An excellent beginner-friendly travel card deal with 75k miles welcome bonus, how to slow travel a month at a time and a fun book rec for your next trip.
Insider Letter #038
👋 Hey friends,
Welcome to Travelling Lens Insider Letter, where every fortnight I send you a carefully curated letter of all things travel, travel photography and points & miles.
In case you missed it, I published a year in review for 2025, recapping my travels, how I used points & miles, lessons in photography and a behind-the-scenes peak into the Travelling Lens newsletter. 👇
Now, onto this week’s letter…
✈️ Travel, Points and Photography
🚨 Capital One has just dropped a great deal on their beginner-friendly credit card, the Venture Rewards card.
You can earn a welcome offer of 75k miles after $4000 spend, plus $250 in Capital one travel credit once you get your card approved. All for an annual fee of $95! It’s not a card I’ve gotten but it’s one I’m considering right now.
💳 Speaking of Capital One, I’ve been doing more research into the Capital One ecosystem of credit cards, points & miles and how it compares to other ecosystems like AMEX and Chase. This was a really helpful 1 hour deep dive into all that from a points & miles guru.
📸 Sean Tucker does a beautiful interview that show cases the black and white photography of Frank Meadow Sutcliffe from the 1800s.
Soft and beautiful environmental portraits contrasting against the rough and tumble generation in England in the 1800s. It’s incredible how far we’ve come with photography—Today we snap a shot and move on in a split second. But 200+ years ago, you really had to really slow down and deliberate with every photo you tool if you wanted sharp images.
✈️ Are the best days of points behind us?
As someone who straddles both the Australian and US points & miles game, getting perspective from one of the top Aussie points & miles expert was really insightful (even if you’re not from Australia). TL;DR, not the game is not dead, just different.
In case you missed it 👇
📸 This Week in Notes
Your credit cards, points, and miles. All in one place.
If you’re a frequent flyer or are just getting into the points and miles game so you can travel for cheap, keeping track of your points and miles can feel overwhelming.
I’ve been using Notion to easily organise everything related to points and miles. So, if you’re looking a simple and flexible system to do just that, join the waitlist to be the first to know when my Points Hub PRO in Notion becomes available.
👀 Substack Finds
My favourite slow traveller Kelly from Benthall Slow Travel share how they slow travel one month at a time. Very inspirational and something that I would love to do in the future myself.
I loved reading about my little home town of Penang, Malaysia from a traveller’s perspective. Thanks Ashleigh at Travel Bugg for sharing this!
Golden Hour is every photographer’s favourite time of the day to shoot. But it can also ruin your photography, here’s why (and how to get around this problem) as explained by Roman Fox.
📚 Travel Reading
Finished reading People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry (which was recently released as a Netflix movie).
It was such a fun holiday read.
A friends-to-lovers romance story between Poppy and Alex. The story was fun and light (mostly), but when I loved most was the message.
Polly as a luxury travel magazine writer had the dream job—travelling the world, meeting lots of new people and writing about her holidays. But at the end escaping her life with the constant travel wasn’t truly living. Instead, it was always about travelling with the people we care about.
Highly recommend for your next travel read.
💬 Final Words
Creating memorable experiences is a smart use of your time and money.
I’m on a mission to help you create memorable travel experiences, capture personal documentary-style travel photos and get the most out of your points & miles so you can see the world more often (and in comfort!)
Got a question? Send me an email or a direct message, I’d love to hear from you!
If you enjoyed this, comment, restack or share it with one person—that’s the best compliment I could receive from you.
Your friend,
Janice
I'm a travel writer, photographer, points & miles optimiser and Notion Consultant. To get in touch, email hello@travellinglens.co.
p.s. Want to an easy & organised way to plan your next trip? Get my free Travel Hub trip planning system in Notion.
I read People We Meet on Vacation a few years back and watched the movie last month. Such a nice mix of romance, friendship and travel!