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Roy Mosterd
@roymosterd
Travel and adventure photographer based in the Netherlands
We used to go camping with the whole family during the summer holidays. We would go to France or Italy with the caravan; it was the highlight of the year for me. I loved going camping and the whole thing around it. New environment, spending the whole day outside, the feeling of sleeping ‘outside’ and above all lots of space to play, roam and discover! I always felt a little sad when we arrived home, you could say I had camping sickness instead of homesickness – the strong longing to see and live the unknown, go on adventure. And I still have this; I am still fantasizing about all the beautiful places in the world that I can explore and learn about.
"Places and trips that help me grow personally, challenge me physically and nowadays, places that inspire me to capture them in all their essence."
"Doing photography wasn’t obvious to me. At school I didn’t have subjects I was particularly good at and I was more or less interested in all of them."
This made it hard to choose what I wanted to do after high school. In the end I chose to study Communication and Multimedia design – I dropped out after one semester. Working at the computer the whole day was something that didn’t make me happy. I just wanted to be outside and only thinking about doing this for 3,5 years more was devastating and discouraging. The career coach from school asked me; “what do you really enjoy doing?” That was easy, snowboarding! Short after that conversation I left to Austria to do a course to become a trainer. There I met Rens de Wild, the trainer of the course. We had a good vibe together and we often took the same lift up to the ski slope while he would be telling me about all the adventures he had had on his snowboard. I admired him and we stayed in touch even after the training had ended. One year later he reached out to me asking if I wanted to help him and Stephan Verheij to shoot some photos of their freeriding. It was one of the most awesome weeks in my life and on top of that, these photos ended up at the covers of two different magazines.
"That was the decisive moment; being outdoors, living adventures and capturing them was everything I wanted."
"So my passion for photography and film started with outdoor sports. A dream came true when I went together with three others to Mongolia to film a snowboard expedition."
For one month we were there, in search of mountains and slopes to go down while teaching local snowboarders about free riding. It was an amazing experience and up to date my biggest adventure ever. The movie is still in the making as it takes lots of time to present the story we want to tell visually in the best way possible so it really conveys the experience and emotions of the expedition. We shot a lot of footage! That is directly the reason why I tend to favor photography over film. It is a challenge to tell a story and communicate a message with just one or a few shots and I lose myself in finding the compositions, tools and edits to achieve that. The time spent on post processing is also much shorter than when editing a video. In spite, I see that film occupies a significant part of my portfolio and I have an ambition for making adventurous documentaries in which outdoor sports are the focus.
I had the passion, I had the feeling and the skills, which I am continuously developing. I just had to find out how to earn my money that way and I was aware of the fact that making a living out of photography wasn’t the easiest goal to achieve. Nevertheless, two of my greatest gigs so far came pretty naturally to me. My first assignment was for the Dutch outdoor brand Nomad, in 2018. I got first in touch with them when I bought a sleeping bag for our snowboard expedition in Mongolia. I asked them some advice via Direct Message on Instagram upon which they proposed to provide me the sleeping bag for free in exchange for visual content. Shortly after I had sent my photos to Nomad, they asked me if I wanted to do the shooting for the 2019 collection.
"I worked out some ideas and they were enthusiastic about the plan. My first international paid gig was real!"
My last gig was in Nepal, for Momo Trekking. The owner is Dutch and he had been following me for a while already on Instagram. A few months after I had told him that I was available for a possible collaboration and eventually he reached out to me. He suggested that I would come with him and a few clients to do a trekking to the Everest Base Camp. He gave me the complete freedom to photograph whatever I wanted, a dream job! There wasn’t much budget, but all expenses were covered and I didn’t have to pay anything myself for this once in a lifetime trip.
I am certainly not the only one wishing and dreaming to visit the most breathtaking corners of the world, which are sometimes nearby, but often far away. I had been lucky with my first gigs but overall photography costs money while developing your skills and portfolio. That is why I investigated together with my girlfriend how we could organize our lives so that we would have a roof over our heads, could do the things we want and travel, without having to take on a full time job that we actually don’t like. One of the solutions is to cut down on the expenses.
"Since a house is usually one of the most costly factors that keeps us coming back every month, we decided to build our own Tiny House."
It’s a social movement that started in the US and came to the Netherlands in 2015 – encouraging a minimalist lifestyle that is more sustainable, eco-friendly and cheaper without giving up all the luxury or comfort. We designed our Tiny House ourselves and with an incredible amount of help from family we built it. We don’t have a mortgage and live relatively cheap. This way we have money and time left to do the things we really love doing, which includes traveling.
"I think that our trip to the Faroe Islands is one of my favorites."
I got to know this places thanks to Chris Burkard; his iconic photo of the waterfall on the island Vágar has been a great inspiration for me. For years I had been dreaming to visit this remote and wild place myself. Finally in 2018, I found myself standing there, staring at the very same waterfall. Feeling moved, deeply impressed and grateful at the same time. It is one of those intense happy moments that my girlfriend and I look back to very often. We have a photo I took that day hanging on our wall in our Tiny House. Each trip teaches us wonderful and important lessons, but I am still learning the most important one. Traveling is amazing and fulfills us, dreaming is perfectly fine, but we shouldn’t forget to appreciate where we are and what we have today.
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