Tom Parker | Departures Magazine

Photo © Tom Parker-Courtesy Departures Magazine

I occasionally leaf through Departures; a luxury magazine for American Express card members, and enjoy seeing the photographs by various travel-commercial/editorial photographers, whose work is clearly aimed at high-end magazine publishing. It's somewhat different from mine, since many of the photographs are carefully staged, involve styling, set up, reflectors, etc.

The latest Departures issue features a spread of photographs by Tom Parker, and it showcases the beauty of Ethiopia. The issue is only in print for the time being, but take my word for it, the photographs are beautiful. In fact, most of the issue deals with Africa and the photographs that are featured were well worth my taking the time to enjoy and learn from them.

I constantly learn not only from the work of travel-commercial/editorial photographers, but (as I previously wrote on this blog) from fashion photographers as well. If you browse through Tom's work, you'll note a preponderance of vertical (aka portrait) photographs, which are favored by magazine publishers. Landscape (or horizontal) formats are more suited to story telling photo journalism (whether travel photojournalism or otherwise.

Tom Parker is an English photographer who relocated to Nepal to write for an independent newspaper. Working as a reporter for BBC Radio 4, he photographed for London newspapers. In 2004 he based himself in Sri Lanka for 3 years and covered the tsunami as a photographer, BBC radio journalist and writer.

He then moved to Mumbai and travelled worldwide as a photographer, and later was appointed photo editor of Condé Nast Traveller India, launching Asia’s first edition of the magazine. He recently returning to the UK and is currently a contributing photographer for Condé Nast Traveller India and Architectural Digest India.

His work appears regularly in international publications including Condé Nast Traveller, Condé Nast Traveler, Departures Magazine, Vogue, GQ, GEO, House and Garden, Sunday Times Travel Magazine, WIRED, Guardian, Independent, Marie Claire and others.