This video is a raw behind-the-scenes look at an $80,000 international travel gig where my small team and I went to Malta and Italy to capture luxury lifestyle photo + video for a travel agency. The wild part: there were basically zero deliverables in the traditional sense—no edit, no full post pipeline. We shot what they needed, dumped it to a drive, and shipped it off. That’s honestly the dream setup if you can land it: all the fun of production, none of the back-end drag. I break down how we got the job (they found me through my travel stock footage on platforms like Artgrid), how the budget conversation actually works, and why producing is always “a little dance.” We talk about accounting for travel days, crew, meals/crafty, and why I always want a contingency in there. I also share a business move I like on projects like this: I bought the camera instead of renting it, then “rented” it to the production so the job helps cover the cost and I own the camera for future work. On the production side, we kept everything run-and-gun with a tiny footprint in high-end hotels, and I show how my Prism Lens FX go bag made swapping ND and diffusion fast when you don’t have a full crew.