{"id":935,"date":"2014-11-21T11:00:10","date_gmt":"2014-11-21T16:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=935"},"modified":"2025-10-17T17:28:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T21:28:15","slug":"making-it-as-a-professional-photographer","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/making-it-as-a-professional-photographer\/","title":{"rendered":"Making it as a Professional Photographer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Making it as a Professional Photographer\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

Young Dave Lemke took more than a hundred photographs with this camera, including a stunning image of a humpback whale breaching the ocean\u2019s surface. With this photograph, a life-long passion was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly after high school, twenty-year old Lemke embarked on an eighteen-month journey of self-discovery. While backpacking across Europe, he took more than a hundred rolls of film with his APC Canon Elph. \u201cI sent most of my film back to Ottawa to be processed,\u201d Lemke recalls. \u201cMy father went to one store to get it done, and the manager told him, \u2018when your son returns from his trip, he has a job at our shop.\u2019\u201d This surprising job offer led to others, in Ottawa, Toronto, and Australia. Working in camera shops the world over, Lemke used these opportunities to deepen his understanding of the craft of photography and his own unique approach to it: \u201cI allow my experience and eye to guide me. Obviously, with technology and post-processing techniques, things are a bit different, but in general, this is how I shoot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During his apprenticeship at camera shops, Lemke decided to complete an English degree at Carleton. Convinced that writing and photography share meaningful bonds of kinship, he felt that an English degree would provide him with skills that would play an important supporting role in his photographic career. The capacity to use words to tell stories and the practice of using images to document the world struck him as being part of the same artistic project.<\/p>\n\n\n

[wide-image url=”https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/life-lessons-1.jpg”]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Department of English Professor Andrew Wallace first met Lemke in a second-year survey of Medieval and Renaissance literature. He recollects being struck by Lemke\u2019s intensity and engagement from the earliest sessions of the course:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDavid was particularly skilled at imagining his way into the predicaments of characters under study. I was fortunate to teach him in two courses and to see these talents in each, but it was only when I had a chance to sit with him and his father before Dave\u2019s departure for Australia that I learned he was also a talented photographer. Of course, this made me realize that his striking analytical intelligence and his skills as a photographer had been mutually influencing each other all along. His powerful grasp of the telling detail and his gift at imaginatively interpreting literary texts speak directly to the power of his photographic work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Wallace, Lemke\u2019s success serves as a reminder that we can arrive at professional destinations by unexpected routes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think that there is such a thing as a calling. Dave was a smart, dedicated, and imaginative student who trained himself to see the world with both sympathy and critical intensity. His English degree required that he read widely, and demanded of him that he make a series of imaginative leaps into other lives and worlds. To see the world as clearly and intelligently as Dave does is a product of his having developed both his photographic skills and his imaginative intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cBeing artistic means being sensitive to things that many people might overlook, Writers use nuances in language to create emotional responses. Photographers see the play of light and shadow, and use their skills to capture a moment in time. Great writing and great images are not an everyday occurrence; indeed we are lucky to get a few in our careers. Perhaps the deep-seated drive within us to keep fingers to keyboard or to keep shooting is perhaps the most important connection between writer and photographer.\u201d
\n\u2014 Dave Lemke<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Learning to be a pro in Vietnam<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Dave
Dave Lemke<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After graduating from Carleton, Lemke moved to Hanoi with the intention of parlaying his previous jobs in the photography business into a full-fledged career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was taking a big chance \u2013 a chance to leave a \u2018job\u2019 and instead begin a career. I had an idea of what it would take to be a successful photographer, but learning the context of how to do so in a foreign country was, and still is to this day, a big challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The risk paid off. Within his first few months in Hanoi, he was published in GEO Saison, a popular German magazine, and received contracts to shoot the Vietnam projects of Hyder Consulting \u2013 a consultancy company that played a role in the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Federation Square in Melbourne, the Emirates Twin Towers in Dubai, and The Burj Khalifa. He has also shot for some of the world\u2019s most renowned media syndicates, including the BBC, the Guardian (UK) and Lonely Planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His most celebrated project to date is one that was picked up by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC): a documentary of Gunther Holtorf\u2019s 25-year road trip across the planet. A \u201cmodern-day Marco Polo\u201d according to Lemke, Holtorf left Germany in 1989 in his Mercedes-Benz G-class wagon. His trip has yet to end: he has driven the world over, with no sponsorship and no breakdowns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Making
GUNTHER HOLTORF\/DAVE LEMKE PHOTOGRAPHY<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Lemke met the famous world-traveler while shooting a Mercedes-Benz event in Vietnam (the 199th country visited by Holtorf). The two hit it off immediately. \u201cI got to drive with him for two days to Ha Long Bay, and by the end of our small trip he had given me permission to publish his untold story. My efforts at cold-pitching the story paid off when the BBC picked it up as a 5-minute documentary.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The documentary made its debut at the same time as the 2012 London Olympic Games. In a single day, it received 1.2 million hits becoming the most-shared BBC page for the week, overtaking the Opening Games Ceremony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though photography is Lemke\u2019s primary source of income, he has continued to nurture his appetite for documenting the world in words. To that end, Lemke hopes to extend his work with Holtorf by writing his travel biography. \u201cIf I am able to do this, no matter what else happens in my life, I am sure it will be my crowning achievement as a writer and journalist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

[wide-image url=”https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/life-lessons-4.jpg”]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When asked for some words of wisdom, Lemke answers by deferring to an admired colleague\u2019s bracing paean to optimistic perseverance: \u201cJo Anne McArthur, an absolutely brilliant photographer involved in the animal rights movement, told me years ago, \u2018There will come a point where you will want to quit, because it doesn\u2019t seem to be working. Trust me, if you keep shooting and make it through that particular point, things will pick up.\u2019 We all have peaks and valleys in our life and professional career, but Jo Anne\u2019s words have rung true. The strength to persevere is one every artist should have.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Young Dave Lemke took more than a hundred photographs with this camera, including a stunning image of a humpback whale breaching the ocean\u2019s surface. With this photograph, a life-long passion was born. Shortly after high school, twenty-year old Lemke embarked on an eighteen-month journey of self-discovery. While backpacking across Europe, he took more than a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[17,1592],"cu_story_tag":[1924,1920],"class_list":["post-935","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","hentry","cu_story_type-alumni","cu_story_type-teaching-learning","cu_story_tag-advancement","cu_story_tag-faculty-of-arts-and-social-sciences"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98005,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/935\/revisions\/98005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=935"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}