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.
How many countries have you been to?
And for those of you who are counters – we’re using the Travelers’ Century Club list.
- Alaska
- American Samoa
- Anguilla
- Antarctica (Chilean – Antarctic Peninsula)
- Antigua
- Argentina
- Aruba
- Australia
- Bahamas
- Barbados
- Botswana
- Brazil
- British Virgin Islands
- Cambodia
- Canada
- Cayman Islands
- Chile
- China
- Cook Islands
- Costa Rica
- Crete
- Dominica
- Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Ecuador
- Egypt
- England
- Falklands / Malvinas
- Fiji
- France
- French Polynesia
- Galapagos
- Germany
- Greece
- Greek Agean Islands
- Grenada
- Guam
- Hawaiian Islands
- Honduras
- Hong Kong
- India
- Indonesia
- Ireland
- Italy
- Jamaica
- Japan
- Kalimantan
- Kenya
- Lord Howe Island
- Madagascar
- Marshall Islands
- Malaysia
- Maldives
- Martinique
- Mauritius
- Mexico
- Micronesia
- Myanmar (Burma)
- Namibia
- Netherlands
- Nevis
- New Zealand
- Norway
- Palau
- Panama
- Philippines
- Puerto Rico
- Russia
- Rwanda
- Sabah
- Samoa
- Singapore
- Spain
- Saint Kitts
- Saint Lucia
- Saint Martin
- Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
- Sint Martin
- South Africa
- South Georgia & the South Sandwich Islands
- South Korea
- Sulawesi
- Svalbard
- Switzerland
- Taiwan
- Tanzania
- Tasmania
- Thailand
- Tonga
- Tristan da Cunha
- Uganda
- United Arab Emirates
- United States
- Uruguay
- Vatican
- Vietnam
- Zambia
- Zanzibar