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.

A paired How Far From Home presentation combining a chalkboard travel record with a field scene
A paired How Far From Home presentation combining a chalkboard travel record with a field scene.

The number was a storytelling device

The pair tracked kilometres travelled and brought that record into their photographs. 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. A journey can accumulate distance through detours and repeated movements, even when two photographs are made in the same town.

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.

Chanel and Stevo photographed together on a city street at the beginning of their project
Chanel and Stevo photographed together on a city street at the beginning of their project.

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.