Travelling Lens Insider #012

Summer is the perfect time to visit national parks like Yellowstone and Grand Teton

👋 Hey friends,

Welcome to Travelling Lens Insider, where every weekend I send you a carefully curated letter of all things travel, photography and points optimisation.

Now, onto this week’s letter…

✈️ Travel, Points and Miles

⛱️ Summer means it’s the perfect time to visit the high-altitude national parks like Yellowstone and Grand Tetons.

I’m off to explore these National Parks in June (can’t wait!). Here are three really useful resources I found when planning my itinerary, the best geysers, wildlife and things to do in Yellowstone, 5 of the best short hikes in Yellowstone and a full episode on exploring Grand Tetons.

💳 There’s no denying that credit card and point hacking game in the US is lucrative (if you know how to play).

Take 17 minutes to hear how you can “power up” your points and miles to take them even further in some of most popular hotel and airline loyalty programs in the US.

🏦Forget monuments and museums, try something more off the beaten path when visiting Washington DC.

(p.s. in case you missed, don’t forget to get the free 🗃️ Expat Travel Toolkit—it’s a carefully curated database of resources I wish I had when I first moved to the US.)

📷 Photography

📸 This one is for the Fujifilm camera fans around the world—the small travel-friendly camera, Fujifilm X-E5, has finally been announced!

I’ve been using the Fujifilm cameras for almost a decade now for travel photography. I love their small cameras and top quality lenses. I have two Fujifilm cameras myself, and this latest announcement is very tempting and I might add it to the mix towards the end of the year as a pocketable and small travel camera.

My first ever Fujifilm camera—Fujifilm X-T10

👣 Life is made of moments—the exciting, the mundane, the happy (and everything in between).

Documenting our lives through photographs is an easy and quick way to remember this. Here’s how you can document your life with photos (and why you should).

🖼️ To become better at taking personal memorable photos you’re proud of is less to do with the latest gear, and more to do with practice and mindset.

Youtube and travel photographer James Popsys’ shares his 10 practical (And unconventional) lessons from 15 years of photography.

Want to an easy way to plan your next trip? Get the free Travel Hub trip planning system in Notion.

Travel Hub, a free travel planning system in Notion

👀 Substack Finds

• 🛫 When tragedy strikes, it's hard to remember that flying is still one of the safest ways to get from point A to B. The pilot and writer behind

  Lessons From The Flight Deck 💺
  reminds us why flying is still safe and what investigations happen after an unfortunate crash.

• 🗻 Another beautiful travel location for summer? Norway. It’s a dream destination of mine, along with visiting the rest of Scandinavia. Listen to this brilliant interview between

  The Gomes Guide 🌎
  and Dana to get your dose of Norway travel inspiration.

• 🏰 Edinburgh is one of the most magical and beautiful medieval cities I’ve visited.

  Jen Belcher (Travel & Books)
  shares her top 12 photo spots you can’t miss in Edinburgh. I’ve been to all of them!

📸 Photo of the week

💬 Final Words

That’s all for today! See you next week

Janice

P.s. what did you like in today’s Letter?—I would love to hear!