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There are dream jobs, and then there is Nuria Val’s job. Not only does the Barcelona-based photographer-slash-model-slash-influencer get to travel around the world for work, but she gets to earn a living doing what she loves most: Documenting moments of beauty, whether it’s perfect morning light streaming in through a window onto a rumpled set of bedsheets, or Val herself swimming in an impossibly blue pool on the coast of Sri Lanka.
Val, who goes by the moniker @frecklesnur, is a veritable poster child for how Instagram created an entirely new genre of creative professionals. Speaking to Girlbossvia phone the day after returning from a work trip to Berlin, Val knows just how lucky she is to have her passions align with her means of earning a living, but she points out that she was simply pursuing what she knew and loved: “It was totally spontaneous. I never expected to do this,” she says breathlessly, “but I would still be doing the same thing [even if I wasn’t making a living at it.]”
Getting the shot
Researching ahead of a trip in order to find the places and experiences that will yield spontaneous results is also key, and Val tries to avoid the most obvious sights and locations when she’s shooting in a new city. In the instance that a clientdoesask her to shoot in a tourist-heavy spot, “the key”, she says, “is getting there first thing in the morning so that there are few people out and you have a wider range of options at your disposal.”
“It was totally spontaneous. I never expected to do this, but I would still be doing the same thing [even if I wasn’t making a living at it.]”
The other key to staying passionate about her work is being extremely careful about working with brands whose artistic vision aligns with her own, and who allows her creative freedom. “I try to give all my feelings to a project so it doesn’t feel like it’s forced or it’s fake,” she says.
Give your brain a break
It’s tough to imagine that there could be a downside to Val’s line of work, but being on high alert at all times and constantly pushing yourself to capture moments of authenticity and intimacy is inevitably exhausting.
In April of 2017, Val took an 18-day work trip to Japan, a country she’d been “super obsessed” with since she was a kid. But of those 18 days, Val had a total of two days off to check out of her creative brain—as much as possible, anyway, because as she puts it, “There’s not really a line between work and play.”
After working in Kyoto for several days, Val was ready to leave behind the crowds of tourists and find refuge in a more nature-driven setting, and she opted to head out to Kinosaki, a district roughly three hours east of Kyoto by car that is known for its hot springs and idyllic village setting. While there, she spent most of her time exploring the village’s famed baths, dressed in a traditionalyukatakimono and sandals. “It’s truly amazing,” she enthuses, “such a super cool way to relax.”
Do the work so you can do the work
As Val has increasingly been sought out for her creative vision, the expectation that she’ll be able to deliver content different from what every other travel photographer and influencer is peddling is implicit. The key to ensuring she’s able to do this, she says, is very simple: “The most important thing is to be respectful to the place I am going—to the people and their traditions, and the way [visitors are expected] to behave there.”
“The most important thing is to be respectful to the place I am going.”
Thus, reading extensively on a new place and its culture beforehand is essential to being a travel photographer, she says, because you will inevitably be required to interact with locals as you navigate a shoot. And the people who know and love a city are invaluable to her seeing a place in all its facets.
She stresses the importance of staying in places where you can meet locals, and having an open heart and open ears, particularly in places where there will be a language barrier. In Japan, for instance, Val found that people were eager to offer help and guidance, despite her inability to understand the language. But with translation technology on her phone, she was able to parse out the advice they were offering up in a way that she wasn’t able to when she first started out in her career.
“The internet makes everything so easy now,” she says, laughing—a statement that couldn’t ring truer from a creative who’s carved the dreamiest of careers with the help of that very technology.
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