Growing up in Nigeria, studying in America and photographing the polar regions, Lola Akinmade Åkerström’s journey has been an exhilarating one. With a degree and a career specialising in Geographic information Systems, she is today one of the foremost travel photographers in the world. Her work has appeared in National Geographic Traveler, BBC, CNN, The Guardian, Travel + leisure, Slate, Lonely Planet, Fodor's, National Geographic Channel, several in-flight magazines, New York Times online. She has also bagged a number of awards, including winning the 2018 Travel Photographer of the Year Bill Muster Award. She talks to us about her experiences over the years, battling institutionalised racism, and her undying love of capturing cultures through her lens.
Lola Akinmade Åkerström’s is an adventurous story, from studying geography to becoming a traveller and going on to explore the world. But it all started back in her home country Nigeria. She had always been fascinated by geography and culture, ever since she was young. At the age of 15 she moved from Nigeria to the United States to start college. With a technical educational background, she worked as a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) programmer and system architect for many years. However, it was her love for travel that pushed her towards photography. Whenever she travelled, she would take pictures of scenes and situations that she would bring back and paint from as an oil painter. She soon realised that her photos were strong enough to stand on their own and she ditched oil painting and started exploring photography as a medium of expression.
Moving from oil painting to photography, she started off with a Minolta film camera. From her early travels in Scandinavia to volunteering with the Eco-Challenge expedition race in Fiji, she found the feeling of creating art and trying different compositions was nothing short of invigorating. From National Geographic Traveller to BBC and more, once she started getting her work published, that was when she was ready to call herself a professional photographer. Today, shooting as a professional there is another set of feelings overwhelming her, ones of appreciation and gratitude that she is now being paid to bring her own vision and style to travel photography, she said.
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