On the Road

Earlier this year I co-led a photo tour in the Palouse region of Washington state. I’d never been there before, but reputation alone indicated an awesome photographic destination offering vistas of rolling hills and farmland, plus all the textures, colors, and plays of light and shadow you could wish for.

This may be strange to hear from a travel photographer, but I can make a case that location isn’t everything—light is. And I’d build my argument on the fact that the right light brings out the best in any location.

I know someone who calls these photographs my Alfred Hitchcock Project. You know, The Birds through a Rear Window. Nice touch, but the truth is the Master of Suspense was not in my thoughts when I began to shoot.

The idea here was...well, there were a few ideas. First, I wanted to do photography that was bright, cheerful, colorful—and different. With times being a bit harsh and stressful for many, I was looking for something light-hearted and, frankly, far from reality. Dreamy and summer-like came to mind. 

The roads I follow as a travel photographer mostoften lead me to landmarks and landscapes, festivals and events, people and cultures. But not always. As you can see from the photos here, I consider photographing wildlife one of the requirements of a successful travel photographer.

The picture of the Buddhist nun drinking tea in the Drepung Monastery in Tibet was going to be perfect. The light coming in through a window behind her was capturing the texture of her skin and casting a glow on the tea and the rising steam, and from my training in studio photography I knew how rarely light like this happens in real life. But by the time I’d asked for and received permission to take the photo, the moment had passed: she’d finished her tea and was about to move from the light. So now, along with permission to take the photo, I had to get permission to recreate it.

Early on I lived in Paris, shooting fashion photography. I saw all the iconic places and landmarks, of course, and observed hundreds of people shooting them. When I became a travel photographer, my initial thought was to shoot lots of subjects other than the icons; to make untypical, evocative images of marketplaces, shop fronts, and unexpected details. Pretty quickly I found out the icons defined a place, and even more important, the icons made the money.