It sounds to me like you’re building a portfolio and making contacts in order to develop a future line of business. If so, then yes it’s deductible from other lines of business. Is it good business to travel all of that way? That’s for you to decide, but as long as the expenses are reasonable the IRS won’t question them. You are expected to show an overall profit eventually. (This is what my CPA told me.)
In addition to those options also mentioned here, there was excellent hair and makeup designed for still photography, finely tuned lighting from years of craft, and diffusion filters on the camera lens (of many varieties) to make the skin glow. Then in the b&w darkroom, more diffusion filters under the lens to make the darks glow, selective use of poly contrast filters, and print retouching. Color went out to the retoucher, too, and could be dyed. So, lots of things.
I need a Windows machine and am very satisfied with my Dell XPS 15 laptop for LR and PS. This is my second one. My wife has Mac and likes that for her photography work, and we have no problem sharing resources in out studio. I also have a custom build desktop for photography that cost less than the laptop, and is also Windows.