Hello, I am Roman and welcome to my travel and photography blog. Before getting into details I want to first thank you for visiting and briefly describe this website so you can navigate it with ease.
For all photo licensing enquiries please visit Stills.
The home page is where you can see all my photography. Each gallery is devoted to a specific location or event. Just click through and you can see all the images in full size. From the home page is also where you can access the my gear page. This is where I keep an updated list of everything I use to shoot and travel.
The shop is where you can purchase my products. All products you see there are 100% made by me from scratch. Nothing is outsourced or has 3rd parties involved. This means that all profits go directly to me thus allowing me to pay my bills and keep creating blogs, tutorials and videos for you.
Finally the blog is at the centre of everything. I write multiple blogs per week covering topics ranging from camera set up tips, photography tutorials, gear reviews, travel tips, travel guides and much more. Although many know me from YouTube, writing blogs is my primary way to share knowledge and experience in a way that comes most naturally to me.
Outside of this blog, you can find me on the following platforms:
Instagram is where I share all my photography. It is my online scrapbook. I also share short form videos here.
YouTube is where I share long form videos that cover various aspects of photography and some travel.
I am also present on a bunch of other social media apps like Twitter, Threads, Pinterest and Facebook.
Now for a bit about me. My full name is Roman Fox and I am from London. However what most people don’t know is that up until the age of 12 I lived in Israel as my grandmother is Jewish. I then spent a few years living in Wales followed by a move to London just as I entered secondary school. In my 20s I lived in the Midlands due to work however most of my time and formative years were in London.
Just like any family we had the odd camera here and there however my very first one was a gift from my grandma when I was 12. It was a Sony Cybershot. I think it was 3.2 megapixels and I loved it. I also clearly remember enjoying editing photos in photoshop and would spend hours cloning elements in and out. At one point I even offered my services on eBay and ended up retouching a few photos. During my childhood we travelled extensively around Israel and my early memories were skating along the sea front, playing basketball and spending long days at the beach. This also explains my love for the Mediterranean lifestyle, climate and culture. Whilst I was at school, I worked in a bike shop which is where my love for cycling started.
After school I went to university in London to study engineering. I was big into cars and wanted to work in F1. However after a brief stint in a motorsport team, I realised how much I hated that environment, so I set my sights on working within the automotive industry instead. While at university I picked up a Panasonic Lumix and took it with me on trips back to Isreal to see my family. At the time I didn’t really travel as we didn’t have money.
After finishing university, I struggled to find work however eventually ended up in a recruitment company in central London. Long story short it was hell on earth and I was fired within a month. This was also the first taste of not enjoying having an actual boss in a 9-5 environment. I went back to my part time job in Halfords (a car / bike accessory shop) and to make extra cash I would fix bikes on the side. About a month later through a friend I got an interview at Jaguar Land Rover for a test engineer role. Somehow I got the job and that was going to be a start of a huge new chapter.
I spent nearly 5 years working in JLR and most of that time was to do with vehicle testing. It was honestly incredible. At 21 I found myself sitting on a frozen lake somewhere in Lapland about to spend the next few hours practicing my ice driving skills. This job took me all round the world. From frozen lakes in Sweden to rally stages in Wales. From the sand dunes in Dubai to the alpine passes in Austria. From the mountains of China to the Nurburgring. I will always look back at that period with rose tinted glasses and fond memories. At this point I had a Sony a6000 and the first generation iPad Pro to edit on. I remember every day after driving coming back to the hotel and eagerly offloading the photos to see what I got. This period is the definite start of my love affair with travel and photography.
A few years later myself and a couple friends decided to start our first business. As amazing as this job was, I was a terrible employee and not fond of being told what to do or answer to someone else. Even going back to my younger days I was always trying to make extra money myself, be it selling cigarettes at school, selling photo editing on eBay or starting a remote bike repair service out of the back of my car when I was 17. The business we started focused on importing Japanese sports cars, cleaning them up and selling them. Eventually this turned into more of a garage where cars were modified before being sold. For various reasons the business didn’t last more than a few years and we went bankrupt. At the time it felt like a total failure. However it was also a collection of invaluable business lessons that would serve me well into the future.
At this point I was financially and mentally broken. The job at Jaguar Land Rover came to an end, I broke up with my then girlfriend, the business was being flushed down the toilet and I was left with over £20,000 of debt. Some of that debt was from the business, some was personally from not managing my finances properly. I ended up getting a job as a project manager for an automotive supplier. The job was about as exciting as watching paint dry, however it paid much more, provided me with a company car and it was fully remote (before it was even a thing). This job was my ladder out of the mess I was in. As my financial situation began to ease up, I upgraded the Sony to a Canon M5. At the time the Canon was £1000 and it was the most I ever spent on a camera. With this job I still travelled a fair bit. We visited factories in China, India, Turkey and Spain fairly frequently.
Despite a seemingly more positive turn, mentally I was a mess. I was single, in a job that I hated, no savings, debt and no real goal or plan. I remember feeling my 20s just disappearing and I didn’t know what to do. Given I was also working from home, I never really left the house so naturally started to put weight on and get out of shape. One day I decided I need to do something before things really got worse. I remember looking at my camera and thinking “I wish I could afford to travel” like everyone does on Instagram. I then realised that I lived just outside one of the most photogenic cities, London. So I grabbed the camera and went for a walk round town. No agenda, expectations or plan. It was simply to switch off and just walk. This soon became a habit and I started taking more and more photos. After a couple years of this, some of my friends seen my photos and commented on how nice they were and perhaps I should open an Instagram account and publish them. So on January 1st 2018 I opened my IG account and published my first few pictures.
By the summer of 2018, I was going out to shoot multiple times per week and by the end of that year I even began to amass a small following on Instagram. My photography was total trash but I could see slow incremental improvement so it was enough to keep me motivated. Also I fell in love with the process of just going for a walk with my camera, something I always say is important in my videos today.
Fast forward another year and now we are in the summer of 2019. I sold my canon and picked up the Fujifilm XT3 for no other reason than liking the design and it being cheaper than a Sony. This was the first time when I actually started to like my own work and where some of my early well known photos came from. I really felt like I was making huge strides both in my photography and personal life. I also started to travel a little more and spent 2 weeks in New York followed by a week in Israel. Both of those trips resulted in some of my favourite and best photos. Things were going well and my love for life was slowly coming back too. The day job was still there and still something I dreaded waking up to, but at least everything else was improving.
August 2019 was the month I published my first YouTube video. I was not a confident guy at all and it took me 6 months to do it. But I hit publish nonetheless. Little did I know where that would take me. I also made my first preset pack and started to sell it on my website as a way to generate some cash and help pay off my debts. At the time I think it was making around £200 per month. Week after week I kept publishing videos, sharing my knowledge and experience of photography. Although I wasn’t an expert (nor am I now) by any means, you can always teach someone who is just a little behind you. In the first 4 months of weekly uploads, I gained 100 subscribers. I think most would have quit by then but for some reason I kept going. Perhaps because I had nothing else to do with my time. However I remember posting a video where I reviewed my XT3 and it took off. My channel went from 100 subscribers to over 1000 in a week. Each subsequent video kept growing the channel and I grew along with it.
2020 rolled round and although I managed to squeeze a quick week in NYC in January, the rest of that year was spent… well you know. I found myself with a lot of extra free time and stuck indoors. So I doubled down on YouTube and planing how I can turn all this into a business. This was a good bet as my channel grew and grew. I managed to hit 10,000 subscribers but the end of the first year and I was averaging around £500 per month. However my photography went downhill. I just wasn’t seeing anything, my editing was all over the place and I felt like I’ve gone backwards. Although it was a little annoying, I knew it was nothing more than a phase I had to push through. The rest of 2020 was very much the same… at home videos, lockdowns and boring photography.
Towards the end of 2020, the restrictions began to lift a little and I did my first trip which was the NC500 in Scotland with my mum. Little did I know this video would blow up and further push my channel. Also I finally felt happy with some of my photos from this trip.
2021 kicked off and there was more hope in the air. My photography was starting to pick up again and by the summer of 2021, I even managed to go on a few trips such as Lisbon and Cornwall. There was nothing groundbreaking or exciting I can tell you. 2020 and 2021 were just consistent small steps each day. Those two years were rather boring but sometimes that’s a good thing. All the consistency was paying off as by the summer of 2021, I was making around £1500 per month on average from YouTube, the odd freelance job, workshops and digital products. At that point my performance in my day job fell off a cliff. Not only was I totally not bothered, but I was putting so much time into my business that at times I didn’t even log into my work laptop and had to make up an excuse the next day. By Autumn I decided that if I quit my job and really really get my head down, I could just about make ends meet. I paid off 90% of all my debts and had some savings too. I also turned 30 and had a bit of a “time is running out” crisis. So the only solution was to hand in my notice, and give this YouTube / online photography thing a go. Best decision ever.
2022 started rather slow as I was still mentally trying to figure out what I am doing and where I am going. I remember sitting in my apartment thinking do I really want to spend my time here? Then an idea hit me. Technically now I was a fully self employed “digital nomad” (fuck I hate that term). So I didn’t really need to be in this apartment any more and given that I wanted to travel more, I had an idea… what if I get rid of this apartment and 90% of my possessions and go travel full time… whilst I am still young. Again this seemed risky… which meant I had to do it. The first trip of 2022 was to Dubai and Abu Dhabi. This was with Faizal & Eren to shoot for their tourism board. I then came home, packed everything up and in April of 2022 began my new life with a month in Istanbul. 2022 also saw me spend a month in Porto and Ljubljana as well as visiting many other places. 2022 also saw me host my first photography exhibition in Nuremberg. Something I am so grateful for. Towards the end of 2022 I really began to think long term with this whole business and start structuring it in a way that will give me a sustainable & modest living for (hopefully) the rest of my life. Finally this was the year where I feel I grew the most. I matured and really honed in on what is valuable, what is worthwhile pursuing and living a more meaningful life. Financially I was now making the same money as I was in my day job. That really boosted my confidence.
Here we are in 2023 and I am writing this while also thinking - how the fuck did I get here. Well it’s obvious how I got here as I just laid it all out. But still, now and then I pinch myself and remember to enjoy every single second of this privileged life I have right now. So far this year I have spent a month in Dubai, Lisbon, Paris & Venice. Now I am back home for a couple months for some time off, weddings, family, friends and working on the more business related stuff. The big push this year is the blog. As much as I love YouTube, writing blogs is my thing, so expect to see something new to read each week. I am also working on more digital products such as camera guides and generally cleaning things up. 2022 and Q1-2 of 2023 were messy in terms of my overall direction and what I was doing. It felt all over the place. However now I have a clear vision and have simplified everything. This should result in a higher quality output and more value for you reading / watching.
After Venice I headed back home for the summer. To be honest I just wanted to rest. I had some camera guides to make, family & friends to see and just enjoy London in the summer. It was a very slow paced period without much going on, by design. As September rolled around it was time to pack the bags and head to Malta. I loved Malta so much and would love to come back one day. Some of the friendliest people and Valletta is so photogenic. I really wanted to travel light on that trip so ended up using my iPhone for so much of my photography in Malta and was again surprised by how good it is.
From Malta we headed to Madrid. It was a cool city however I found myself lacking enthusiasm for photography there. It was great to chill and spend time there, just not shoot.
After Madrid my girlfriend went back home and I jumped on a quick flight to meet James Popsys and go on a bit of a photo trip across Portugal for a week. Specifically Port, Cascais and Lisbon. I can keep coming back over and over.
With the Portugal trip coming to an end, it was time to head back to London for Christmas. The plan is to spend 5 weeks at home, re-charge, catch up with family & friends and get a bunch of work done. 2024 is shaping up to be the most hectic year yet and I want to make sure I’m ready.
