Welcome to Travelling Lens Insider, where every weekend I send you a carefully curated letter of all things travel, photography and points optimisation.

Now, onto this week’s letter…

✈️ Travel, Points and Miles

• 🥾 When you receive this letter, I’ll be exploring Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado! Excited to see some epic mountain views and stunning lakes and waterfalls. Dirt In My Shoes is my go-to National Park blog, written by a former park ranger. If you’re thinking about visiting Rocky Mountain National Park, here are 5 of the best and easy short hikes—I’m trying them all and will report back.
• 💳 Become a points & miles expert using this 4-step framework (and use these 8 tips to stop leaving points and miles on the table).
• ✈️ Aspirational travel in business or first class seats using points can be hard to find and book. This points & miles expert gives you her exact blueprint to book your next seat in business class, in under 16 minutes (real life example used).

(Like what you’re reading? Pass it along to someone who might love it too. And if that’s you, make sure to subscribe here! Thanks so much 😀)

📷 Photography

• 📸 Feeling unmotivated to take photos?Sean Tucker shares some great practical tips for staying motivated and inspired in taking photos.
• 🖼️ Don’t let your photos disappear into the digital graveyard.Turn your travel photos into a physical, tangible photo book that you can hold and flick though. Bonus: when you are curating your photos for the book, you get to re-live your travel experiences!
• 📷 As someone who loves to take personal travel photos during my trips, it’s so easy to over pack my camera gear. These 3 questions are tremendously helpful in choosing what gear I bring for each trip to avoid bring camera gear I don’t need.

Want to an easy way to plan your next trip? Get the free Travel Hub trip planning system in Notion.​

👀 Substack Finds

• As you know, I’m a big fan of using points and milesto travel more often and redeem aspirational seats in business/first class for long haul flights. I really liked this practical piece from Lindsey Cade, where she shares her personal points earning strategy and habits so she can travel more. I think you’ll like it too!
• A US flight attendant gives us some behind-the-scene insight on flight safety at each of the major US airlines. A really interesting read. I always love hearing from travel industry experts like pilots and flight attendants.

💬 Final Words

That’s all for today! See you next week

Janice

(p.s. I’m always looking to improve. If you have feedback, I’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s newsletter. And if you enjoyed it, please let me know why!)