Together Laurence and Jessica have traveled the world. Featured on CNN, USA Today, National Geographic, and many other places, Laurence and Jessica’s Finding the Universe began in May of 2010 as a way for Laurence to organize his wonderful experiences and share his photography. Today, it has turned into a hub of travel advice and inspiration for both travelers and wanderlusters. On this site, the two share their adventures, secrets of travel, and beautiful photos taken by Laurence himself.
Last summer, Jessica and Laurence took a road trip across the United States and featured the scenery through stunning photography on their blog. In posts like Highlights of Route 66 Arizona – In Photos, this traveling duo allowed readers to follow along as they discovered their country’s natural beauty. People are sure to be inspired by the fantastic adventures documented on this site.
From Yosemite and London to Sri Lanka and Cambria, wherever you are going, this travel blog is here to help with all things planning for the best trip yet!
What inspired you to start a travel blog? Was there a specific reason or an event that made you decide ‘I’m gonna start a travel blog today’?
I started a travel blog purely as a way to document my personal travels. I’d been travelling in Australia for a year, and writing a diary, plus sharing photos to Facebook, and thought an online version that combined the two might be easier! I had no idea it would grow to where it is today and become my full-time job.
What have been the most challenging and the most rewarding aspects of running your blog and social media presence? Do you keep in touch with your readers?
The most challenging aspect is the time management – trying to balance time between having an awesome adventure, and then the production of high-quality content, not to mention the marketing, pitching and so on that goes along with running a blog. Thankfully, my wife works with me (we have a blog each, Finding the Universe and Independent Travel Cats), but we are able to share some of the workload!
The most rewarding aspects are twofold – first, getting to travel to incredible places, and take photos is, of course, wonderful. The other part is hearing from people who I have inspired to go somewhere or do something – that’s always a very positive feeling.
Finally, I do keep in touch with readers. This is done in two ways. I’m a professional photographer, so a lot of folks are interested in learning from me to improve their own photography. To meet that need, I created a travel photography course, and a great part of that is the one-to-one relationship that I form with my students, who can e-mail me their questions, something people really find useful.
Otherwise, people contact me via e-mail, in comments, and through my Facebook page, where we do live video to give people a behind the scenes view of our travels!
What’s your favorite place that you have visited & what’s a dream destination that you still haven’t conquered?
Currently, my favorite place is Scotland, which is handy, as we’re based in Scotland at the moment. The scenery is just spectacular, the whiskey is fabulous and the people are wonderful. Dream destination – somehow I’ve still not been to Iceland. That is right at the top of my list!
If you had one piece of advice for people who want to travel throughout the U.S. and around the world but want to stay on budget, what would it be?
Budget varies hugely between countries, and the U.S. is definitely not a cheap place to travel. My advice is to cut back on non-essentials like fancy meals and posh accommodation, and focus on funneling your funds to awesome activities and adventures.
I also highly recommend people check out my friend Matt’s book – which is called Travelling the World on $50 a Day. Loads of practical tips in there for anyone looking to make their money go a bit further!
