What do you get when you cross a photographer with a writer?
If you didn't already know, we're Jack and Elise. Coincidentally, we're both English-born, New Zealand-bred, and found ourselves living at the same halls of residence at Massey University in 2018, which is where our story begins.
If you know us, you know we are both overly-nostalgic people, and we love documenting the eras we are passing through so we can look back on them in the future (our first university flat had a 'scrapbook wall' where we stuck all our university memorabilia (mostly rubbish). Thankfully, we've graduated into more normal forms of documentary.
While Jack's weapon of choice is the camera, and Elise's is a pen and paper, the heart of both of our professions is storytelling.
In 2022, after four years of essays, projects, parties and late-night McDonalds runs, we both desperately needed a change of scenery. That's when Elise came up with a grand idea. "Let's go to Vietnam."
"Vietnam!?! Isn't that dangerous?"
"I don't think so. Maybe in 1972... but now it looks pretty good."
Somewhere between the planning and the packing, we'd managed to add Cambodia to the itinerary as well (and then due to an unfortunate VISA muck-up ((Jack...)), Thailand as well), and six months later we were on a plane.
It was meant to be a quick, 2-month holiday; a chance to see something different before heading home to fulfil our dutiful lifetime of corporate ladder climbing. But as soon as we climbed the steps of Angkor Wat, sailed a wooden boat down the Mekong, and drove motorbikes through the mountains of Ha Giang, it was all over. I'm not religious, but I imagine this is close to what reaching enlightenment feels like. THIS is what life is all about. Screw the 9-5.
We returned to New Zealand with a game plan. Work for a couple of years, save every penny we could, and then leave to travel as far and wide as possible.
We left our beautiful home, friends, and family in New Zealand in June 2025 and have been travelling the world ever since, using Atlasantix to share and preserve our travel memories in a way that's more meaningful than just a couple of iPhone photos.
Neither of us were videographers before we embarked on this world trip, nor did we know how to edit a video, so it's been a long learning journey for sure (I'm sure you can tell from our earlier videos - we really had no idea what we were doing!) but we can't wait to keep going and see if we can make a thing of this.
Atlasantix has become a huge part of our lives in such a short space of time and we've loved every second of filming and creating our travel videos, and taking photos we know will be hanging on our wall or pasted in photo albums in the future. We aren't sure what the end goal is or what the future holds but we can't wait to find out.
Anyway, that's enough rambling about us. If you're still reading this then thank you so much for tuning in and for your support. If you have any suggestions of things or places you'd like to see, or ways we can make Atlasantix better, please reach out to us via our email address at the bottom of the page. We love hearing people's thoughts and looking for new and exciting ways to improve.
Anyway, thank you again. We love u xxxx
Elise and Jack.