About Me

Learn More About Me

Well I guess that if you're here, it's to learn more about me, beyond the general facts! So here are a few questions & answers on different topics: personal life, travel, photography, and the blog.

🧔🏻 Personal

How old are you?

I'm 29 years old (in 2023); I was born in 1993.

Where are you from?

I'm from Paris, France.

Where do you live?

I'm still in Paris. Well actually, I live in the suburb, about 30mn north of Paris.

What's your day job?

I'm a project manager in big data for PSA (Peugeot, Citroën, ...), one of the biggest car manufacturer in the world.

What's your dream?

My dream is to be a full-time travel blogger! Right now I do this as a side project; I use my days off from work to travel and work on the blog. I'd love to do this full-time, and be able to travel more.

Why is your logo a jumping man?

Because I jump around all the time! I do Parkour, and used to be a Parkour coach & athlete for Parkour Paris. Now I focus my time on the blog, but I still take photos for my team.

🌍 Travel

Do you travel all the time?

I wish! I use French National days off to go on 3-day weekends, and use my annual leave to go on longer trips (2/3 weeks). In 2018 I went on 8 trips; and 5 trips in 2019.

Do you travel alone?

It depends. I usually travel with Nesrine, for most of the trips. On few occasions I travel with friends, like when I went to Slovenia to meet a Slovenian friend I met in Australia the year before. And finally, I sometimes go on solo trips, but that's pretty rare; it happens when I travel for work, then stay for the weekend to explore the country.

What's your travel style?

I'd define it as comfy adventure. We rent hotels around 25€/night per person: we look on Booking.com for great location, private bathroom, and a comfy bed. That's about it. We then leave for the day, and go on epic hikes to explore the area. When I travel with frends or alone, I go much more adventure style and sleep in hostels & shared rooms.

How do you afford to travel?

Nesrine and I both have a day-job, meaning a steady source of income that we use to pay for our travels. I fund 99% of my travels, as I want to keep my freedom in discovering places and share honest reviews & feedback with you on the blog.
A short trip (3 days) costs us about 180€/person (flight 100€/person - car 60€ - hotel 25€/night/person); a long trip (2 weeks) about 765€/person (flight 300€/person - car 280€ - hotel 25€/night/person).

📸 Photography

Did you take all the photos on your site?

Yes! I'm a travel photographer, and I take my own photos when I travel; these are the photos you can see on the site. About 10% of the photos are not mine; either when I don't have a good photo of the place, or when I talk about a spot I didn't have time to visit for example.

What gear do you use?

I use a pretty old camera from 2012, a Canon 6D. It's far from being the best camera out there, but it does the job just fine. And it's pretty cheap compared to most recent cameras. I have 2 main lenses: a Tokina 16-28 f/2.8 wide angle lens that I use for most of the landscape shots, and a Canon 70-200 f/2.8 zoom lens for details, portraits and wildlife. I have a third lens, a Canon 85mm f/1.8 that I use for product shots & portraits when at home, but I very rarely take it with me on trips.

Are all your photos taken with this camera?

All photos from 2018 are taken with this camera, or with my drone: the DJI Mavic Pro. The photos before 2018 were taken with my first camera, a Nikon D5500. It was a great camera, and if I hadn't been robbed in Bosnia and lost all of my gear, I'd probably still be shooting with it.

How do you edit your photos?

I use Adobe Lightroom for 90% of the work; I apply my presets that I've developed over the years to speed up the workflow, then adjust the settings for each photo. I then take the photos to Photoshop to give them a final boost, and if needed remove distractions in the photo.

How did you learn photography?

I read/watched a lot of free tutorials online, had help from a photographer friend, and the most important: practice! I shoot a lot, and I learn by doing. You can read the full story here.

💻 Blog

How did you create your blog?

It was originally meant to be a portfolio, where I'd shared & sell my photos. No one came on the site, and it didn't work out. I then decided to share travel stories on the site, and then added a few photography guides. The site started to attract visitors, and I kept going!
I bought a theme for Wordpress, modified it a bit for my style, and that's about it. I used the same theme for 3 years, and honestly it wasn't that great: it looked OK at best, and took forever to load. But you don't need to worry about this in the beginning, just publish content until your blog grows!

Why did you change your site?

I never really took the time to create a site I'd be proud of; plus it was loading way too slow! In May 2020 I launched a big redesign project with Nesrine. She designed the site entirely, and I coded it myself with a light theme as a starting base. I coded about 90% of the site, using html, css, javascript and php. Now the site looks great and loads fast!

How much time per week do you work on your site?

Around 40h per week. From Monday to Friday I work 1h per day during my lunch break at work; and then for about 4h when I get home. On the weekends, I work from 4 to 10h a day.
Nesrine works around 20h per week, 2h after work and 5h on Saturdays/Sundays.