how traveling changes me
How does travel shape my work?
A difficult question to answer. I have been traveling across the western world (Europe, the Americas, Africa) since I was 4 years old. I am not sure that meeting new people, seeing new places, having new experiences really inspire and motivate me in my photography. What it does is change, add to, effect how I view the world around me. I do not do street photography, landscapes, photo-journalism, etc. What seems to inspire me is living a life in a new place for a period of time. Walking, looking, in many ways being a “tourist” and seeing things that I don’t see on a normal basis, and in doing so, I will sometimes look up and see something new and breath-taking and if I have a camera with me, I will take images, but sometimes I don’t have my camera and imprint that vision into my head and heart. I have lived through many different events in my life with and without a camera, which I use to allow me to remember.
Example 1 and 3 – My girlfriend had accidentally broken my camera in Spain about 5 months into a yearlong trip in Europe. I went to Morocco for a month and was in Algeciras on the coast. We were staying in the “Hippy Hotel” and when I went into my room, it was full of cockroaches. I had paid so I and my 3 year old son stayed the night but I swore I would not stay there another night, so went to sleep on the beach. My friends said I was crazy. But the next morning, my son and I awoke to the vision of the sunrise and a camel herder with his string of camels walking the seashore in front of me. That was 50 + years ago, but that sight is still in my head and heart as if it was yesterday.
Maya Beach 2025
Example 2 – Maybe 12 – 15 years ago I was a normal tourist, wandering around the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio, taking pictures of the mountains, the bay, the horizon around me. Absolutely beautiful and unforgettable. And yet, when I came home, processed the film and looked at the images, most of them looked so ordinary. I printed maybe 2 or 3 and did nothing else with them. This past semester in school, I was looking at my old negatives and found the Rio images and there was one that I had skimmed over before that this time reminded me of the vastness and beauty of this world we live in. I was looking out over the bay at the mountains, the clouds surrounding the mountaintops and it was quiet and peaceful and was a bit like stepping off into the heavens.
I do take pictures of the streets, landscapes, like every other tourist, but the images that I see that take my breath away are the ones I do not want to forget. Those are the ones that I will make images of. Sometimes the ones I will put away for another time. The ones that wake me up to the wonders of the world.