Nisa & Ulli Maier – Travel Photographers

Nisa & Ulli Maier – Travel Photographers

By Arden de Raaij

There’s nothing quite like traveling, and who better to tell you about that then mother-daughter photography team Nisa and Ulli Maier. Alone and together they travel all across the globe, capturing their explorations in form of inspiring photography. Through the modern miracles of social media and their beautiful website cookiesound.com, they share their stories and photography with friends, family and whoever is interested.

Ulli has been traveling since the early 70’s and has explored all kinds of places only few have seen. Her daughter Nisa was born in Austria, grew up in Africa, has lived in Australia and Indonesia and studied in California. It’s safe to say that she’s been on the road since the day she was born!  We got a hold of Nisa to ask her a few questions!

Photo of swimming Buffalo's in Ganges Varanasi, India
Photo of swimming Buffalo’s in Ganges Varanasi, India
Photo of Bejing police officer, China
Photo of Bejing police officer, China

First of all, I’m so curious how you manage to talk to all your followers and update your website cookiesound.com (which is absolutely amazing by the way!) during your amazing travels?

First of all, thank for the compliment about the website 😉
How to we manage to keep twitter & the website alive? Well, we have a very high phone bill 😉 No, just kidding. Keeping in touch with friends on twitter and updating our website is really important to us while we travel because we want to share our experiences. So we mostly try to stay somewhere with some sort of internet connection. If this is not the case, then we do use our iPhones from time to time. Also, we don’t always travel together, so if one of us is on the road, the other one is responsible for keeping everything up to date.

Photo of Bus Driver - Kohima Nagaland, India
Photo of Bus Driver – Kohima Nagaland, India

You guys have seen so much together, what does traveling for a lifetime do with a mother-daughter relationship?

We really do have a great relationship. Since we have been traveling together forever, we know how one thinks. Finding the perfect travel buddy is really (really!) hard but the two of us are a perfect match.

Photo of motorcross in the sand dunes, Brazil
Photo of motorcross in the sand dunes, Brazil
Photo of Dennis Tihara surfin, Teahupoo, Tahiti
Photo of Dennis Tihara surfin, Teahupoo, Tahiti

I read you’re in Guangzhou right now, how’s that region of China treating you?

By now we’re in Laos and the area is treating us really well 😉

Southeast Asia is our favourite travel destination by far. The people, the culture and the weather is what makes this part of the world so amazing. We’ve never had any troubles (except maybe the one or the other flight incident with Indonesian planes haha) and we know many of the countries in SEA really well (yet we still always come back again). But we also try to visit new places on each trip, this way it’s a mix of vacation and adventure.

Photo of woman with poppy Seeds, Cambodia
Photo of woman with poppy Seeds, Cambodia

You’re both photographers. Is it difficult to go somewhere and enjoy the environment without thinking of the perfect picture?

We’re both freelance photographers. Unfortunately we can’t earn our living just by shooting photos (yet). We have regular jobs like everyone else. In the last 1 1/2 years things have been going really well though, so who knows what will come next 🙂

When travelling, our camera equipment is most important to us. Not only because we enjoy looking at the photos after our trip but also because we want to show others what it’s like at far away places. Sometimes this can be stressful but then we just leave our photography stuff behind for a couple of hours to enjoy the surroundings as they are. But this doesn’t happen too often…

Photo of poor boy - Varanasi, India
Photo of poor boy – Varanasi, India
Photo of Tee plantation village - Darjeeling, India
Photo of Tee plantation village – Darjeeling, India

Which places that you haven’t seen yet are high on your wish list?

The world is too big for one single life but we try to see as many places as possible. Countries that are still missing but we really would like to see are: Iceland, New Zealand, Palau, North Korea, Antarctica, Sao Tomé & Príncipe, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Tibet.

If you had to pick a place to stay for the rest of your lives, where would it be?

Puh, this is a difficult question. Austria has always been our home and this will most probably be the case until the day we die. But if there is one other place we could see ourselves living at, it must be Pulau Roti in Indonesia.

Photo of Workers in Kolkata, India
Photo of Workers in Kolkata, India
Photo of Landmine victim - Phom Penh, Cambodia
Photo of Landmine victim – Phom Penh, Cambodia
Photo of Children - Sen Monorom, Cambodia
Photo of Children – Sen Monorom, Cambodia