Cover Girl

I made this photograph of a hilltribe (a.k.a. montagnard in Vietnam) girl at the outdoor market in Bac Ha Vietnam. Although only 110 kilometers (68 miles) from Sapa, the trip took over five hours in the old Russian built 4X4 I rented. Getting there was truly half the fun! The remoteness of Bac Ha also makes it a photographer's paradise. Upon arrival at the market, I found no tourists and had the bustling collage of the ten different hilltribes that live, farm and raise livestock in the surrounding hills to myself. As much as it is obviously a place to buy, sell and trade their goods, the market also serves as an important social gathering place to all of the tribes in the region.
This young girl, as with all of the women at the market, uses this large social gathering to showcase her most elaborate handmade headdress and silver jewelry. Individuals take great pride in their attire because it reflects not only the tribe the belong to, but also their families social status and wealth. Just as I had framed her gnawing on her favorite market treat, a stalk of sugarcane, she took a break and glanced perfectly into my lens providing me with this image and the knowledge that having a sweet tooth is truly cross-cultural.

Fishing with a View of Ipanema

Odds are, if someone asked you to name the top five most famous beaches in the world, two names near the top of the list would be Copacabana and Ipanema. Justifiably so. After all, Copacabana is credited as being the birthplace of the bikini and Ipanema, well, who can't at least hum the chorus to the Jobim/Morais masterpiece, "The Girl From Ipanema" that single-handedly put Bossa Nova on the world map of musical genres? What's really amazing is that both of these beaches are in the same city! Indeed, this could only occur in the hedonistic beach culture of Rio de Janeiro.
With an estimated population near ten million people, Rio has most of the things that go along with a city of that size anywhere in in the world, i.e. traffic, etc. However, two things that really set Rio apart from any other urban metropolis are it's stunning geographic beauty and the "Cariocas" (Residents of Rio) belief that leisure time at the beach is a birthright. Wanting to illustrate this uniqueness I headed down to Arpoador, which is the rocky outcropping that separates Ipanema and Copacabana. This turned out to be a good choice because not only did it afford me this beautiful view looking all the way down Ipanema Beach to it's spectacular mountainous end, it also had plenty of locals engaging in their favorite seaside activities. Whether it was working out to maintain their "body beautiful", surfing or in the case of these four men, fishing right off the rocks into the ocean. Facing West in the late afternoon gave me the opportunity to silhouette the men, thus turning them into the representative "everyman" and the perfect composition to illustrate the lifestyle of this unique mega-city.

Eyes

Do you ever feel like your being watched? That is the feeling I wanted to capture with this image.
I spent the afternoon wandering around and making photographs at the Swayambunath Pagoda, also known affectionately as The Monkey Temple due to it's most populace residents. I came around a corner and noticed this group of young monks perched on a concrete platform three steps above me. I was drawn immediately to the composition of the "all seeing eyes" of Buddha watching over the group of young devotees as they engaged, as boys the world over do, in an intense game of checkers.
As so often happens, the idea of this image screamed out to me well before I actually captured it on film. I had seen this intriguing gaze of Buddha's eyes along with the question mark looking symbol where his nose should be all over Nepal. I learned that the symbol actually represented the "all seeing" third eye of Buddha always watching over us keeping a tally of our karmic record. Not only was this a perfect vantage point to compose this philosophy, but I knew if I could get the monks to notice and look at me, I could really express the feeling of being "watched" with their eyes highlighted in a beautiful shaft of afternoon light along with this philosophical symbol of Nepal.
I inconspicuously set my f-stop and shutter speed for the desired depth and movement, quietly sat on a step and composed the photo knowing the key to the entire image would be timing. Seconds later as a couple of the monks noticed me, they all turned to see what I was up to. Magic!
This photo will always serve as a reminder to me of the Nepalese belief that Buddha and the karmic universe see everything. How is your karma?

Darn Chores!

This little Vietnamese boy's face says it all. Darn Chores!
Living in the Mekong Delta, the people in this southernmost region of Vietnam seem to spend more of their life on or in the water than on dry land. This is no tropical paradise however, in fact, it's one of the poorest regions in Vietnam where the people are all but cut off from the rest of the country by the Nine Dragons, which is how the Vietnamese refer to the nine major rivers that the Mekong splits into before reaching the South China Sea. Obviously, the most readily available source of protein in this region is fish, which is where this boys daily chore comes in. What initially appears to be every little boy's dream of playing in the mud, upon closer inspection shows that, he is in fact collecting the daily catch along the banks of the river. Due to the delta's proximity to the sea, the river actually experiences the ebb and flow tides of the ocean. Generations of Delta living have taught the local families to use this natural phenomenon to their advantage. By lining nets along the banks of the river, which are under water during hide tide, fish are caught by getting stranded in the nets as the water recedes. The obvious disadvantages of this technique are that there is a certain amount of luck involved as well as the fact that someone has the rather messy task of going waist deep into the mud to collect the bounty.
On a personal note, I promise to never again complain about having to empty the dishwasher or take out the trash!