✨ Welcome to our series, TravMedia's Travel Writer of the Week! ✨
Each week, we'll be shining a spotlight on one of the incredibly talented, passionate, and inspiring Journalists or Editors from our amazing community.
This week, we'd like to shine the spotlight on freelance travel writer - Bella Falk.
We hope you enjoy - happy reading !!
Where are you based?
I've lived in my little flat in West London for nearly 19 years. It's my calm, cosy base when I'm home from all the crazy travels, and I love it.
What outlets do you write for? Who is your audience? What are your travel specialties?
As many freelancers say, I'll write for whoever will commission (and pay) me - which means approaching whoever I think is a good fit for the story. My specialities are wildlife, nature, safari and conservation, so I write for publications like Travel Africa, BBC Wildlife, National Geographic Traveller and newspapers like the Telegraph, Independent and Metro, as well as luxury magazines like Luxury Travel Australia or Elite Traveller.
I love expedition cruising, so I've also written for cruise magazines and of course trade titles like Selling Travel and TTG. I'm also interested in solo (female) travel, over 40s and childfree travel, history, archaeology and science, and as a photographer I've written for photography magazines and licence my images both for editorial and marketing use.
And of course I write for my own website, Passport & Pixels.
Are you in-house or freelance (or both)?
Always freelance. As well as being a travel writer and photographer I also write and manage Passport & Pixels, produce a wildlife photography podcast, and do some documentary producing and directing. I love the variety!
What are your professional pet peeves?
At the moment I have two main ones. The first is that many brands and destinations insist on a confirmed commission before supporting a press trip for UK writers (even though that's not the case for US writers!). I understand the need for certainty, but in practice it's so much easier to get a commission after the trip, when you know the destination and story better, are not pressuring a very busy editor for a quick decision, and in my case, when I can also add life to the pitch with photos.
My second, related peeve, is that many brands still don't seem to understand the incredible power and value of travel blogs. Print is great, but it's also tomorrow's chip paper, while online articles are evergreen and can continue to rank for years. My top performing article is four years old but got 86,000 page views in the past year - while overall my site had nearly 1.5 million page views in 2025!
Yet many PRs and brands still turn their noses up if I suggest coming on a trip to write for Passport & Pixels. At best some will reluctantly take an article if they require a second commission, but only if I have a print commission as well. Yet later I will find myself on that same press trip with a journalist writing for some online publication which has very similar pageviews to my site - or with an influencer who'll make a few reels which will fall off the Instagram algorithm in 48 hours. It makes no sense! And trying to have a conversation about sponsored content is a total non-starter, even though it's a very small investment to make for returns that could last for years.
In your past professional life you were …
I have always been in the media. I started at the BBC and spent 20 years as a producer-director making mainly science and history documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4, Discovery, PBS and more. I still do TV projects when I can, but the landscape has changed a lot and they are harder to come by, and these days when an opportunity does come up I often find I'm already committed to something travel-related.
Where would you like to return to?
The Galapagos. I visited as a 19-year-old backpacker with a compact camera, before I got properly into wildlife photography. I'm desperate to go back now that I know what I'm doing!
What's on your bucket list?
There's a crazy seabird related to the puffin called the crested auklet which I would love to photograph - but (I think) the only accessible place to see them is the Aleutian Islands off the coast of Alaska. There are a few small-ship Alaskan expedition cruises that go there, so that's something I'll trying to get off the ground next year. I've also never seen a tiger in the wild, so an Indian photography safari is also very high up on my list.
Where do you travel for fun?
I'm lucky to be able too say that all my travel is fun! Like many travel writers (and with a blog as well) I don't take holidays - I'm completely unable to stop myself from taking photos and creating content. But my biggest passion is Africa, so places like Kenya, Botswana, Tanzania have really stolen my heart and I will go back there as much as I can.
Your funniest (or most harrowing) travel story is …
Many years ago I travelled with a friend overland from Accra in Ghana to Timbuktu in Mali - mainly just because it sounded cool - using the 2002 Lonely Planet West Africa guide. Our route passed through the small town of Mopti in Mali where, as the book says, "good accommodation is scarce". As backpackers on a budget, we ended up in a place described as “dirty and sleazy, with added drunks and hookers." When we checked in, we passed a long corridor thick with incense. All the doors were open and scantily-clad women were waiting in the rooms. Later, when we came back from getting dinner, the doors were all closed. We hurried to our own room and locked ourselves in. In the middle of the night, a man started banging on our door and shouting. Fortunately, after a while he went away, but it was a pretty scary moment!
What advice would you give your younger professional self?
Have a bit of bloody confidence! Even today I'm still full of self-doubt and am terrible when it comes to negotiating rates. Yet I see other people (usually men, let's be honest), achieving so much not necessarily by being better, just by being bolder and more confident. It's fascinating the way others see me compared to the internal chaos that goes on inside my own head.
What nugget would you like to add that we haven't touched on?
I could go on a huge rant about generative AI, but I won't - except to say that I see it creeping in everywhere now and it's so easy to spot. Everything sounds the same! I am begging people not to use AI to write for them, it's such an own goal as those emails get deleted immediately.
How best should people contact you?
You can find me on Threads, Instagram and Facebook @passportandpixels where I'm always posting my wildlife photography and stories and images from recent trips.
Via email
