About us

Let's say we are a mature couple.

Dirk is from 1956, Linda is 10 years younger.

We know each other since the late 80's and we are together since the early 00's.

Linda likes photography, cycling, knitting and healthy food.

Dirk likes music, cycling and has no other option but to eat healthy food.

We love the moderate adventure. That means that we do not mind some effort but we also do not mind some luxury from time to time.

We do not really plan our trips in detail, we know what direction we want to go and the rest comes by itself.

Cycle Holidays

Our cycling holidays are mostly in Europe as we try to reduce going on a holiday by plane.

When we started tour biking, we had a strict time schedule whereby lodgings were prebooked, return transport was arranged, and our main goal was to reach a certain destination by bicycle.

We found out that this was not ideal for us.

Now, we only plan what the possible end destination is and what route to follow.

We stop whenever we see a beautiful spot, we stop whenever we meet interesting people to talk to, we do not mind how much kilometers we are doing, 20 km is as good as 80km. If someone recommends to deviate from our plans, we just might do this.

We only decide on where we will stop for the day sometime in the afternoon. If we know that we do not want to cycle a lot next day, we might book a place the night before. Last minute lodging can be more expensive but can also be cheaper, like pitching your tent in someones garden.

If we are getting short on time, we bridge some of the distance by train or bus.

Of course, our way will not fit everyone, it just depends on what kind of person you are.

Our gear, reviews and links to other websites

We are not doing any type of advertisement or reviews on our gear as we are of the opinion that there is already an abundance of comments by others and more specialised websites.

Links to other websites are for your convenience only.

From "seeing it" to our social media and the website

Background

During our first cycle holiday in 2009, we kept our family and friends in the loop by regular emails with short stories and photos of our trip. After awhile, this felt for us like stalking and the following trip, we switched to a blog page.

Unfortunately, writing blogstories is not our strength and took too much time during the trip.

Searching for a more suitable solution, Linda switched to Instagram and what started as something for family and friends slowly got a bigger audience. Meanwhile, I (Dirk) started making some holiday videos with an action camera, just as a pastime while Linda was taking pictures.

We are as such not a professional photographer or cameraman and only doing this as a hobby.

Except for some basic knowledge from some literature and a few amateur courses, all what we do comes naturally.

All the rest is luck.

The website was created during the Corona crisis. Except for Linda's posts on Instagram, we did not have any photo books and with a huge amount of unused photo's on our pc, the website became our "best of" digital photo book. Few years later, we changed it into a photographic travelogue.

Since Instagram changed their algorithms with clear preference for commercial content, we have drastically reduced instagram posts and are now mainly creating stories while we are on the road.

As these stories disappear after 24 hours, Linda groups them per trip under "Story highlights" which is the tappable circle below her bio. This allows interested followers to view a complete or part of a trip as 1 story.

Equipment

When it comes to equipment, we're using for our travels :

- mirrorless camera with 2 prime lenses - 18mm and 35mm

- action camera

- phone

- drone (not for all travels)

Models and functionalities of cameras keep on changing or improving and what we are using is as such not necessarily what is best or even what we will be using in the future.

Our own criteria are:

- Reputable brands with sufficient independent reviews and comparisons allowing us to make the right choice.

- Easy and practical to use and as light as possible.

- providing quality output for photos (eg High MP - RAW) and video (eg 4K).

- Acceptable price range and that will be different for everyone.

For storing, editing, processing and retouching photos or videos, we both use our iPad.

As backup, we use multiple Portable SSD disks as solutions via the cloud do not always work due to poor internet connections when on the road. We make sure that we always have 2 copies of every photo or video.

Workflow on the road

Photos:

All photos are downloaded in to Lightroom on Linda's iPad.
Photos which are quality-wise not as per her standards or are duplicates without added benefit are immediately deleted from the Ipad. Remaining photos are processed/edited.
At regular intervals, originals are deleted from their source after being copied to a portable SSD as a backup.
To create a post or story on Instagram, selected photos are copied to the iPhone where posts or stories are prepared using xxxx for posting on @lindadevisch.
Periodically, a blog is posted on www.dilistuff.com covering a part of the trip with a photo and short story per day.
If storage capacity of iPad reaches too high %, Lightroom is synced with the cloud, freeing up storage space but also reducing ability to work on affected photos offline.

Videos:

All videos are downloaded to Dirk's iPad (Photo's and File application depending source).
Videos are reviewed and those considered unusable are immediately deleted.
Remaining videos are copied from the iPad to an SSD as backup and all videos of related dates are deleted from their source.
one-minute videos covering part of the trip are made with LumaFusion in portrait mode and posted on instagram @DiLisnippets.
After posting periodic instagram video, all video files of related period are transferred to 2nd SSD and are deleted from the ipad.

Workflow when back home

Photos:

Move all photos from Lightroom on the iPad to Lightroom Classic on the iMac.
Further cleanup or touchup if required.
Share all photos to Dirk in JPEG, reduced dimensions 2000 X 1333 px, for adding trip on Website.
Keep all photos with Lightroom in RAW format on HDD for any possible future use.

Videos:

Make Landscape Video compilation for our DiLIstuff Youtube channel with Lumafusion on iPad using videofiles on portable SSD.
After publication on Youtube, keep movie in 4K on HDD and delete all source files from SSD.

Dilistuff website:

Publish @DiLisnippets 1 minute portrait videos on homepage of website as teaser while trip page is under construction.
Create Trip on website and once published, remove teaser and related blog pages from the home page.

Other:

All files on internal and external HDD have an extra backup with Time Machine

Editing of Photos and Videos

Main editing process on photos and videos is cropping.

All photos are shot in RAW, majority in landscape and later cropped to portrait for Instagram @lindadevisch and freeformat for the website.

Videos are shot in 4K, landscape for YouTube and cropped to portrait for instagram.

For photos, Linda will also apply her own color grading and contrast filter to ensure that there is consistency in visual style. The filter is an attempt to represent what we actually see with our own eyes.

She will also occasionally remove objects from the picture if they are not a permanent intruding visual obstacle, eg a person passing by, a garbage bin or a single electric cable.

For videos, except for cropping there will only be color grading to match colours for content captured by different camera's (eg aerial view by drone and ground view by iphone)

Video's are shot in 30 or 60 fps on all cameras for compatibility in production.

What's in, what's out ?

Often, we have been asked how many photos we are taking on a trip.

This really depends on the trip but the volume has increased a lot since we started documenting our trips on the website in story format and switched to instagram stories.

We now also take more photos of details or the same view with the bikes, without bikes, with the 2 of us, just Linda, etc...

It's only when we are creating the story that we are selecting which photo is most suitable in respect with the preceding or following photo's or what fits in the story line.

For photo's, we estimate that only 15% of all photo's captured finally end up on the website

For video's, the percentage is even a lot lower and we guess it will only be a few percentages of what is captured.

Photos on instagram account @lindadevisch

Portrait videos on instagram account @dilisnippets

Landscape videos on the dilistuff YouTube channel