AsiaLIFE

When he packed up his London studio and moved to Cambodia two years ago, Nathan Horton was returning to his roots, reminding himself just why it was he first picked up a camera to pursue a life in photography. “I came to Cambodia to get away from what I was doing,” he says. “I spent ten years in London becoming the photographer I didn’t really want to be, and I really wanted to get back to doing travel photography.”

Today, sitting in his Phnom Penh studio So Shoot Me while his three-week-old daughter dreams the day away in her cot out back, he admits it has not been as easy as he had hoped. Nathan is a seriously busy man. He is in hot demand in the capital as a commercial photographer, shooting campaigns for a who’s who of well-known companies operating in Cambodia, including ANZ Royal, Nokia and Coca Cola. Nathan also shoots for AsiaLIFE, a magazine, he says, that shares his love for the lifestyle trinity of food, drink and travel.

Shooting London Life

Away from his commercial commitments, Nathan indulges his passion through travel photography workshops. Run from his Street 136 studio and from more exotic locations around Cambodia, it is these travel photography packages that drew him to Cambodia after a decade as a commercial photographer operating out of the English capital. It was a place he already knew well. Following graduation from a politically-orientated art school in 1990, Nathan began working for a commercial photographer to raise money for a photographic tour of Asia. Originally aiming to spend a year, he stayed for two. The camera gave him an excuse to look more closely at the lives of those he encountered on his travels. “I was really in my element as a photographer in Asia,” he says. “It reminded me of all the reasons I picked up a camera in the first place.”

The next three or four years saw him juggling exhibitions in London with further trips to Asia, funded in part by selling his work to photo libraries but mostly through working in bars and restaurants.  “I lived the one man, his camera and his rucksack lifestyle for five or six years until I had my first daughter,” he explains. The appearance of Tamara, now 12, grounded him and led to his entry into the commercial photography market in London. He quickly found his niche in lifestyle photography for major magazines and newspapers, including Elle, Food & Travel, Land Rover and The Times. Still, his working life was punctuated with as many offshore commissions as he could muster. Unfortunately, these commissions tended to barely cover his costs, forcing him to stick with the commercial work between trips until a commission from Food & Travel magazine in 2005 opened a door to a way out. During a drunken conversation with Mark Ord, his guide in Cambodia and the founder and director of Gecko Travel, an idea was born that would turn Nathan’s world on his head.

Packaged Photography Tours

Over the course of the next year, the two turned the concept behind Gecko Travel’s photographic tours of Cambodia into reality. Designed for travellers wanting to add something different to their offshore holiday, the 11-day packages unleash participants on the very best photographic destinations the country has to offer under Nathan’s expert guidance. Despite the breathtaking beauty of Angkor, which he claims has the power to take his breath away no matter how often he visits, it is the people that are the real jewel in the crown of Cambodia. Teaching people how to better use their cameras is a key part of his job, but it is helping people understand how to work with the people they photograph that is the most rewarding.

“I really emphasise how to photograph people in a foreign country,” he says. “Although most of the people who come on my tours probably came here to see Angkor, they come away just as deeply charmed by the people.” To Nathan, travel photography should be about integrating and sharing your experience with the country. “Photography is not just about running away with images trapped in a little black box,” he says. True to this philosophy, no matter how busy Nathan is, he gives as much of his time as he can to helping Cambodians access, appreciate and learn from photography.

The Dragonfly

AsiaLIFE caught up with him following a morning photography lesson for local children left orphaned by HIV and ahead of an afternoon on the Mekong working on his next travel tourism plan. The Dragonfly, a Cambodian ferry cum boutique hotel he plans to incorporate into the packaged photography tours he runs with the FCC, is central to Nathan’s dream of opening up the true beauty of Cambodia to the outside world. “The real hidden side of Cambodian life is how much of it is lived on the water,” he says. “The Dragonfly will give us quite unique access to it.”

Owned by tourism outfit Jungle Journeys, the restored dark wood vessel has sleeping berths for eight and space for off-road vehicles, motorbikes and kayaks. Nathan says the Dragonfly will be able to stop in places the larger cruise ships cannot, and the onboard vehicles will further help crack open Cambodia’s hidden interior. As he leaves his studio for the Dragonfly, his wife Srey Leak keeps watch over their new daughter. Elsewhere in Phnom Penh, an advertising executive plans his next campaign. Nathan Horton may be living his dream, but it’s a busy one.