What you’ll discover in our Etsy shop

Handcrafted photocards featuring the world’s best places and the stories behind them. Think of them as bespoke journeys-in-an-envelope to share with those you care about most, no passport required. Below, the cameras and media we use to make our photocards, from start to finish, ready to ship and share.

The world’s best places and the stores behind them

Please note the photocard prints do not have a white watermark. They arrive as shown in the video clips below.

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Zaanse Schans—Zaandam, Netherlands.

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Rosa ‘Iceberg’—Sydney, Australia.

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‘Baux’—Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, France.

A photographer’s journey

Or, how Allen & Mark came to give more than 45,000 photocards to family and friends, then turn their passion into a business

Kodak Tourist billows camera, circa 1950. It’s the body Mark and his sister learned to shoot on as kids. As teenagers, they had their own in-home darkroom. Cool parents, no?

Remember film?

Mark’s first camera is a hand-me-down Kodak Tourist billows model using B&W 620 film. Sold from 1948-1951, the entry-level camera features a folding Bakelite and aluminum body wrapped in Kodadur, a remarkably long-lasting faux leather. Today it’s displayed in Allen & Mark’s home library. A reminder not only of time’s past, but of how quickly technology re-shapes our lives and how we interact with the world through its shape-shifting lens.

Today, he shoots on FUJIFILM’s X-H2 or X2-Pro, IoT devices as much computers as cameras. They sport textured black bodies not unlike the Kodak Tourist from 75 years ago. In between is an Argus C3 rangefinder camera followed by a parade of SLRs, including a Nikkormat, Nikon F3, Canon EOS (a super-special gift from Allen’s mother), and Nikon D700 (with GPS and an AF-S Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED lens—one of the best ever made). And too many casual pocket-size cameras to remember. The Nikon F3, Canon EOS-1, and Nikon D700 were donated to an elementary school photography program in Dallas to encourage a new generation of photographers.

Yet the story of Vast Compass and our photocards isn’t about film, or hardware, or pixels, or technology at all. Not in its truest sense, anyway.

Argus C-3 camera with flash kit and bulbs. Kodak photo boxes, film canisters, and 100’ bulk film canister from when Mark and his sister rolled and developed their own 24-36 exposures rolls.

The Nikkormat (Nikomat in Japan) was a consumer version of Nikon’s pro line. It’s the camera that put several photos each shot by Mark and his sister in the U.S. Library of Congress.

The Nikon F3 was Mark’s first pro camera, used to shoot weddings and portraits to help with college tuition. It was stolen while he worked on a Hollywood set. Image credit: JamesPFisherIII

Barron’s mother gifted Barron with a Canon EOS-1 on her last Christmas. It’s what Allen & Mark used to record their first trip to Paris together in 1995. Image credit: Canon

The FUJIFILM X2-Pro is a second body when needed. The Nikon lens in the back is real. It’s twin on the right is actually an insulated tumbler with a lens cap lid. A good trip fills all the SD cards.

The FUJIFILM X-H2 is our primary body with an XF 16-55mm F/2.8 R LM WR lens (equivalent to 35mm 24mm-85mm) providing wide-angle to portrait capabilities, perfect for on the go shooting.

An elevated snapshot

If you’ve poked around our website or blog a bit, you already know we believe the best travel photography is an elevated snapshot. Magical moments somehow captured in time, without the folderol of pro lighting, tripods, light meters, bounced flash, and drones.

To be clear, we love high-style photography. We’re big fans of professionally captured shots, including from high above. But at Vast Compass we focus (literally!) on travel as you experience it in the moment, at eye level. And our image library is like your own self-curated collection of shots you share with family and friends after vacay, or your BFF’s destination wedding.

That personal eye-level view of the world

That personal, eye-level view of travel photography is what we’re all about. Unfussy, unproduced, and unforgettable. Sometimes it’s a wide shot, showing a whole building. More often it’s a zoom in to just a gilt shutter, a window framed in vivid blue against whitest stucco, or a dappled lavender refraction of stained glass on a stone column. Red leaves, roseate, in a mossy glade.

Our imaginations fill in the remaining space of everything that exists between what we see and what’s out of frame. Unsurprisingly, it turns out what we imagine in our mind’s eye is the most vast compass of all.