Travel Photography & Budget Travel Tips by Chris Ballam
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Ballam Family (Scott, Zack, Jen, Chris, Kade, Ava) |
Travel Photography & Budget Travel from 30+ Years on the Road
I'm Chris Ballam — a photographer and lifelong budget traveler based in Highland, Utah. Over the past 30+ years I've visited 29 countries across 6 continents, most of them with my wife and our four kids along, from toddlers to teenagers. This site is where I share the photos and the tested, firsthand advice behind those trips: how to plan them, pack for them, pay for them, and photograph them.
The trips here are real. I planned and led a 7-week, 8-country family route through Southeast Asia — Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Laos, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam — with all four kids. I've backpacked 100+ mile stretches of Wyoming's Wind River Range, served three times as a Boy Scouts of America Scoutmaster, and packed my own children and others for missions abroad. Everything on ChrisBallam.com comes from experience I've actually lived — you can read more about my background here.
Start With My Most-Used Guides
If you're here to plan something specific, these are the pages readers reach for most:
- Elder Missionary Packing List for Brazil and the Sister Missionary Packing List for Argentina — complete, country-specific lists built from packing real missionaries, right down to what to leave home.
- Coyote Gulch Backpacking Guide — routes, gear, water sources, and permits for one of southern Utah's best canyon hikes.
- Budget vacation guides — how to plan affordable international trips by region, with real daily costs and the best times to book.
- Travel photo galleries — images from across 6 continents, organized by destination.
Family and Budget Travel That Actually Works
I travel around a full-time career and a fixed number of vacation days, on a real budget — so the advice here is about getting the most out of both. In practice that means traveling in shoulder season, using points and miles to cut flight and hotel costs, staying in well-connected neighborhoods instead of tourist centers, and eating where locals eat. These are the same strategies I've used to keep 29 countries within reach on a normal income.
And because nearly every trip includes my kids, the family-travel guidance covers the logistics most sites skip: flying with toddlers, keeping teenagers engaged, and pacing a trip so everyone enjoys it rather than just survives it.
Photography from the Trips, Not a Studio
Photography came first for me — I studied it in my first year at Utah State University before making software engineering my career. Since then I've built an archive of thousands of travel photographs, and I share both the images and the practical techniques behind them, whatever camera you carry. The galleries are grouped by destination, so you can see what a place actually looks like before you plan a trip there.
