With Maxime
Traveler, Cultural Photographer, & Group Travel Organizer
Hey you! My name is Maxime and I am a 28 year young traveler, cultural photographer and expedition organizer. I have always been nostalgic to the past and I love to immerse myself in a place and educate myself about its culture, traditions and heritage. I also have a weakness for the Middle East and Arab World.
My mission is to share stories and knowledge about heritage (history, culture and traditions), the people I meet and the places I visit and take others along with me either through visual storytelling or by organizing group expeditions or retreats. With that, I additionally aim to create a positive impact and contribute to local communities and local environments wherever I or we go. To achieve this, all my travels and group travels are community-based or in collaboration with (travel) brands that are community-based, sustainable, social responsible or holistic and make change through active engagement with local communities and the environment.
My photos are available to purchase as prints. By purchasing these prints you are directly supporting local communities or charity projects since a percentage is always donated right back to the local community or the local environment where the photo was taken.
A little background information about Maxime:
I grew up traveling and living around Europe with my family or alone. I feel like everything that I have done in my life or have been interested in has always either been culture, discovery or travel related. At the age of 11, I moved to Vienna, Austria with my family where I lived until I was 19. I was always an observer and someone who is easily fascinated by people, cultures, history and places. It came as no surprise that I eventually picked up my mothers camera at the age of 14 and started capturing my daily life and experience of living abroad in Vienna, Austria at such a young age.
My endless curiosity, fascination and restlessness to explore have definitely been triggered by living abroad at such a young age and being immersed in a complete new culture with its own traditions. Besides that, going to an international school with children from all over the world, each with their own culture and traditions has probably led to my further interest to explore the world for a living. I enjoy learning about new places, its heritage and meeting people from different walks of life. A camera is the perfect tool for that.
After graduating from high school in Vienna, I moved to Milan, Italy at the age of seventeen and followed a photography Course for six months which was taught by fashion photographer Tom Bauer. This is where I learned to handle my camera manually and learned the basics of portrait and street photography. After Milan, I moved to Amsterdam, The Netherlands, where I attended Hotelschool The Hague. As it was my dream to travel the world, I believed Hotelschool The Hague with its hospitality and tourism focus was the best education to accomplish that dream in the future.
Ever since I started Hotelschool The Hague at the age of nineteen, I worked as a event, festival and nightlife photographer in Amsterdam. I did this for seven years and this is where, when and how I learned everything about photography.
At the end of 2018, it was time to pursue my travel dreams. Not just explore and see beautiful places but truly learn about this world, its nature, its history, its cultures and traditions and capture it along the way. From working on a yacht as a photographer and stewardess for 6 months in 2019, I somehow ended up in the Red Sea of Saudi Arabia and since then I have become absolutely fascinated about this part of the world. While traveling and immersing myself in local cultures there, learning about their traditions and history and people's daily life, I strongly felt that I could do and wanted to do more than just photography. It is during these travels that I finally found clarity and a deeper purpose and realized I wanted to do something meaningful not just for myself but especially for other people and the people I meet along the way.
This is how I slowly started moving from just a photography business to a travel business with the idea of creating, organizing and leading group expeditions and retreats that dive deep into local cultures while creating a positive impact at the same time. With my expeditions and retreats I aim to show culture but also contribute in the best way possible, by collaborating with local communities, contributing to local projects and promoting better ways to travel while at the same time building a community of like-minded travelers who equally promote a more sustainable and ethical approach towards travel. Please head over to the next slide to read more about the expeditions.
Insta @with.maxime
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