If there’s such a thing as an Instagram veteran, then Nathan Landers, AKA Ned Landers, AKA Ned Kelly, is it. 

Newcastle native Nathan Landers has carved out a career making art on social media, taking lively, idiosyncratic photos at hotspots all around the globe. He and his influencer partner, Tegan, are one of Instagram’s original ‘travel couples’ and for years their signature aesthetic has been harnessed by big name fashion and lifestyle brands. But where other travel couples pose romantically within clean, perfectly framed compositions, Nathan and Tegan step to the side of the frame, prioritising the artistic, the cinematic, the fashionable and the cool. 

Nathan’s journey to the centre of Instagram wasn’t instantaneous or linear. He picked up a camera at the tail end of a nearly two-decade career as a talented builder. After a partially sponsored trip to Vietnam, he and Tegan put on their business caps and chipped away at a dream until it became a thriving reality – where they now document travels and represent brands full time. 

Currently based on the Gold Coast, Nathan’s career is complimented by his long-held love of dance music as a working DJ. He and Tegan have travelled all over Europe, the Middle East, Asia and India. During COVID, they bought a camper and did to our great sunburnt country what they’d done to the wider world – immortalising locations and moments through photo and video.

Known for a photographic style that celebrates the beauty in imperfection, Nathan takes to his daily pursuits with the obsessiveness of a Capricorn, immersing himself in the technical aspects of every new endeavour. He and Tegan continue to walk the globe on a yearly basis, showing followers that travel is more than what you see in an airport brochure. 

We sat down to find out more about what sounds like an awesome way to make a crust.

My real name is Nathan Landers and kindergarten kids can get pretty creative with nicknames. Basically, it came from Ned Flanders: Nathan landers, Ned Flanders. So, Ned kind of stuck, literally since kindergarten, and it slowly developed into Ned Kelly. I started DJing at about 22 and I needed a DJ name. And it was sort of on the fly. A friend came up with the name, it was a real last-minute thing. Now, most of my friends don't use my real name, to them it's just Ned.

The first time I was actually thinking “this is kind of fun” was when I met my girlfriend Tegan about 10 years ago. 

About two years into the relationship, I wanted to go travelling and I finally talked her into going with me. She had started photography and it was around the time when Instagram wasn't really a thing. It was very fresh. People were just putting up drunk party photos with classic funny Instagram filters, Travel photo accounts barely existed. It was just a fairly new app. 

But there were a few things coming through Instagram that sparked Tegan’s interests - she saw some travel photos pop up that were really unique. Today it’s standard, but back then it was like... someone standing in a nice photo in front of an Eiffel Tower, you didn’t see that that much. It was kind of new. She saw the business side of it off the bat and said let's take a camera, let's take travel photos, and we'll try and tag travel companies. If we can get a free trip, that would be the ultimate goal, and it led to that eventually. We never thought it would. But at the very beginning, I took a GoPro and we had this other camera that she owned. Right away, I thought to myself "I like this, I think I've got a knack for it".

That was the first time there was an actual spark where I could feel the obsession begin. I was actually going out of my way to get photos and really enjoying it. That was about eight years ago. 

It was a seven month trip around the world. It was mainly Europe. But we also went to Egypt and Jordan... honestly there weren't many spots we didn't hit. It was one of those big trips where you're eating one meal a day and you're really stretching the budget. But we also had the travel photo idea driving us, getting travel photos and tagging. Tagging was relatively new as well, so we tagged travel companies and  they'd see our mediocre photos and eventually it just picked up a bit of traction. 

There was a company called Busabout that I think has been absorbed by Contiki or one of those travel companies since COVID. They first picked us up because they loved the travel couple thing. They basically just said we'd love to send you on a trip which felt like an absolute lifetime goal for us... the fact that they were going to pay for our trip to Vietnam blew us away.

We sat at home and looked through all the content. It was probably six months after getting back that we got that email from Busabout. 

The travel couple thing was also fairly new on Instagram, so a nice travel-style couple photo that you see absolutely everywhere now wasn’t really a thing 10 years ago. So if you could take decent photos like that, you would get a lot of interest from travel companies. They were always needing new content for their brochures and online promo. 

Great! Just before, we bought our first new camera. We got talked into buying a Nikon camera from a friend that worked with Tegan, he was a real Nikon enthusiast - He swore black and blue that Nikon was the be all end all of the photography game. I didn’t know anything; I just ran with it. So we bought a Nikon D7200 and that was a huge game changer as far as quality of photos go and that was when the spark really elevated. We decided to take it way more seriously and definitely got a bit click-happy with that new camera, but it was great because I felt like we were learning at a pretty fast pace. 

And I have a pretty obsessive attitude towards any new hobby, you know, like I need to know everything about it. I was looking up YouTube videos on the Nikon D7200 and the best way to set it up, the best settings and whatever else -just obsessing over details.

I’ve stayed with Nikon ever since, to me it seemed superior as far as photos go. 

The quality of photos. We had a much better lens, which made a huge difference. That's when I realised why a lens is expensive , because the glass is that much better. Before it was like: “I'll get a photo with my iPhone three, that's good enough” but after this I understood why people pay so much money for glass and good cameras. It excited me. I felt like I was taking quality photos and working with someone like National Geographic wasn’t that far out of reach. My dreams started to expand because I was really starting to understand the importance of details. The perfect photo with the perfect composition was always so important. I went from just taking classic Dad photos, like landscape shots that are pretty basic, to being more artistic and making artistic choices.

Yeah, so we worked with Busabout quite a bit after that - the following European summer, they put us on another trip over there. They paid for us to be on the bus, which was a huge thing for us. By the way, between all of this, I was a full-time builder, DJing on the weekends, so trying to balance that and trying to get time off had its issues, especially for a big European trip. I was lucky enough to have had a pretty lenient boss who understood what I was doing. If I was gone for long periods on these trips, he backed it, because he was a younger guy who had big dreams himself – and he could see that I was getting somewhere with what I was doing. 

We went on a European trip for about a month and did a similar thing, we hit all the hotspots, with a better idea, I think with the same camera and just knew how to operate it and who to tag and all of a sudden, it felt like we were way more business-driven. 

Our photos were getting a lot more professional, a lot, A LOT better. But it was also nice to see something to work towards as well. Other people on Instagram taking really good photos only drove us to try and get a photo as good. How do we get a shot there? How do we do better? Who do we tag? We got craftier with Instagram hacks like taking portrait-style shots more instead of only landscape shots and posting at times that would get us better engagement. It became a business slash obsession ever since.

Absolutely. After that trip Busabout put a little bit more money and faith in what we did. And a sense of validation came when they used some of our images for the front covers of their magazine that goes in travel shops. They also used our images quite a bit throughout their brochures. 

Mainly Tegan. She’s more the model. She did it full-time and still does as an influencer. She’s also a brilliant photographer – so in front of as well as behind the camera. We were hitting the mark and they were really happy with us, and then we started working with Intrepid and did a few trips with them. Around this time, I made the business choice to fully quit building. 

It was, because it was my bread and butter and it was consistent money coming in. And this new business was so up and down, there’s no consistency whatsoever. But it was one of those moments where you almost have to be all in for anything to work. 

No, we were always pretty transparent with who we were working with. We were just trying to be as sensible as possible and not overlap with too many conflicting brands, and we managed to do pretty well. I think around... we went to Japan for someone... I can’t actually remember what it was for...

Yeah! We’ve been away for a good chunk every year with work. There was one year where we didn’t have a lot of work but we went away anyway. We knew that if we went to certain spots and shot certain content we’d have people buying photos from us. We went from being scared to go somewhere because we didn’t have much money to where we felt we knew we would get money if we went out there. We had a good enough reputation and felt confident people would buy. 

Brands. There was travel content, then fashion labels started coming on board. Volcom, for example, gave us a budget to shoot their new collection over in Europe. So, we’d shoot fashion content and travel content at the same time. 

Yeah, that’s what it’s turned into, essentially. Travelling for us now is a sunrise-to-2am job. We’ve been lucky enough to be given this opportunity that everyone would love to work in. Everyone wants to get paid to travel, right? We managed to fall into this little pocket where we can. But there are a lot of people who want to carry that torch. So, we always want to make sure we are shooting our best. It keeps us hungry. 

It is. I think that’s the only reason why I don’t beat my head against the wall. I think after 18 years building houses - a driving force was to never go back to that work. I would do anything for it. And I enjoyed it.

I’ll paint a picture of a general day while we’re travelling. We would have already scoped out where we’re shooting. Depending on where we are geographically, we’d go shoot the sunrise ‘til about eight o’clock, just cause the sun comes up, low light is really nice. We’d go have some breakfast, then go find some other key spots that are good. The sun around 10 o’clock is pretty good. 

We’d have some lunch, then for about two hours during the day, especially if it’s hot where we are, we’d probably just chill for a bit, talk about how hungry we are, then aim for a few early afternoon shoots somewhere. Then we’re shooting sunsets somewhere, then shooting for an hour after sunset. 

We’d then get home and go through content, upload stories, and edit photos. 

We used to be quite worried about trying to get photos up on the day. We tried to edit as much as possible to get photos up and keep the content consistent, so brands saw our page, saw that we were very active. I mean, it’s essentially a visual resume. We’d keep that fire burning and we loved it. We still love it and that’s why working until 2am most nights is not even an issue. 

So, there was another pivotal moment where this exact question was bothering us. It got to a point just before COVID where as you say, every man and his dog was taking these photos and Instagram was just flooded with the perfect travel photos… someone on a perfect sunny day in front of the Colosseum with no one else there and that kind of stuff. 

Everyone was doing that and Tegan and I were like: how do we make this different because this is not working. Everyone's doing it. We're just gonna get swallowed up by everyone else doing the exact same photo and selling their content for cheaper. So, we made the artistic decision to shoot a whole lot differently, to stand out and remain competitive. We worked on keeping the photo composed, but really playing with the colour grade, like making things really dramatic and cinematic. Not so bright blue skies, not so picture perfect. 

I remember seeing someone's photo that was a bit of an accident, where the subject was out of focus, but the background was nothing and it was in focus. And it had this instant film camera look about it. The horizons weren't quite perfect. Something's out of focus, something's in focus, it's grainy, and has this real candid feel about it. 

That was this light bulb moment where it just popped in, I needed to do something like this. And I started taking photos where I would put Tegan, for example, in front of the Eiffel Tower, and I'd focus on the Eiffel Tower and then she would be blurry. I think one of the first ones I put up, she was in front of the Colosseum and holding a rose and I made her blurry and the Colosseum clear. There were a couple of birds and what was usually in focus wasn’t. It gave the photo so much more depth and story. I’d shoot straight and still work to the rule of thirds, but I purposely make it crooked. 

Exactly, and I’d push things. I'd make sure her face would be following that third point, you know, so it still felt right. Classic, old-school photographers would disagree because the horizon isn't straight, but I purposely make it crooked. I like being abrasive like that. It got people interested in talking. My work would be discussed by other people because it was interesting. It wasn't just another photo that blended in and that was my biggest goal – create something interesting that had story and depth to it and that’s what I've tried to do ever since.

Yeah, absolutely. It’s come to the point where I feel like I’ve been doing it forever, but it’s slowly become fashionable in a way. I feel like for the first time in my life I was at the forefront – I developed this style. My account grew drastically because I was shooting like this and nobody else was. Not even six months after I was doing it, people started to figure out what I was doing and that it was so simple – focusing on the secondary subject. Then all of a sudden everyone’s Instagram had blurry subjects but I still felt as if I had a creative edge over people that were trying to emulate it. 

I didn’t feel like I was being swallowed up by this style that I helped create. Brands are starting to figure it out and they’re kind of into it. They were unsure initially, but I would throw a few blurry pictures in with say, 50 photos, and now they actually pick the blurry ones. It took a bit of convincing but it’s become sort of commercially fashionable rather than something edgy that they wouldn’t touch. 

Tegan would disagree, but New Delhi. It was this sensory overload where you couldn’t take a bad photo. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there but it has this post-apocalyptic feel, like in The Book of Eli where everything’s covered in a film of dust and dirt. People are desensitised to the living conditions because they’ve been around it their whole life. It’s such a culture shock in the best way possible. 

Yeah, what works with the colour grade of India is that you’ve got your warm-coloured city, the polluted air has this warm look about it. It’s pretty but it’s also polluted. Then you’ve got your coloured spices which really pop – blue and red tones are really exaggerated against the warm tones. It’s visually stunning. 

The more I learned about video and the more I tried to do both video and stills in the same day, the more I realised how different it is. It’s like, I guess, trying to do boxing versus jujitsu. From the outside looking in - it's still fighting but when you realise how different these things are... It’s only in the last year have I started to really figure out that I need to be in a whole different headspace to be able to shoot photos and shoot video. It's just so different. I look for different things. I mean, the style of my photos and videos - they gel with each other really well, but the way I shoot is so different. And I've only figured out in the last year I've got to put those into different ponds.

Absolutely. At first with video, I was more worried about it being slow and cinematic and cool and whatever else. Only recently I started to use the gimbal less and make it less smooth and more real. If you’re familiar with Jason Bourne, those kinds of movies...

Yeah, I'm a big big movie buff. I think that's what sparked the whole cinematic look with all my work. I love the rawness and the guerrilla style of video. In the last six months, I've dropped the gimbal altogether. And I shoot really shaky and if it’s not shaky enough, I put a shake in it. 

I also learned that the visual aspects are only one piece. If you can draw people in with sounds that are familiar, they can paint the rest of the picture – even if you can’t see what’s going on you can hear what’s going on. Like in a fight scene in a John Wick or Jason Bourne movie. There's a lot of swishing of the camera - you know what's happening because you can hear the sound but you don’t necessarily see it or see it right away. You don’t always need the full visual aspect. That’s the kind of thing I’m trying to emulate. The style of cinema that I'm so in love with. 

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I’d probably go back to that Colosseum shot of Tegan. That’s a photo I took long ago but I still look back at it and am still happy with it, even with the way I edit now. That’s kind of the perfect representation of my style. I’ve taken many other photos like that but that one stands out. 

A huge part. I feel like we know that too. So that's another way I feel we have an edge over other people in this industry. We are technically a travel couple but we don't push the coupley stuff. We have just grown out of that style these days. Now we try to make it as artistic and as cinematic and as moody and edgy as possible. I think that's the driving force for us. How can we make travel photos cool and that's probably why we still manage to stand out. 

When we travel, everyone’s got their latest travel gear and hiking boots, then Tegan and I will pack way too many clothes because we’re big on fashion and we love to dress up. That’s part of the edge we have, we love fashion and we like to push it when we’re away and show people that you can be fashionable when overseas. It just means you might have to take an extra suitcase.

I think the biggest thing would be: don't get too caught up on what other people are doing. Comparing yourself to others too much will hold you back. Use it as inspiration. I get my inspiration from those collective accounts that repost other artists' work. Try and follow accounts that resonate with you and a style you like. Another way to teach yourself is to try to emulate famous photos or even just photos you love. You will find once your work is looking as good, you will start to develop your own creative outlook. You will only grow as a creative by experimenting with new ideas

For example try to do something different with the focus, or composition, or colour and try and make it yours in a way. I think that was the only way I grew. I would see what other people were trying to do and I would try and do something similar. And then I'll do it my way and it would slowly evolve into something and that's just how I think most people's style develops - trial and error. 

Currently, what goes with me everywhere is the Nikon D850 and the NIKKOR 14-24mm 2.8; the 24-70mm 2.8, the 70-200mm 2.8. 

See Ned/Nathan’s work here.