We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Marie Levillain a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Marie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I’m a practical person. I’m not really into theory, so I’ll do trial and error until I get to the point I want to reach. I’ve always worked like this on several aspects of my life and photography made no exception. When I first picked up a camera, I knew nothing about it and didn’t bother researching anything on that topic. I tried everything single one button on my camera, trying to understand how they work for a whole week, and when I had my own idea, started to pick up blogs about photography. I learned a lot through these, but practice was my main point of interest everyday. I went out every single day during covid confinement to shoot, learn and fail. I was shooting jpeg and understood the importance of raw very quickly ; manual mode was the first mode I learnt and to this day it’s the only one I use ; I trained my eyes by just simply looking at photographs online and trying to understand why it was working and why other weren’t.

To speed up the process, I would have recommended my younger self to watch more YouTube videos. Lots of great landscape photography names have YT channels these days, very well furnished about composition, edition, photography techniques : that could have definitely speed up the learning curve but also the progression process.

I think perseverance, planning and patience are 3 essential skills in landscape photography. For me, the outcome of a great really lies in planning ahead, being patient while on the spot, and to persevere if things don’t work out the way you envisioned it.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m Marie, I’m a 29-years-old travel and landscape photographer from south of France. I come from the Oriental Pyrenees, a beautiful place enclosed between the Pyrenees mountains, the Mediterranean sea, and Spain.

I think I’ve always had the travel bug: my parents did a road trip across the USA when I was young, followed by Martinique and Guadeloupe. Growing up, they were showing me the photos and told me how these trips were incredible and how many beautiful places they saw. They were leaving me sometimes with my grandmother to go abroad. I remember especially them going to Lebanon when the Israeli-Lebanese war was striking; my dad is a professional photographer too, and I have this memory of him packing his gear in his huge bag before leaving. They always encouraged me to push myself to the limits, and experience more raw and unique activities when visiting a country. To go beyond.

Although my parents pushed me to pursue a journalistic career, I was more interested in wine and languages and did 2 bachelors in foreign languages and wines. I ended up combining these two passions working as a sommelier on cruise ships around the world. Before embarking for a 4 months contract in the Seychelles, I bought a drone, to “bring back nice photos of beaches” for my mom. Silly me didn’t realize I would catch the photography bug there thanks to the possibilities of aerial view ; covid struck and I went back to France. Completely confined, I bought a camera in 2020 to nurture my new found passion for visual arts. I discovered my home region through my lens, as if I was seeing it for the very first time.

4 years later and many travels across the globe, I’m very proud to call myself a photographer and run a business around this. My favorite part of my job is to share the beauty of our planet and encourage people to chase more meaningful experiences and more unique locations.

I wanna teach people how to elevate their photography too ; I’m currently in the process of setting up workshops around night sky photography and landscape photography in my region ; I created a travel & photography guide around Dolomites – other guides on different destinations are coming this year. People can already buy prints and calendars from my shop on my website.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

In 2021, after one year of filling my hard drives with countless photos, I signed up for another contract on a cruise ships, still as a sommelier, because I still had no idea at that time photography would be my job later. If you’re not familiar with the cruise ship world, you basically work 10/12 hours, share your cabin with a stranger and there is a lot of pressure on-board. I was working for a high-luxury French cruise line, around Brittany and Corsica. Long story short, due to covid restrictions, we weren’t allowed to go out off the ship, and I had some strong personal and professional issues on board that led me to be very depressed and wrecked when I disembarked. I didn’t touch my gear for the whole summer and wasn’t feeling creative at all as I was in a deep spiral of sadness and depression.

I spent 3 weeks in the dark, not knowing what to do with my life. One morning, I let my relatives know I needed some fresh air and a fresh start, packed up my bags, and drove 14 hours straight to Austria. This was the most random decision I ever took, but I spent 3 weeks alone, photographing the beauty of this country. I found back the peace of mind and soul I was looking for. It comforted me to pursue photography and to keep on dreaming to photograph and travel to nature. This trip, and especially photography, saved me.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I would like to encourage people to chase more meaningful connection to nature, in order to protect it. I could notice it during my travels, how human have a strong and often disastrous impact on our planet. How small hidden gems and protected areas are trashed because of the rise of social medias and people looking for fame sharing these remote and unknown places without any advice on how to protect it or caring for it. I feel it’s so important right now to care about our earth and how we should all want to protect it more. This planet is the one we have and is our legacy to future generations.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.roamwithmarie.com
• Instagram: @roamwithmarie
• Youtube: @roamwithmarie
• Other: Tiktok : @roamwithmarie_

Image Credits

Marie Levillain – @roamwithmarie