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Ben Verlooy
@benverlooy
Landscape photographer based in Belgium
It’s only been two years since I first started taking photographs. But actually it all started with me impulsively buying a drone I barely could afford.
After my graduation, I went off and booked myself a plane ticket to Morocco to see what the world had to offer. When you’re away from home for a longer time, you experience the things around you more intensely. At least, I do. And during my travels in Morocco I met so many interesting people and got to see so many beautiful places, that I was determined to travel elsewhere. And Mexico it was! But before I left, I bought myself a drone. I thought it would be fun to make a film about my months in Mexico to have some kind of reminder for later.
I was there for four months and traveled to a couple of places. I landed in Cancun, which wasn’t my kind of scene (way too touristy), and then traveled in the yucatan area for a couple of weeks where I visited Tulum and its cenotes, to Bacalar and its magnificent lake, Valladolid and its temples… Lots to see! After those weeks I took a flight to Chihuahua in Northern Mexico where I hopped on the El Chefe (only train in Mexico) to the west coast. In this area there’s almost no tourists in the winter months and it was the perfect local experience. You can hop on and off the train and witness amazing places such as the Divisadero Canyon. Once I arrived at the west coast I surfed at a lot of great spots along the coast (Sayulita, La Ticla, Nexpa, Puerto Escondido) until I made my way back to Cancun to go back home.
"Both Mexico and Morocco taught me an important value: Share more."
The people are very hospitable, prioritizing you over themselves to get good food and a good rest, taking good care of you as if you were part of the family. It’s like they have lots of love to share, even if materialistically they don’t have much to share or to offer. That also made it hard to keep focussed and stay alert as it wasn’t always as safe, especially in the north of Mexico.
I filmed all these experiences with my just acquired drone, but of course, as I didn’t know what I was doing the video turned out pretty shit. That made me want to learn more about how to actually make videos and photos though. So I bought a camera and took off to Indonesia with a friend. This is where I learned the basics about photography so I could apply it in future projects.
I don’t have a lot of patience so I’m kind of a run and gun guy when it comes to capturing nature. I like the saying ‘done is better than perfect’, but sometimes it pays off to wait a while too. There needs to be a balance. Also, I think that I should connect more with other photographers because there’s only so much you can learn on your own. And it’s way more fun. Besides, to keep learning, I’m trying to shoot other genres than landscape because I think it will help me grow as a photographer. Looking up the basics of these other types of photography and just trying it out is a fun process of trial and error and I hope to incorporate the things I learn from that in my landscape photos. My first professional job was for a small surf organization, filming and photographing surf camps. After that, I made some videos and photos for small companies, realtors and a music band. In the future, I would love to work with outdoor brands and their sponsored athletes or tourist boards around the world to make promotional work for them.
I still have to learn a lot on a professional level, and probably on a personal level too. But I’ve learned this up till now: you have to show what you create even though sometimes you think it is very bad. If people don’t know that you take photography seriously, you get less opportunities to learn. That might be pretty common knowledge but it was harder for me when it became reality. I’m still hesitant to tell people I’m a ‘photographer’. For me the word has the connotation of being a professional. I don’t earn enough to live off it at the moment and I kind of connect that to being a professional. I like that it is so easy and accessible these days though, to just pick up your phone and start taking photos, but it also makes it very easy to call yourself a photographer. In the end it is just everyone’s perception of the word and we should not let that influence our ambitions and stop ourselves from hiding what we create. There is no level that you need to reach to be allowed to share your work.
"But things like winning a prize in a worldwide DJI contest made me realize that even though my work can still improve a lot, I’m going somewhere."
I think my favorite shot is a good example of that. It’s a photo I took of a local worker in Indonesia. He was working on his field when I asked if I could film what he was doing. He was so friendly and told us some stories about his farm afterwards while giving away some of his freshly harvested fruits. The photo is far from perfect but it reminds me of the valuable lessons I learnt during my travels: be happy with little, share the little, complain less and embrace as if it were big. Just like this Indonesian farmer; he gave up his (probably precious) time and fruits for us even though there was not necessarily an advantage in it for him. Maybe these are pretty cliché life lessons, but when you get to experience them for yourself they seep through even harder.
"I admire such people and they inspire me."
Each person contributes to who I am today and I value every single stranger I met along the way. I’m a pretty easy going guy so I adapt quickly to new situations, people and cultures, but when traveling, the hardest for me is coming home. Knowing that you wouldn’t be able to see ALL of the people you’ve met along the way anymore because they live so far away across the globe. It feels like you know these people already for a long time when in reality you mostly only met them a week ago, or even just a few days.
"Every experience or encounter you have when you travel alone is more intense, because you know that it is definite."
I try to change my mindset so I can experience this appreciation back home as well. Here we use to spend a lot of time inside our homes and focus on career and future. We should make more time to meet strangers sometimes and just be more kind to each other in general. It all sounds very cheesy when I put it like that but I truly think that we can experience so much more at home when we would be a bit more impulsive and open up to strangers, just like when we travel.
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