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Shot of the Week: The Grandest of Canyons (Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, USA)

Shot of the Week: The Grandest of Canyons (Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, USA)

Shot of the Week: The Grandest of Canyons (Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, USA)

One week into our road trip, and we finally made it to the Grand Canyon! Before this visit, I’d been there for a brief stop along one of my many journeys between St. Louis and LA in college, and Ian had only flown over it in a plane. It was time for both of us to really see this place. And see it we did, in the sun, rain, sleet, hail and snow!

We camped for two days at the South Rim’s Desert View Campground — a deal at just $12/night — and endured cold, snowy weather inside our warm sleeping bags and tent (see more of our camping essentials here). After roughing it at Lake Mead and Williams the two previous nights, I was SO happy to finally be staying at a place that had showers (thought it did require a 20+ mile drive to the other side of the park). It was also the perfect, iconic place to round out week one of our all-American road trip.

This photo of the Grand Canyon was taken on Thursday May 14th with the Sony a7 II and Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5 Heliar III lens. (Continue to view full photo.)  Continue reading “Shot of the Week: The Grandest of Canyons (Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, USA)”

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Our List of Awesome: 5 Crazy Cool Moments From Our Lives This Past Month

Our List of Awesome: 5 Crazy Cool Moments from Our Lives this Past Month

Our List of Awesome: 5 Crazy Cool Moments from Our Lives this Past Month

A lot of exciting stuff has been happening to Ian and me this past month. Many of you already know about some things from following us on Facebook or being a Lonely Speck subscriber. (Thanks for your support!) But I still wanted to document all the neat things that are going on with Ian and me here on the blog. So I made a list!  Continue reading “Our List of Awesome: 5 Crazy Cool Moments From Our Lives This Past Month”

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Shot of the Week: Busy Bee (Huntington Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California, USA)

Shot of the Week: Flying Bee and orange flowers at Huntington Botanical Gardens, California, USA

Shot of the Week: Flying Bee and orange flowers at Huntington Botanical Gardens, California, USA

One hundred thirty-six. If you’ve ever wondered how many shots it takes to capture a killer, in-focus — and in-flight — bee photo, that’s your answer.  We don’t typically do this type of photography, but the setting we found ourselves in earlier this week gave us the perfect opportunity to practice. My cousin Val is visiting California this week, and luckily (for once) I was in town! While searching for something to do together near to where she’s staying, I remembered the Huntington Gardens. I’d been once or twice before, several years ago, and I always enjoyed spending a few hours meandering around the Garden’s huge variety of flowers, plants and trees.

The weather’s been chilly here in California the last few days, but Monday treated us to a beautiful sunny California day. Hummingbirds were flitting about, the gardeners were busy pruning, and bees were buzzing around all the vibrantly colored flowers.

Ian, having just borrowed a new lens to review from B&H Photo, was eager to take photos. While flowers are a fine subject on their own, they’re certainly more interesting when there’s something flying around them. But these little buggers just wouldn’t hold still! This photo is #121 out of 136 bee photos he took in this spot. (Just ask me how many external hard drives we have — completely filled with photo files…)

This photo was taken on Monday, May 4th with the Sony a7 II and Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5 Heliar III lens with the Hawk’s Helicoid V5 close focus adapter. (Continue to view full photo.)  Continue reading “Shot of the Week: Busy Bee (Huntington Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California, USA)”

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Sony RX100 III Review: Why It’s the Best Travel Camera I’ve Ever Had (and Why I Sold My a6000 to Buy It)

Sony RX100 III real world review of the best travel camera I've ever owned

Sony RX100 III real world review of the best travel camera I've ever owned


Before I met Ian, the nicest camera I ever owned was probably the one on my cell phone. Well, he fixed that faster than you can say “interchangeable lenses,” and gave me my first digital SLR (a Canon T2i) after just two months of us being together. That was three years ago. Since then, the digital cameras I’ve “owned” include a Canon EOS M, a Sony a6000, and finally, my beloved Sony RX100 III. The T2i was a great camera to learn on, the EOS M I never really grew fond of, and the a6000? It was GREAT! Until I tried the RX100 III and just HAD to have that instead. Keep reading to find out why AND to see my favorite photos I’ve taken with this camera.  Continue reading “Sony RX100 III Review: Why It’s the Best Travel Camera I’ve Ever Had (and Why I Sold My a6000 to Buy It)”

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Getting Started on the 4-Hour Body Slow Carb Diet: Weight and Inches Lost in Week One!

Week One on the 4-Hour Body Diet: Weight and Inches Already Lost!

Week One on the 4-Hour Body Diet: Weight and Inches Already Lost!

I’m not a big Tim Ferriss fan. I tried SO HARD to read The 4-Hour Workweek about a year back, but I just couldn’t make myself finish it. The content wasn’t terrible. And I’m sure he’s got plenty of readers who worship him. But in my opinion, he sounds like a cocky jackass.

So why the hell are we trying his diet?

In Ferriss’s series of “4-Hour” books is The 4-Hour Body, a book on “rapid fat loss, incredible sex and becoming superhuman.” He provides a diet plan in the book, which we’ve decided to try for four main reasons:

  1. We got fat last month in Mexico. Too much yum.
  2. Ian had read the book before and considered trying it, making it a less foreign idea when I recently read another travel blogger’s post about the diet.
  3. The diet focuses on losing fat, not just losing weight.*
  4. Cheat Day

Note: I much preferred the similarly-themed The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau to Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek. The tone is inspirational rather than snarky and antagonizing.

*This is the most important point for me. I don’t want to just lose weight willy-nilly. I’d like to knock out the extra fat. I haven’t “dieted” since we started traveling because I haven’t seen the need to. My weight’s stayed at a healthy level over the past year. But since I quit my job to start traveling, I no longer ride my bike to work every day. I no longer nearly effortlessly achieve a toned body from my commute. So I wanted to do something about it. And here we are.  Continue reading “Getting Started on the 4-Hour Body Slow Carb Diet: Weight and Inches Lost in Week One!”

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Diana’s Nose Piercing at Ink Monkey Tattoo & Piercing (Los Angeles, USA) [Bucket List Item COMPLETE]

Diana's Nose Piercing by Thomas at Ink Monkey Tattoo and Piercing in Los Angeles, California

It was a busy day. I’d sung at least thirty rounds of the “hand-washing song,” created an hour’s worth of child’s flower crowns, and devoured the first Milky Way candy bar (it was cheat day!) that I’d tasted in as long as I can remember. We’d just finished volunteering with friends at the Arts and Literacy Festival in Santa Monica. But this was the moment I was waiting for.

I’ve wanted this since college, and I finally mustered the courage upon our latest return to Los Angeles. After two months abroad in Costa Rica and Mexico, we returned to the States with me itching for change. The day after our plane touched down, we hung out with a few of our best LA friends — two of which happened to have nose piercings — and I made my decision. I’d do it the next weekend, and for fun, they’d come too!

I hopped up, like a child visiting the dentist, onto the reclined chair that would support me while the needle went through. I chuckled as I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror — flower crown still in place — and leaned back in my seat to listen to an overview of the piercing steps and my only instructions: keep your eyes closed. Want to watch the gnarly video of my nose-piercing experience? YEAH ya do! Continue reading “Diana’s Nose Piercing at Ink Monkey Tattoo & Piercing (Los Angeles, USA) [Bucket List Item COMPLETE]”

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Shot of the Week: Morning Levitation (Trona Pinnacles National Monument, California, USA)

Shot of the Week: Morning Levitation, Trona Pinnacles National Monument, California, USA

Shot of the Week: Morning Levitation, Trona Pinnacles National Monument, California, USA

It’d been awhile since our last trip to Trona Pinnacles. We’d been engaging in a good amount of chatter around photos we’d taken there — one photo now makes up the cover of a Papa Roach single, and three were on exhibit in a gallery in Mexico — but at least 6 months had passed since we’d last visited.

After a month in the city (Mexico City), we were excited to have some dark skies awaiting us when we returned to California. We brought the whole crew — Tiger, too — and headed north to capture our first Milky Way photos with the a7 II. Tiger had an awesome time, as expected, though he did nearly step on the largest scorpion we’d ever seen in the wild (unbeknownst to him). That kinda ended Tiger’s and my frolicking around in the dark. I took him back to the tent and we hung out inside while Ian continued shooting.

Since Ian was in the process of editing his final video lessons for our latest Skillshare class — Levitation Photography — we couldn’t miss the opportunity to get one more levitation photo in this exotic desert landscape the next morning. We hadn’t tried many in direct sunlight, so the shadow was a bit of a challenge, but the natural landscape made for a nice contrast to all the urban shots we’d been getting for the class. Want to know more about levitation photography? Check out our class on Skillshare — at least watch the intro video; it’s pretty cool — and view sample photos from the class over on The Photon Collective.

This photo was taken on April 24th with the Sony a7 II and Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens. Continue to view full photo.  Continue reading “Shot of the Week: Morning Levitation (Trona Pinnacles National Monument, California, USA)”

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We Got Liebster’d! 10 Questions Answered + Our 5 Nominees

Liebster Award on North to South

Liebster Award on North to South

Well my, my… what do we have here? Looks like a Liebster Award nomination from the fantastic Tomy and Marina of Made in Moments. To the two of you: Thanks for nominating us! We shall accept and continue the Liebster tradition by passing the torch to 5 other bloggers (see who we’ve nominated below).

To our readers: You’re probably wondering just what exactly a Liebster Award is… In short, it’s a way for bloggers to support other bloggers by calling them out on their own blog and challenging them to answer a list of questions. Why should you read this post? It’s a great way for you to get to know us a little better, from our answers to the 10 questions Made in Moments has set forth for us! (Plus I’ve forced Ian to answer the questions, too, so you’ll be hearing thoughts directly from him for the first time EVER on this here blog.)

Read on for some fun facts about Ian and me, plus our list of Liebster nominees.  Continue reading “We Got Liebster’d! 10 Questions Answered + Our 5 Nominees”

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Where Men Become Gods: The Pyramids of Teotihuacan, A Photo Journal (Estado de México, México)

Piramides de Teotihuacán, Teotihuacán Pyramids, Estado de Mexico

Piramides de Teotihuacán, Teotihuacán Pyramids, Estado de Mexico

Last week we sat down to plan our final week in Mexico City. With the unstable political situation here, we weren’t sure how soon we’d return. So we made a list. All the places we wanted to be sure to visit before we left. Obviously Los Pirámides de Teotihuacán were on the list.

I can’t believe we didn’t visit the pyramids of Teotihuacán sooner, because it was definitely one of my favorites of our whole Mexico City trip. If you’re planning a trip to Mexico, you DON’T want to miss this.  Continue reading “Where Men Become Gods: The Pyramids of Teotihuacan, A Photo Journal (Estado de México, México)”