About

Our Story

Who are Andy and Jennifer Martin? Our story is anything but ordinary; we’ve charted our own course and opted for unconventional adventures. We’ve been to over 70 countries, and we love sharing the world that we’ve captured in pixels.

I was born in southern California, Andy grew up in Pennsylvania, and we met in North Carolina. We were married in the Bahamas, and lived in Chicago and Houston before moving to Australia for a work assignment. We’re now Australian citizens (and still American) and we recently celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary!

 

 

Andy and I have both been “doing photography” as long as we can remember. And we’re not young, so we’re talking film cameras and stinky darkrooms.

Photography really clicked for us though when we shifted from film to digital. We started planning our holidays around going somewhere to photograph something: landscapes in the southwestern United States, polar bears in Canada, gorillas in Uganda, snow monkeys in Japan, the night sky in Namibia, humpback whales in Tonga, or sea lions in Australia.

We originally had the website whywework.com. It was easy to remember, and we both worked long hours in challenging jobs so traveling was pretty much…why we worked. Our website was mainly a way to share our adventures with friends and family.

We changed hosting providers in 2013, and they royally screwed up the transfer so the website was offline for a while. In 2014 someone offered a large amount of money to buy the domain. While that URL was absolutely perfect, selling it funded a heap of travel. So now we’re Andy and Jennifer (.com).

What do you do with your images?

Over the years, we’ve met many interesting people and are frequently asked if we sell or exhibit our images. Photography has always been something that we did for ourselves. The stress of “getting the shot” or focussing on scenes and subjects that people would buy did not appeal to us. We also love many genres of photography and didn’t want to limit ourselves to one specialty.

 

Covid hit us pretty hard emotionally. While we were fortunate to be able to work from home, our travel wings were completely clipped. We spent a lot of lockdown buried in our Lightroom catalog, processing images we’d overlooked and reliving past experiences. And that’s when it hit us.

 

We love the process of creating, we create entirely for ourselves, and you don’t need to earn a full time living from photography to be a photographer.

 

We started creating more and sharing more and that completely reinvigorated our creativity. Some of our work is available for sale, and if you don’t see the image you are looking for, please contact us.

 

We also have some images available as NFTs, which align with our minimalist lifestyle and blends our passion for photography and emerging technology. We’re building our blockchain legacy; a multi-genre collection collection of our top .01% – images from 20+ years of photography. This extremely intentional collection of grail images will evolve over time to tell our story and will not be done until we are.

How many countries have you been to?

And for those of you who are counters – we’re using the Travelers’ Century Club list.

  1. Alaska
  2. Anguilla
  3. Antarctica (Chilean – Antarctic Peninsula)
  4. Antigua
  5. Argentina
  6. Aruba
  7. Australia
  8. Bahamas
  9. Barbados
  10. Botswana
  11. Brazil
  12. British Virgin Islands
  13. Cambodia
  14. Canada
  15. Cayman Islands
  16. Chile
  17. China
  18. Cook Islands
  19. Costa Rica
  20. Crete
  21. Dominica
  22. Democratic Republic of the Congo
  23. Ecuador
  24. Egypt
  25. England
  26. Falklands / Malvinas
  27. Fiji
  28. France
  29. Galapagos
  30. Germany
  31. Greece
  32. Greek Agean Islands
  33. Grenada
  34. Guam
  35. Hawaiian Islands
  36. Honduras
  37. India
  38. Indonesia
  39. Ireland
  40. Italy
  41. Jamaica
  42. Japan
  43. Kalimantan
  44. Kenya
  45. Lord Howe Island
  46. Madagascar
  47. Marshall Islands
  48. Malaysia
  49. Maldives
  50. Martinique
  51. Mauritius
  52. Mexico
  53. Micronesia
  54. Myanmar (Burma)
  55. Namibia
  56. Netherlands
  57. Nevis
  58. New Zealand
  59. Norway
  60. Palau
  61. Panama
  62. Philippines
  63. Puerto Rico
  64. Russia
  65. Rwanda
  66. Sabah
  67. Singapore
  68. Spain
  69. St. Kitts
  70. St. Lucia
  71. St. Martin/St. Maarten
  72. St. Vincent and the Grenadines
  73. South Africa
  74. South Georgia & the South Sandwich Islands
  75. South Korea
  76. Sulawesi
  77. Svalbard
  78. Switzerland
  79. Taiwan
  80. Tanzania
  81. Tasmania
  82. Thailand
  83. Tonga
  84. Tristan da Cunha
  85. Uganda
  86. United Arab Emirates
  87. United States
  88. Uruguay
  89. Vatican
  90. Vietnam
  91. Zambia
  92. Zanzibar