Camera Roll is an interview series where we glimpse into the current moment via the mundane and the ordinary — the life documented and forgotten, lived through our phones and beyond.
Magazine editor Yolanda Edwards’s first phone was a landline in her childhood bedroom — and her first cell phone was rented for her by Conde Nast in the mid-90s. Her career began there, as a member of the photo department at Conde Nast Traveler, and she later became creative director. More recently, she started her own visually stunning travel magazine, Yolo Journal. Her love of exploration and uncovering hidden gems has brought her to California, Greece, Bordeaux, New York, and back again. We spoke with Yolanda about the lock screen photo she might never change, her tips for emerging travel writers, the suburban mom who changed the course of her life, and more.
what kind of phone do you have and how many images are on it?
I have an iPhone 14 and there are 108,312 “items” (this is how Apple refers to images) on it at this very moment.
can you describe your lock screen? what made you choose it?
It’s a black and white photo of my daughter that I took in Normandy when she was around four. I haven’t changed it in at least 10 years — there’s such a sweet energy to it. She is confident, happy, and adorable.
How long do you typically spend on your phone in a day?
My Sunday report card usually comes in at around 4-5 hours. I don’t always work on my laptop, so I justify it some of it as being work time.
where are passersby likely to spot you? what are you doing there?
I’m probably on a walk in a park or on a hike, and it could be in New York (in the city or in Sullivan County), in Rome, the Médoc region in France, or Northern California. I spend a lot of time in all of these places.
what is your morning routine like?
I roll out of bed and immediately go to the coffee machine, where I brew my coffee. As soon as that’s going, I sit down with my phone (bad habit that I’d like to change!) and look at emails, texts, and DMs. After a few minutes of that, the coffee is ready, and then I open up my old-school notebook — a Smythson leather-bound — and start writing down what I need to get done for the day and the week. Then, it’s time to walk my dog, Prune.
when did you get your first phone and what do you remember about it?
I’m old enough that my “first phone” was a landline in my room. My first personal cell phone experience was with one that was rented for me in the mid-90s, when I was working for Conde Nast Traveler and taking a personal vacation. They wanted me to be available, even though I had the lowest position in the photo department. It was a giant phone — seemed like a brick you’d hold up to your ear. The first and only call I got came within moments of beginning a road trip in England. I picked up, and from the other end, I heard “Hello Yolanda, this is Helmut Newton. The team at Traveler told me to contact you as I’m heading to the Florida Keys and wanted some advice.” Needless to say, it gave my husband and me so much to talk about for the rest of the journey — and I’m still talking about it today.
Tell us a little bit about your background and journey. Where did you grow up and what was it like?
My first ten years, I grew up in Tacoma, WA, and the next eight years in the Bay Area, in Burlingame, CA. My parents were pretty young, had found Christianity quite recently, and had a zealous enthusiasm for it. Somehow, even as a little kid, I knew that wasn’t for me. I think when I was trying to find my thing, I found travel. It was literally escapism — even if I didn’t imagine I could ever get to any of the places I was seeing in magazines, just knowing that there was somewhere else better out there and having that in my head as some very loose goal gave me a lot to dream about. At a certain point, I was gifted a subscription to The New York Times by my grandpa, and I cut out every travel article and made files organized by location. In high school and college, I started to be the person who people asked for travel advice. I went to Europe for the first time when I was a junior in high school, thanks to an invitation from my best friend’s parents, and thanks to my dad, who taught me how to play piano. Giving lessons is how I made the money to pay for the trip. Post-college, I was helping run a nightclub in San Francisco, where I came up with ideas for parties and did the invitation design. After that, I worked in photo production in fashion and travel, until I ended up writing about travel at Cookie Magazine in 2004. All those different elements play into what I’m doing now — listening to what people want and need in the travel lifestyle world and packaging it up in an aesthetically pleasing way.
After high school, you did a cultural immersion program in Greece. How did you decide to do that, and what was it like? Did it impact your choice of career?
I was completely lost as to what to do after high school. My parents didn’t place a huge amount of importance on college, and honestly, I just wanted to go somewhere that sounded cool and would get me the heck out of living with my family. The mother of one of my piano students was asking me where I was applying, and I didn’t have any clue — I had zero guidance. At that point, I was being homeschooled. My parents offered me that as an option because they wanted to keep me away from all the temptations of high school. I only said yes because I knew I could teach more piano lessons and make more money, which I needed to escape! I didn’t have a college counselor, and I wasn’t around friends discussing applications. This mother must have sensed that I was a kid who needed some direction, and she suggested I look into this program — she’d met the founder of it and thought it seemed up my alley. It was a life-changing semester. I started to take academics seriously and ended up getting into UC Berkeley afterward. When I was interviewing for jobs, no one cared about my university, the fact that I spoke Modern Greek, or that I majored in Comparative Literature, but it impacted my confidence. I stood a little taller.
How did you first get into travel writing and magazine editing?
When I was working at Conde Nast Traveler, the editor-in-chief always wanted to hear my opinions, and after I left, he put me on an “idea contract.” Every month, I had to write a memo of what I thought was interesting in travel, and what I thought we should do stories on. Years later, I was doing photo production at W Magazine, and a woman I went to college with, Pilar Guzman, walked by my desk. She had been brought in to develop the idea of a cool parenting magazine called Cookie. I helped her create the maquette for it — a mock-up to show what the magazine would be like — and when it was greenlit to become a real magazine, she asked me to join her. I declined because I didn’t want to continue being solely in the photo world, but then she offered me a job writing about family travel.
How do you think about the relationship between image and text at Yolo Journal?
When I was at Conde Nast Traveler, we hired great photographers and writers to each capture a place separately. Those stories were beautiful — many of them were award-winning. Still, people would ask me, “But where would you go?” even after seeing a story written about the very place they were asking me about. I saw a disconnect between these epic pieces and what the reader's takeaway was — they weren’t connecting on a personal level. When I started Yolo Journal, the idea was to work with image-makers who we wanted to hear from. The words needed to connect with the images you were looking at.
How do you make time for your personal life and strike the balance between work and free time?
I work with my husband, and our daughter Clara works with us too. We all love what we do, so the time we spend working is probably unbalanced with the rest of our lives, but I feel very lucky that I get to do this. I try to take time to read, not look at my phone, and do flower and still life arranging.
what do your days look like?
It all depends on where I am and the season. In the sleepy French countryside, where I am now, I’m up early and doing all of the big projects that need a lot of focus. There aren’t a lot of distractions, and it’s where I work best. Later this week, we’ll head to Rome, where I have a bit more of a work/life balance. When I’m traveling to places for research, I barely have time to get to my emails and messages, not to mention the projects I have to work on. So, having this time is key.
what’s been inspiring you?
I’m always inspired by all the books and magazines we have collected — and I love that over the holidays, I get to actually open them up and relax with them.
How do you use your phone or other tools to mark, store, and remember moments?
I document photographically with my iPhone, and since I have it with me all the time, I overshoot on that. I’ll use time on an airplane or if I’m in line somewhere to go through images and delete anything that doesn’t feel useful. I also have a Contax camera that I love, but it somehow never has film in it or the battery is dead. I used to do travel journals for any trip that was ten days or longer. But we started traveling so much once our daughter went to college that I stopped with the journals. I use my daily notebook to write down things that are memory triggers. Simple things — where we went and who with; what Matt cooked for dinner. If I need to remember more than that, I pair it with my iPhone.
What’s your stylistic approach to taking photos and videos on your phone? Are there certain styles or techniques you like to use?
I just shoot what I see and frame it to show what I think the photo truly is, and I definitely always wait for a moment when there isn’t a car or a human in the background. I don’t use filters or any editing program. If I’m making an environmental still life, I think about the surface and the props within the scene. We’re big collectors, so I have plenty of props to work with if I'm shooting a still life.
what are you watching?
I don’t usually watch much, but over the holidays, we started The Agency, which is so good, and now we’re watching The Bear.
what are you reading? what newsletters do you subscribe to?
I’m reading our friend Jane Anson’s incredible book Inside Bordeaux: The Chateaux, Their Wines, and the Terror. It’s teaching me so much about the area, its history, our neighbors, and of course, the wine. I’m also reading The First 20 Minutes, which is about how to exercise better. Newsletters I like reading include Notes From Emiko’s Kitchen, Xtine, So There’s This Place — I have a pretty tight list in my recommendations on my Substack, Club Yolo.
what is your favorite thing you’ve bought or come to possess in the past year?
My daughter gave me a beautiful portrait of my dog, Prune, for Christmas. Obviously, the thought behind it means the world, but the execution of the portrait is also beautiful.
Favorite apps on your phone?
Duolingo is my daily app! I’m on day 631 of a streak! I mainly use Instagram, The NY Times, and my Health app to see how many steps I’ve taken.
what’s the last thing you googled on your phone?
“Jane Scribner, Hillsborough CA” – that’s the piano mom who suggested the program in Greece to me. I need to find her and tell her that she was a big part of shaping the course of my life.