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travel photography
Our final day in Prague included another sunrise start. The best way to capture stunning shots of a city in the middle of summer is to get up before everyone else does haha. This morning we decided to head to the Prague Old Town Square. WOW it was beautiful with the bright, sunrise light streaming through the buildings.
Unlike our first day in Prague, on day 2 Dan and I managed to wake up at sunrise. Since we are here in the middle of summer, it gets extremely busy during the day. In order to be able to capture photos of the city, we need to get up as early as possible! The bonus side to having quiet streets is early in the morning, you also have beautiful soft light to work with as well.
I thought I would share my street photography separately in this post instead. I captured all these photos with my Sony A7IV + GM 35mm f1.4.
Finally, the travel blogs are back!! It's been 3 years since I went overseas, my last trip being to Scotland to do photography for a wedding. Now that the Australian borders have opened again, Dan and I decided to head back to Gdansk, Poland to see his family. By the end of our first whirlwind week we were ready to head off on our month-long road trip. First stop - Poznan, Poland!
I took these photos in June of 2019, it was the last time I've travelled overseas from Australia since the pandemic started. At the time, Dan and I were staying with his family in Gdansk, Poland. We travelled to a few different places during the month we were there including Scotland to capture a wedding, a roadtrip to Austria and this little trip to Granada, Spain.
I used the Sony A7IV and the Tamron 35-150mm f2-2.8 lens for these photos. While I am a portrait and wedding photographer, I do enjoy going out to do landscape and wildlife photography. I saw the opportunity to visit these waterfalls on a rainy day and was hoping to see some fog - the weather definitely delivered for me!
Today we are continuing on with our road trip through Austria. Our second half in Austria was a little more overcast so we spent a few of our outings exploring and taking photos in the rain.
Last year while Dan and I were in Europe, we decided to go on a roadtrip with Dan’s cousin Karol and his girlfriend Gosia to Austria. I took the Sony A7III with me for travel photography with the Sony 28mm f2 and 35mm f1.4.
Our weekend in the Scottish Highlands is one I’ll remember forever - Scotland is such a beautiful place that I could have easily spent a whole week (or two!) just in the highlands exploring and taking photos. On Saturday we made our way to the Isle of Skye, so on Sunday - our last day before our flights back to Gdansk, Poland - we decided to make our way to Glen Coe Valley. We visited the famous Harry Potter train tracks which took my breath away getting to see them in real life - what a beautiful structure! We also stopped at castles along our way, rivers, lakes, bridges - again as you can see in the vlog I filmed, we stopped on the side of the road to photograph everything pretty much every 10 minutes!
On our way home at the end of the day, we passed through the iconic mountains of the Scottish Highlands. All the parking spots with good viewpoints were absolutely packed to the brim, so we stopped at one a bit further back and decided to make the most of Scotland’s nature “freedom” and ran to the top of a hill to the most stunning views of the mountains at sunset. It’s safe to say Dan and I took at least 98098 photos of each other while we were up here and it was the perfect way to say goodbye to Scotland.
Watch the video of our time there below! And please subscribe to my channel if you haven’t yet, I upload new videos every single Wednesday.
All photos edited with my new Mountains Lightroom Preset!
All photos edited with my new Mountains Lightroom Preset!
After the wedding, Dan and I only had 3 short days left to enjoy Scotland before our flights back to Gdansk, Poland. We were as far south as we could go in Scotland for the wedding, but decided to make our way all the way north in a long roadtrip to Inverness. Inverness was our base for the weekend and we spent both Saturday and Sunday going on roadtrips to explore the Scottish Highlands. On Saturday we woke up bright and early and made our way to the Isle of Skye, stopping every few minutes on the side of the road (as you can see in the vlog I filmed!) to take pictures with all the stunning landscapes around us.
The Scottish Highlands were absolutely beautiful and I would love to go back there one day and spend more time exploring. Since we only had 2 days to see everything, we couldn’t wait for ideal lighting conditions for landscape photography, so we worked with what we had. Luckily the weather in Scotland is usually quite overcast which I absolutely loved for creating moody photos. You can see a lot more of our trip and behind the scenes of us taking photos in the vlog I created from our time there below! And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to my channel - I upload a new video every single Wednesday.
This blog was put together with Narrative. I love using Narrative as part of my photoshoot culling process to see which images from a shoot I should edit and I also use it to easily & quickly be able to put together these blog posts with different layouts of images side by side. I’m really excited to say I’ve teamed up with Narrative and have a 15% discount code for you guys using the code julia15 or just clicking this link! You can download a free trial to test it out for 7 days too :)
All photos edited with my new Mountains Lightroom Preset!
All photos edited with my new Mountains Lightroom Preset!
After spending a few days in Edinburgh, it was time to head to the south of Scotland to get ready for the wedding we were capturing. The morning before the wedding Dan and I headed out to explore what was in our area and stumbled across Galloway Forest which was a beautiful park full of lakes, mountain views and you guessed it - forests! We spent a few hours driving, going for walks and taking lots of photos. One thing I noticed about the lakes in Scotland is that a lot of them are a very dark colour as you can see from the photo above, which I absolutely loved! The water looked clean but for some reason also looked almost black, it was mesmerising.
We headed back to our accommodation and spent the rest of the afternoon charging up all our camera batteries and getting our camera gear ready for the wedding. You can see a few photos from Laura & Shaun’s wedding here if you’re interested in taking a peek! It was a wonderful day and we were really spoilt for choice on photo locations in the amazing Scottish countryside. You can also watch the vlog I filmed which we were in Scotland below, please subscribe to my channel if you haven’t yet, I upload new videos every Wednesday!
This blog was put together with Narrative. I love using Narrative as part of my photoshoot culling process to see which images from a shoot I should edit and I also use it to easily & quickly be able to put together these blog posts with different layouts of images side by side. I’m really excited to say I’ve teamed up with Narrative and have a 15% discount code for you guys using the code julia15 or just clicking this link! You can download a free trial to test it out for 7 days too :)
All photos edited with my new Mountains Lightroom Preset!
All photos edited with my new Mountains Lightroom Preset!
This is my first of 5 blog posts I’m going to be sharing from my time in Scotland and what better way to start than at the very beginning of our trip, in Edinburgh! After only 3 short weeks back at home after Thailand to catch up on work, capture a few weddings and do some photoshoots, Dan and I flew from Sydney, Australia to Gdansk, Poland. We spent about a week at Dan’s family’s place in the country catching up on jetlag, visiting the old town and as usual taking lots of photos and even filmed a video. Next up it was time to head to Scotland!
We were visiting Scotland as Dan and I were capturing a wedding while we were there. We decided to book our flights with a few extra days on either side of the wedding as Scotland is a place we both have wanted to visit for so long! Our first couple of days in Edinburgh were a whirlwind! We visited the old city, walked up to Edinburgh Castle, did a photoshoot with Tamar & Matt at the Botanical Gardens and did a photoshoot of photographer Caroline (behind the scenes for this photoshoot coming really soon!). Here are some of the pictures I captured in those first two days.
You can watch my vlog of the rest of our time in Scotland down below + it’s a sneak peek for the rest of the photo posts to come soon! Please subscribe to my channel if you haven’t already, I upload a new video every Wednesday.
This blog was put together with Narrative. I love using Narrative as part of my photoshoot culling process to see which images from a shoot I should edit and I also use it to easily & quickly be able to put together these blog posts with different layouts of images side by side. I’m really excited to say I’ve teamed up with Narrative and have a 15% discount code for you guys using the code julia15 or just clicking this link! You can download a free trial to test it out for 7 days too :)
All photos edited with my new Mountains Lightroom Preset!
All photos edited with my new Mountains Lightroom Preset!
After visiting Krabi, Dan and I split off from our group of friends and decided to stay a couple of nights on Phi Phi rather than just making a day trip like they had already done. We took the ferry from Krabi to Phi Phi and when we arrived to the island, we were able to walk to our accommodation - I didn’t realise how tiny this island really was! Our time on Phi Phi was exactly what I needed to clear my mind and feel refreshed. We spent our days swimming in the ocean, we hired a kayak one day and made our way to Monkey Beach to snorkel which was really fun and went on little walks to explore the island.
On Phi Phi was the ONE time I took out my Canon 35mm f1.4 with me to take a few portraits at the beach right in front of our hotel - which are the photos in the maxi dress just down below. The rest of the trip and time I only took photos with the Sony 28mm f2.
After Phi Phi, we took the ferry to Phuket where we reunited with our friends. Phuket is such a busy city and not really what I personally prefer when travelling - I would much rather be on a quieter and calmed island such as Phi Phi or Krabi. Regardless, we spent a couple of days at the beach soaking in the sun (with lots of sunscreen!) and swimming in the almost wave-less ocean. Unfortunately on our second day in Phuket I came down with food poisoning so the rest of my time in Thailand is a bit of a blur and a bore trying to get some rest to feel better. I’m not sure what I got sick from, but at one point or another everyone from our group of 7 fell sick to something expect for 2 people - Dan and Anetta (lucky them!).
Phuket was too busy and loud for Dan and I’s taste, so we decided to move hotels further up north to a quieter part of the Phuket area called Bangtao. I was too sick to even move, so Dan was very sweet and packed up my suitcases (which everything was strewn around our hotel room lol) and with shaky legs, we got into a cab and spent the last few days hanging out at a beautiful beach where we took some of my favourite portraits of the trip with the sunset.
You can watch the video of my time in Thailand below which includes behind the scenes of how I took some of the photos in this blog post. And please subscribe to my YouTube Channel if you haven’t already! I upload new photography related videos every single Wednesday.
All photos edited with my Aspen Lightroom Preset + Florence Lightroom Preset!
These photos from Phi Phi were edited with my Aspen Lightroom Preset
Dan took some portraits of me on my 35mm
before // after - edited with Aspen
Dan and I resting on Bangtao beach while I was super sick!
before // after - edited with Florence
before // after - edited with Florence
This blog was put together with Narrative. I love using Narrative as part of my photoshoot culling process to see which images from a shoot I should edit and I also use it to easily & quickly be able to put together these blog posts with different layouts of images side by side. I’m really excited to say I’ve teamed up with Narrative and have a 15% discount code for you guys using the code julia15 or just clicking this link! You can download a free trial to test it out for 7 days too :)
All photos edited with my Aspen Lightroom Preset + Florence Lightroom Preset!
After spending 2 days in Bangkok, the next stop of our Thailand trip is Chiang Mai. I think Chiang Mai was one of my favourite parts of this whole trip, its a quiet city nestled within the mountains and forests, so there is lots of green around. There are also so many different places to visit and things to do!
We found a driver who took around to all the sights throughout the 2 days we were in this city. Everything is about a 1 - 2 hour drive from the city centre of Chiang Mai, so we tried to squeeze in seeing as much as we possibly could! We went to the top of Doi Suthep Temple and visited some temples and viewpoints along the way up the mountain, explored the local markets, visited and ethical elephant sanctuary (where you don’t ride the elephants, only feed them and walk WITH them), explored the sticky waterfalls and climbed many steps to get to Muang On Cave. I can’t forget I also practically ate my weight in Papaya and Longang - the fruit is absolutely delicious and so cheap too!
You can watch the video of my time in Thailand below which includes behind the scenes of how I took some of the photos in this blog post. And please subscribe to my YouTube Channel if you haven’t already! I upload new photography related videos every single Wednesday.
All photos are edited with:
Disposable Film Lightroom Preset (to accentuate those beautiful greens!)
Aspen Lightroom Preset! (for a more natural, clean edit)
Florence Lightroom Preset (for those few street photos!)
Breakfast at the airport.
These first bunch of photos are edited with my Aspen Lightroom Preset.
Doi Suthep Temple
These next few photos are edited with my Florence Lightroom Preset - it has a more film-like vibe
Our big travelling group! Dan and I + our friends from Poland.
These photos onwards are edited with my Disposable Film Preset
Walking down to the sticky waterfalls
We climbed about 300 steps to get to the top and the views were beautiful!
This blog was put together with Narrative. I love using Narrative as part of my photoshoot culling process to see which images from a shoot I should edit and I also use it to easily & quickly be able to put together these blog posts with different layouts of images side by side. I’m really excited to say I’ve teamed up with Narrative and have a 15% discount code for you guys using the code julia15 or just clicking this link! You can download a free trial to test it out for 7 days too :)
All photos are edited with:
Disposable Film Lightroom Preset (to accentuate those beautiful greens!)
Aspen Lightroom Preset! (for a more natural, clean edit)
Florence Lightroom Preset (for those few street photos!)
I am currently in Gdansk, Poland and in true fashion - catching up on my blog posts from our trip to Thailand this February! There will be 4 total blog posts from our time in Thailand, starting with our first stop of the trip, Bangkok. Dan and I flew in at 4 in the morning, got to our hotel and crashed. The next day our friends from Poland arrived, we met up with them and started our exploring - there were 7 of us travelling together.
I took a break from my camera on the first day we were there, I had just come from photographing 4 weddings the weekends before the trip so I wanted to have a day off from taking photos. Since Thailand was a holiday, the only camera I brought with me was the Sony A7III - as it’s great for vlogging/filming and taking photos as well. The Sony 28mm f2 lens (all the photos in this blog post are taken with that lens) and the Canon 35mm f1.4 + metabones adaptor which to be completely honest only came out of my bag ONCE in the 3 weeks we were in Thailand.
Bangkok is absolutely wild, there is so much going on absolutely ALL the time. Even though I normally stray towards nature and greenery when I travel as it makes me feel more comfortable, it was a great city to experience. Watch my video below from our time in Thailand and please subscribe to my YouTube Channel if you haven’t already! I upload new photography related videos every single Wednesday.
All photos edited with my Amalfi Lightroom Preset and Aspen Lightroom Preset!
These first few photos are edited with Amalfi
From here onwards, the photos are edited with Aspen!
At the floating food markets - this is the BEST meal I had on the trip, absolutely delicious!
Hazy Bangkok sunsets
Visiting the hectic Khao San Road night markets
Our last night in Bangkok spent at a rooftop bar!
This blog was put together with Narrative. I love using Narrative as part of my photoshoot culling process to see which images from a shoot I should edit and I also use it to easily & quickly be able to put together these blog posts with different layouts of images side by side. I’m really excited to say I’ve teamed up with Narrative and have a 15% discount code for you guys using the code julia15 or just clicking this link! You can download a free trial to test it out for 7 days too :)
All photos edited with my Amalfi Lightroom Preset and Aspen Lightroom Preset!
Dan and I travelled to the US with our friend Cuong and spent just under 2 weeks exploring the national parks and taking a plethora of photos! The only camera gear I brought with me was the Sony A7III, Sony 28mm f2 and the Canon 35mm f1.4 II + Metabones iv adaptor.
After spending a few days exploring autumn & snow covered Colorado, it was time to start heading on our road trip through the US for a new adventure. The first state we had to drive through was Utah, and since it was so closeby, we decided to stop in Arches National Park on our way through. It was such a stark contrast to now be in the desert compared to lush and snowy Colorado but it was a beautiful landscape to experience nonetheless. In some spots of the National Park you could even see snow-capped Colorado in the distance!
We drove through the night into Salt Lake City, woke up in the morning and spent a whole day driving through a barren part of Nevada, making it to the border of California. Next stop is Yosemite National Park! I hope you all like the before & after images I’m including throughout my blog posts now! After getting some feedback on Instagram, it was a general consensus that you guys wanted to see more of that.
And if you haven’t seen it already, below is my photography related vlog of our time in Colorado and at the end, of what we got up to in Utah. Every photo in the vlog includes a before & after & was shot on my Sony A7iii + Sony 28mm f2.
Please subscribe to my YouTube channel, I release new videos every Wednesday and Saturday!
All photos edited with my Florence Lightroom Preset!
This blog was put together with Narrative. I love using Narrative as part of my photoshoot culling process to see which images from a shoot I should edit and I also use it to easily & quickly be able to put together these blog posts with different layouts of images side by side. I’m really excited to say I’ve teamed up with Narrative and have a 15% discount code for you guys using the code julia15 or just clicking this link! You can download a free trial to test it out for 7 days too :)
after - edited with my Florence Lightroom Preset
before
before // after - edited with my Florence Lightroom Preset
before // after - edited with my Florence Lightroom Preset
All photos edited with my Florence Lightroom Preset
In October, I travelled to Colorado with Dan and our friend Cuong to visit Denver and road trip through the snowy and autumn coloured mountains. We visited Aspen, Telluride, Ouray and all the places in between. I took only my Sony A7III to be able to vlog and take photos throughout our trip + 2 lenses: the Sony 28mm f2 and Canon 35mm f1.4 (which I used with a Metabones iv adaptor on the Sony).
The reason I decided to take the Sony over my Canon 5D mkiv is because it is such an optimised camera for travelling. First up, it’s small and light weight which is perfect to vlog on and also doesn’t weigh me down while spending long days exploring, hiking and just walking around. Second, I see it on par with photo quality as my 5D, the images are crisp, RAW files are easy to manage and colour and focusing is actually pretty fine with the 35mm adapted.
Lastly, since I also run a YouTube channel, filming video is just as important for me as taking photos! The Sony system is great for video, it has smaller file sizes than the Canon and again, the small and light weight nature of the camera means that I am able to vlog on it! I think we’ll all get sea sickness if I had to vlog on my 5D haha.
Check out the vlog from our trip below which has behind the scenes of us taking travel photos - portraits and landscapes as well as travel photography tips and SO many before and after photos!
Please subscribe to my YouTube channel, I release new videos every Wednesday and Saturday!
This blog was put together with Narrative. I love using Narrative as part of my photoshoot culling process to see which images from a shoot I should edit and I also use it to easily & quickly be able to put together these blog posts with different layouts of images side by side. I’m really excited to say I’ve teamed up with Narrative and have a 15% discount code for you guys using the code julia15 or just clicking this link! You can download a free trial to test it out for 7 days too :)
All photos are edited with my Lightroom Presets! I used a variety of presets to suite the look of the photo and the style I was going for with each of the shots I took. I used these presets:
San Francisco Lightroom Preset
There are before and after images throughout this blog post so you can see what each of these presets look like! And if you want to see more, I shared a before and after for every single image that I shot in the vlog :)
before // after - edited with my L.A. Lightroom Preset
after - edited with my L.A. Lightroom Preset
before
Location of a portrait we wanted to photograph
Final photos
What taking photos with a crop frame lens on a full frame camera looks like! I kinda like it!
before // after - edited with my Amalfi Lightroom Preset
before // after - edited with my Amalfi Lightroom Preset
before // after - edited with my San Francisco Lightroom Preset
before // after - edited with my Amalfi Lightroom Preset
All photos are edited with my Lightroom Presets! I used a variety of presets to suite the look of the photo and the style I was going for with each of the shots I took. I used these presets:
Last week, Dan and I had the chance to visit Fiji for a wedding we were capturing. We decided to take a few extra days of holidays after the wedding so we could make the most of being somewhere so beautiful! We stayed in 2 places during our week in Fiji, both on the coral coast. The first hotel was the Warwick for the wedding, and the second place was a group of private villas called Maui Palms.
Since it’s winter in Australia at the moment, we were so excited to be somewhere that was always warm. I was mesmerised by the crystal clear water which looked like glass, all the colourful fish swimming in and around the coral when we spent 2 whole days just snorkelling and the vibrant sunsets.
I still love being able to document my travels for YouTube as I love watching back and seeing all the places I visited. This time though, I wanted to try something new and incorporate more teaching into my vlogs, so they are still interesting and educational for you guys to watch! Let me know what you think of this new format :) I have my second and final vlog from Fiji coming this Saturday!
The majority of these photos were edited with my Florence Lightroom Preset as I found the vibrant colours with a film-like look suite the photos from Fiji perfectly. I used a few other presets throughout the blog post too, which I will leave links for in the description in case you’re interested to see what photos were edited with what presets!
Please subscribe to my YouTube Channel, I release 2 new videos a week - Wednesday & Saturday!
All photos without an extra link were edited with my Florence Lightroom Preset Pack!
Last week Dan and I made our way to Tasmania to capture a photo + video wedding. We decided to take a few extra days while we were there to be able to explore a part of Australia we’ve always wanted to go to. We landed in Launceston early Wednesday morning and spent our day checking out various lookouts before checking into our beautiful Airbnb house which was on a farm in the countryside. From there onwards we spent our week exploring Lake St Claire, photographing the gorgeous backyard wedding that we will share soon, visiting Cradle Mountain National Park and Freycinet National Park. I absolutely adore Tasmania, there is so much green everywhere you look and sometimes it really feels like you’re the only people in the entire state. I would love to come back soon!
Check out my vlog from our week in Tasmania below and please subscribe to my channel if you haven't already! I release 2 new photography related videos a week.
All photos edited with my Amalfi Lightroom Preset!
