Meet Stacy Wu | Travel Blogger

We had the good fortune of connecting with Stacy Wu and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Stacy, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
My husband and I have always been keen about traveling, while he’s passionate about photography (and an awesome photographer in my mind), I love recording details of our trips. We both work full time jobs so time off is a precious thing to us, and because of that we do our research diligently to make sure we could enjoy every trip we take to the fullest.

Very often when we are planning for a trip, we read upon blog posts and suggestions from other travelers, we also follow many travel-related accounts on Instagram and check out the “Top” photos of a destination. Gradually, we learned that these popular travel profiles or these “Top” photos shown at each location are not from ordinary travelers, they are either renowned photographers or full-time travel bloggers with professional crewmembers. While the photos we see are very aesthetically pleasing, it is quite impossible to achieve by ordinary travel enthusiasts like us.

It was around that moment we realized that we have some “in between” needs: we can’t mimic these top accounts by hiring professional crewmembers to plan or capture our journeys – it contradicts our original goal of traveling, but we also aren’t ready to settle with casual cellphone photos – most commonly seen nowadays. Because of that, we started to learn and plan our travels based on 2 factors simultaneously: how to beautifully capture our trips and how to maximize the fun during them. We built our website (www.wulitimes.com) to record our journeys and times spent together and also started my personal blog Instagram account (oostacywuoo), so we could better share our experiences as ordinary/non-professional travelers that are able to capture some “above average” travel photos.

Please tell us more about your work. We’d love to hear what sets you apart from others, what you are most proud of or excited about. How did you get to where you are today professionally. Was it easy? If not, how did you overcome the challenges? What are the lessons you’ve learned along the way. What do you want the world to know about you or your brand and story?
While most people travel with their phone cameras nowadays, we firmly believe that professional cameras are NOT replaceable in terms of quality travel photos. Of course there are many challenges to using a professional camera when traveling:
– It is far less convenient to carry compared to cellphones, cannot be put in a back pocket
– It is heavy to carry, if additional lenses/flashlights are also carried, the camera bag itself can easily go over 30lbs
– It is difficult to operate, there are so many skillsets to be learned, and very often lots of practices are needed
– Photos are not instantly ready, they will have to be worked in professional software (e.g. Adobe Lightroom) before becoming final. Editing skills are also to be learned and practiced in these complicated software
– It could be a costly investment

How we overcome these challenges? I could think of a few:
– We treat the extra weight as a workout
– We treat all the learnings and practices as self-improvements
– We see the investment in long-term and focused on the returns

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Honestly, I would recommend them to check out my blog posts on California Destinations, I think they should be inspired on how much California has to offer, from beaches to forests, from deserts to oasis, from nature or architectures..

https://www.wulitimes.com/california-destinations

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Shoutout to my husband, who may not have played an explicit part in this so most people don’t recognize his contribution, but he’s the person who is behind the planning of every journey of ours and is behind the camera of every photo of me.

PersonalStacyW

Website: www.wulitimes.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oostacywuoo/

Image Credits
Matt Li