Justin Cooper in a wide-brimmed hat, camera in hand, looking up at the sky
Justin Cooper standing in a shaft of light inside a slot canyon
In the beam, a slot canyon
The Artist

Justin Cooper

Photography, to me, is a unique medium. It’s the ability to stop time. Nothing ever happens twice. A sunset with one specific cloud pattern, a billion different snowflakes that fall every single day. That’s where it all started for me. I cracked my head open when I was fifteen, and I forgot a lot of my life. Photography is what allowed me to cope, to deal. I use that now to share with those who otherwise won’t be able to see the world.

Justin Cooper at the bottom of a shaft of blue ice, looking up at the opening
Inside the ice, looking up
It’s the ability to stop time.

When I was in college, I lost my oldest friend. She had always wanted to travel, but she was never able to. She knew that she was going to pass away. She had no immune system, so airplanes, anything like that, were not in the cards. Every time I got back from a trip, I would tell stories endlessly, endlessly, endlessly, over and over. That’s where the duality of Destination Daily and The Art of Travels came from.

Justin Cooper tipping his hat on a snowy ridge, peaks rising out of the cloud behind him
Above the cloud line
That’s where the duality of Destination Daily and The Art of Travels came from.
Justin Cooper sitting on the James Dalton Highway welcome sign, Alaska
The James Dalton Highway, Alaska
Justin Cooper standing on a gravel road below a mountain range
A gravel road, and the range beyond it
The Artist

Over fifteen years of going where the picture is.

Not where the road ends. Not where the viewing platform is. Where the picture is.

Destination Daily is that onward travel. My goal right now is Alaska to Argentina, photographing my way through, but really sharing the world with those who aren’t able to leave their house. The Art of Travels was my ability to bring those places home. To share some of the most beautiful, interesting landscapes I have ever seen, in a dramatic, serene way.

How I treat my images is the same as those before me. What I could do in a darkroom is what I would do to my photographs, and no more. Nine times out of ten I don’t edit a single thing. It all comes from sitting in a single location for hours, or days, until the conditions are just right. To me, that is art. That is this medium. It is not graphic design made to show what was never there. That has its time and place, but for me it isn’t the raw, visceral feeling that photography gives.

  • Go where the picture is, not where the road endsMost of these cost days of walking, or waiting, or coming back a second and a third year to find the same light in a better mood.
  • Never photograph the same thing twiceNothing here is a variation on anything else here. When an edition closes, that view is done, and I go and find another one.
  • Print it properly or do not print itMade by hand, by the originators of the process, on materials chosen for one quality above all others: how honestly they hold a black.
Follow the Journey →

Destination Daily. The truck, the route, and where the pictures come from

Thank you all for going through my site, for looking at my collection. This is over fifteen years of work boiled down to less than 300 images.

Justin Cooper

From the feed

@destinationdaily_

See the collection → Ask me anything →
Contact

Tell me about the wall.

A piece you keep coming back to. A size you cannot settle. A commission. A room that has defeated you twice already. These reach me, and I am the one who answers them.

This lands in Justin@theartoftravels.net, and is usually answered inside two working days.

Currently traveling

I am frequently somewhere with no signal at all. If a reply takes a few days, that is nearly always the reason, not that your letter went unread.

Browse prints →