About Me / David Coleman / Have Camera Will Travel

Welcome to my site, Have Camera Will Travel!

Here’s a little about this site (and me):

My name is David Coleman.

I’m a professional freelance travel photographer. I’ve been doing this for a while now, and my photos have appeared in a bunch of different publications, billboards, TV shows, and even massive architectural scrims. You can see some of my travel photography here.

This is my own site. There’s no team, no AI-generated content, and no corporate entity behind the scenes. I write all the posts myself. I review all of the gear personally. And I take the photos and keep the site humming. I only post reviews of gear and services that I’ve personally used or tested.

I’m based in the Washington DC area now. I grew up in Australia. I’ve traveled all over. And now I have a lovely family with young kids who keep me on my toes.

The photo at the top of this page kind of sums up where I grew up. Not too shabby. I took this a few years ago; it’s very close to my hometown. A good chunk of my life has been spent in and around the water.

My first camera was an Agfa Optima Sensor 535, which my parents gave me when I was 10 and we moved half-way around the world from Australia to the UK. I was immediately hooked, shooting slide film as we did a whirlwind tour of Europe (mostly camping, and shooting mostly Kodachrome and Ektachrome). I still have the original slides I took.

The next camera I adopted was an Olympus OM-1. My that point, I was mostly shooting black and white (Ilford HP5, FP4, Pan-F, mostly), processing it and printing in a jury-rigged darkroom I set up in a spare space in the basement. Around the time I graduated high-school, I saved up for a Nikon F801. Later, I moved onto a Nikon FM and a Nikon F100 (which still might be my favorite camera). There were detours along the way with other cameras, like a Nikonos V when diving and snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef or islands in the South Pacific, an Olympus OM-4, and an Olympus-35 SP. I still have several of these old film cameras, although I rarely break them out anymore. I didn’t immediately jump on the digital train, but I’ve been squarely on it for the past 20 years or so.

If you’re in the Washington DC area, you might know about another of my sites: Cherry Blossom Watch. That’s a site I do for fun every spring for Washington DC’s famous cherry blossoms. You can also find some of my DC-based photography at DC Photo Guide.

Other ways to follow along:

So, welcome. Please feel free to stay awhile and poke around the site as much as you like–I hope you find something of interest and (fingers crossed!) useful here.

talk soon,

David.

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