Adventures in Photography

Tuesday September 21st, 2010

Sergio Ballivian is resourceful.

I know this because he started a recent email to me by explaining that he was in the process of “trekking in the amazing Peruvian Andes.” Communication would only be difficult after he made his way to the Amazon, and then “off to Cusco, Machu Picchu and then to the jungle for the second half of the trip.”

The reason our Boulder-based photographer has been dutifully sending off emails from the Andes is that he is scouting and designing tours for a new company he has just launched called Sergio Photo Tours. As the website puts it, the goal of the company is to gather people who “share a passion for capturing a moment” and take them to new and inspiring locations to discover new images.

An example of Sergio's travel photography.

This new company brings together two of Sergio’s lifelong passions. Not only does he have an extraordinary enthusiasm for travel, Sergio has been been running an adventure travel company called Explore Bolivia since 1994, when he was still working at the National Geographic Society in Washington, DC. Through this company he has been taking film crews, photographers and adventurers to Bolivia and northern Chile—for example, he arranged a trip by photographer Joel Sartore to Atacama Desert in Chile, working as guide, driver, translator and overall “fixer” for a story in National Geographic Magazine. Sergio’s professional ventures in photography came when the tourism business in Bolivia “took a downward slide,” and since 2003 he has been a photographer full-time, but has still been running the travel company alongside.

Recently Sergio felt it was time to produce something new. “Last year I decided I needed to combine my two loves, travel and photography, and I was itching to find a way to make that happen,” he told me. But it was not until July of this year that he and his “right-hand man” Alex Miles Younger got together to try and find a way “to get the travel and photo worlds to come together in one neat package.” As they spoke on Skype, Alex “was furiously doing some typing in the background,” and told Sergio at the end of the conversation that he had registered a website for a photo tour company. It was now up to Sergio to “fill it in.”

Sergio tried to establish the site not only as a travel company, but also as a resource for information about photography and travel. He enlisted three other photographers who “have lots of real-world travel experience” to join him on the tours, which have been prepared for Bolivia, the US and New Zealand. Peru is coming “very soon,” and so are the Canadian Rockies, one of Sergio’s “all-time favorite locations.” The list keeps growing, though; Sergio couldn’t resist adding Iceland and Ethiopia as well.

As the company begins to lead clients on photographic tours, Sergio’s resourcefulness will be an indispensable advantage. Not only does he start with a background in digital photography and travel, he has a verve for experimentation. “I am actually testing out portable battery packs with solar panels on this trip,” he said. “I have a great solution for going to remote areas and still [having] access to ‘juice,’ since we are so dependent on electricity and laptops nowadays.”

-Asad