How Far From Home: Chanel and Stevo’s Early Travel Photo Diary

A small black chalkboard gives the How Far From Home photographs their familiar thread. The surroundings change from a city street to a field or a snowy landscape, but the number on the board keeps the journey connected.

The project began with Chanel Cartell and Stevo Dirnberger, two creatives from Johannesburg. Their own account dates their departure to 2 March 2015, when they left their advertising jobs and set out to explore beyond their familiar routines.

The number was a storytelling device

The pair brought kilometre labels into their photographs as a recurring record of the journey. It was a way to make movement visible, giving separate pictures the feeling of chapters in one longer story.

Those labels should not be read as precise straight-line distances between Johannesburg and each photographed location. The labels form part of the creators’ personal diary; their exact measurement method is not established by this gallery.

The board tells you that the journey continued. The photograph tells you what caught their attention along the way.

A creative brief can make you look differently

Their background in advertising and branding helps explain the clarity of the idea: choose a recognisable element, repeat it and let the surroundings supply the variation.

Look at the archive images as a series. An urban street gives the board a very different context from an open field. The contrast creates interest without requiring an entirely new concept for every stop.

This is one reason a small creative project can enrich a trip. It gives you a reason to pay attention when the day has no famous landmark on the schedule.

The early photographs are one chapter

The original gallery captured the beginnings of the journey, including European stops and time farther north. The project subsequently developed into broader photographic and commercial work, documented on the creators’ website.

An early travel feature is therefore not a current location update or a complete account of how the later business worked. It also does not establish that leaving employment is necessary for a creative life.

Try a smaller version of the idea

Choose a repeatable prompt for your next outing: one doorway, one interesting shadow or one object that belongs to the day. Make the photograph, then write a sentence explaining why you noticed it.

After several outings, arrange the images together. You may discover a theme that was less obvious while making each picture separately. The experiment can work around your neighbourhood as well as across countries.

Plan the practical side together

For a shared trip, agree how much time photography will take and when the camera can stay packed away. Our couples’ travel-planning guide helps with those everyday decisions.

For another project held together by a repeated visual idea, compare FollowMeTo’s India photographs. The useful inspiration is not the number of kilometres. It is the decision to make something thoughtful from the journey you actually have.

The first route, with its places intact

The original diary begins in Johannesburg and passes through Abu Dhabi before a series of Austrian stops: Seekirchen, Salzburg, Vienna, Eugendorf, Anif and Untersberg. Berlin follows in Germany, then Oslo and Alta in Norway. Keeping the smaller stops matters because the project was about the journey between famous destinations as well as the destinations themselves.

The kilometre labels belong to the creators’ photographic diary. They should not be treated as verified straight-line distances from Johannesburg or as a transport itinerary. Some labels move backwards or place similar locations at different totals, so their meaning cannot be reconstructed confidently from this gallery alone.

A creative project with two participants

Chanel Cartell and Stevo Dirnberger described leaving work in advertising and branding, reducing their belongings and setting off with four bags, including camera equipment. Their background helps explain why the journey was organised around photographs and creative challenges.

Their early Wanderlist included an Alpine peak, dancing in Berlin, an alpaca photograph and time with huskies. These details give the story more texture than a generic account of quitting a job. They are dated milestones from the original project, not a claim about where the pair live or work today.

Read the sequence as a diary

Repeated place names can be useful. They show that a travel story may include returning to a base, spending time in ordinary surroundings and making several pictures in one location. Progress does not require a new country in every frame.

For a personal version, give each photograph a date and one detail that the frame cannot explain: who suggested the stop, what interrupted the plan or why you stayed longer. Cartell and Dirnberger's chalkboard supplies continuity; your own device might be much less visible. Read the sequence back after several outings and notice which ordinary moments still matter. That exercise works close to home, and it leaves room for the journey to become more interesting than the number recorded along it.