TRAVEL INTERVIEW WITH SCOTT AND CHRISTY OF ORDINARY TRAVELER

Meet Scott and Christy of Ordinary Traveler, two adventurous Americans who love travel, surfing and photography. In today’s interview, they share some insights into their world of, well, travel, surfing and photography! Let’s get started…

We love everything about San Diego! The laid-back attitude, great weather, close proximity to the ocean, consistent surf, people who live here are from all over and the general acceptance of the travel lifestyle. I can’t really imagine us living anywhere else. San Diego allows us to spend so much time outdoors, which we love, not too mention if we lived anywhere else I might actually have to dress up for work. No thank you! It would be almost perfect if we had good public transportation here too, but ah well we can’t have everything.

Christy is a bookkeeper for a construction company as her main job and Chief Editor for OrdinaryTraveler. I work for a small software company that caters to advertising agencies and I am the web designer (also general fix it guy) for Ordinary Traveler. We both participate in freelance photography projects and are pursuing some other business opportunities, which should be launching in the next couple of months. Our first product caters to women travelers and we are really excited to share it with everyone. If you want to be the first to know about it, make sure you like our Facebook Fan page http://www.facebook.com/ordinarytraveler

We travel whenever we have the time off from work. The only time that we try not to travel is on holidays. We do however make some exceptions for family get togethers, but it’s so expensive to fly during the holidays, so I’d rather see family during another time of year.

We’re pretty open to almost any kind of trip. We like to be active and explore the area. The only kinds of trips that we usually shy away from are fancy resorts where we really don’t get to meet other people like us or places where we wouldn’t be able to explore the local activities and culture.

We are planning a long-term trip to South and Central America next year for our first real taste of traveling for longer than 2 months. We are not exactly sure how long we will be gone because we don’t know yet how much we will enjoy the nomadic lifestyle. I really enjoy being able to travel whenever we want, but having a home base is really nice too, especially when that home base is San Diego.

Although Christy takes most of pictures, we both are photographers for the site. I think we each feed off each other giving each other ideas for different kinds of shots. It actually works out really well. The energy and friendly competition can make for better photos I think. We do each have a specialty though Christy specializes in taking the good pictures where I specialize in taking most boring, out of focus and blown out pictures. I do, however, get lucky every now and then.

Christy has been practicing photography for over 15 years and I have just recently begun learning more about it. I’m really interested in photography and it also keeps me from getting bored while she is shooting. I think every time I go shooting I get more and more interested in photography because of the cool things that I am able to do with my shots the more I learn.

Christy has taken many courses starting in high school and loved it ever since she started. I, on the other hand, didn’t really have much interest until Christy gave me her old Canon Powershot. Once I realized how much it mattered to have a halfway decent camera I started to realize that I might actually have some potential with photography. I’ve been stealing knowledge from her ever since.

Shoot a lot of photos. Practice makes you better. Find a mentor to help you and give you suggestions about your shots. This way you will also have someone to go shooting with. Live feedback is always the best. It is also beneficial to take a basic photography course so that you can understand the basics.

Once we moved to San Diego it just seemed like a no brainer. There is so much consistent swell here. I think it all happens for most surfers when you first stand up and get that rush. You just want more and more. It’s kind of an addiction for us. I think our only surfing goal is to be able to do it as often as possible and maybe have jobs that are flexible enough to allow time to surf as often as possible during the best times of the day.

We’ve been to quite a few places separately and together. We’ve surfed places like Byron Bay on the east coast of Australia and some surprisingly good waves in Thailand. Christy took a trip to Bali and surfed Changuu, Dreamland and Padang Padang. Scott also had a solo surf trip in Peru where he got to surf places like Huanchaco, Chicama (one of the world’s longest left) and some other secret spots.

We would love to tell you our favorite spots, but then there would be too many surfers there next time we visit, so I think we’ll pass on this one. Sorry .

We’ll be heading to Panama soon to check out the surf there, which we’re super excited about. I think some day we would really love to surf in Portugal and France. I have heard it’s just amazing there.

I think one of our biggest priorities to get to Taiji, Japan. We want to document the dolphin slaughter that is happening there. Being near dolphins quite a bit we feel quite a close connection to them. We have also been looking into a trip to the Galapagos Islands which is just packed full of sea life.

—————————————————————————————-

Thanks so much for a personal glimpse into your lives. Great luck with your impending business ventures. Waiting eagerly to see what you’re up to…  cheers, Lash

Follow Scott and Christy:

Ordinary Traveler
Facebook: Ordinary Traveler