to the fire after a long day of open ocean dealing with my seasickness and the lost GPS. Learning curve number two: because we were lost, we were supposed to sleep at an indigenous village, and both of us were so excited about this. Because the southern part of the island is not a tourist destination; it does not get visited very often.

And we had the opportunity to camp with the indigenous people in their village, which was so exciting. But because we were lost, we couldn't find the mangrove entrance. We decided to camp on this beach instead. The last photo that you saw, that's where we camped. And we decided, the next morning, “It's okay, we will find this village; we will portage,” which when full of possessions, the kayaks, when we lifted them up to portage, they started to bow the other way under the weight.

Which is not something you want from a foldable kayak, so scratch that plan, dump out all of our possessions, refold the boats, and start portaging the boats with our camera gear on our backs. And we start to go down this trail, which starts on this bridge, and then the trail was off to my right. We start to go down this bridge, and we run into a local.

So exciting! The local gives us some very, very key information. Clare Fieseler in a short portage: Originally, Clare and I were going to portage our gear for a mile to an indigenous village. Right as we were packing up to start hiking, we were told that the dense jungle path we were going to use was actually a crocodile trail. (laughter) Narrowly avoided that one. (laughter)

So Clare and I had come up with the hashtag #PaddlingPanama. You can kind of see it down there on the left, and we used that to curate these images together to do this eventual blog post. Mine is here on my left, and Clare's, “How Circumnavigating an Island by Kayak Is Like Speed Dating.” (laughter)

We were laughing and joking while we were paddling that expeditions are like explore Match.com because you're trying to put out these small little fires when you're panicking and you're like, “Oh, you deal with it like that?” “Me too, okay, we're good, we can go into the field together, we're a match.”

So Instagram has done so much for my life; it's really brought into my world. It's allowed me to connect with people that I never dreamed of connecting with and share my images just outside of my community. I will continue to share. It's also introduced me to some of my best friends. This is my best friend Heidi, and these are seven-year-old chickens sitting on our heads.

It's introduced me to some wonderful people, and as much as it's broadened my world, it's really shrunk it too. I use it to check conditions of places if I'm going somewhere and need to look up the weather, then I will look up the location and see what has recently been posted. I obviously use it for business, but, yeah, it's also shrunk my world and introduced me to some really wonderful people.

It's such a great tool for connecting, so I hope you will connect with me there too. (applause)