Rainy days are not always bad, even when traveling. For one, it gives your photos a completely different look and feel. Both of these photos were taken on an extremely windy day, just after a downpour of rain.

With the launch of OT Surf Apparel coming up in February, I have been thinking a lot about the risks of taking big chances in life. The fear of failure has been creeping its way into my psyche at all hours of the day… but usually right about the time when I should be sleeping.

I’m about to share a bit of a sad story from our Havasu Falls trip. This is not intended in any way to put down the Havasupai people who live on the reservation, but merely an account of what we saw.

At the end of our exciting helicopter ride up the canyon, we made our way to the parking lot to find our car and watch all the exhausted people who bravely made the 10-mile hike up the canyon. We instead took the easy and extremely fun way out via helicopter.

It’s hard to believe how many blogs we read on a daily basis and how many bloggers we have gotten to know over the last 15 months. It’s like online dating, but with friendships. Or as we like to call it… online friending.

Travel can bring unexpected surprises in life and in photography. Many times the best photographs are unexpected. You can try to prepare for the perfect shot, but it doesn’t always work out.

Adventure travel can make a trip infinitely more memorable than just sitting poolside for seven days straight. I’m not against relaxing vacations where all we do is eat, drink and sleep, but our favorite type of vacation involves some form of adventure.

This photo was taken in Dhading, Nepal, where I took a good portion of the photos in our popular post, Children of Nepal Photo Essay.

Since photography is a big part of our lives and our blog, we couldn’t complete our 2011 year in review without compiling some of our best travel photos of the year.

We recently booked a trip months in advance to Morro Negrito Surf Camp in Panama. We paid $1330 in full for an exotic getaway on an island with uncrowded waves. Three days before we left for our trip, we got a surprise email

There is something about Paris that makes black and white photos look gorgeous. I don’t have a lot of photos from my 2005 trip to Paris, but the ones I do have seem to all look better in black and white.