TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHY challenges me because I have picture-postcard images already in my mind of the most famous places in the world, and I too often find myself validating my experience of travel by seeing and photographing exactly what everybody else has seen in Paris or Buenos Aires or St. Petersburg or Tokyo. What can you do with the Eiffel Tower that hasn’t already been done?

When I am in an iconic setting, if I have presence of mind enough to think before I shoot, I deliberately look for strangeness. If I’m in Paris looking up at the Tower from Pont de Bir Hakeim or from Quai de Grenelle, I see what everybody else sees who has ever approached it with a camera. But I want to see more. Perhaps there is someone with an unusual hat, or someone who is moving in an uncommon way across the scene. Maybe there are people clustered in an interesting way. Going back at night with my camera and a tripod doesn’t make that much difference because everybody has already seen a hundred pictures of the Eiffel Tower glowing in the dark . But the important thing is that I keep trying. I keep trying to really see. Looking for a photograph in a scene is what I like to do.
Sometimes I don’t find anything more than everybody sees, so I settle for a well-composed image by consciously imagining tic-tac-toe lines in the view-finder. I move the camera so that various points of interest stand or rest at the intersections of imaginary lines. I do what Renaissance painters consciously did... the same thing that Greek and Roman artists and philosophers discovered a couple of millennia earlier: I rely on the “rule of thirds” by looking through the view-finder the way the sixteenth-century painter looked at a rectangular canvas. Thinking in horizontal and vertical thirds when I’m looking through the view-finder helps me keep the center of interest in a scene out of the center of the picture, and I can mostly avoid the bull’s eye pictures that tourists seem unable to resist. If there is a horizon, I don’t let it split the frame exactly in upper and lower halves. I usually like the line of the horizon to be either a third of the way down from the top or a third of the way up from the bottom of the frame. Of course, rules are to be broken; and some of the most satisfying photographs are the result of putting something dead-center in the frame; so I don’t rule it out altogether. I try to remember not to rule anything out. One of the great things about digital photography is that a hundred shots cost no more than one. There are several things I like about this very simple photograph. The frame is roughly divided into three horizontal parts, and the shape of the man's image makes it satisfying to have him in the middle of the picture. I like the fact that this Muslim man in Muscat, Oman, is prominently wearing the same kind of watch that you might see on a stockbroker on Wall Street. I also like the fact that he was deliberately ignoring me, but at the same time he seemed pleased to have his picture taken. The sentry at a very modern store in Dubai was standing guard with an ancient rifle. He and the rifle would be suitable props for a movie set in the Nineteenth Century Middle East.The smirking camel sat waiting for a rider in front of the ancient ruins of a Roman amphitheater in Petra, Jordan. The animal made a more interesting photograph than the ruins did. The elephants, with obviously more on their minds than bathing, were enjoying time out from work at a river in the middle of Sri Lanka.
The man in Singapore's Botanic Garden was wearing his orange jacket on a very hot, humid day. His hat is the perfect shape, and his place just to the right of the middle of the image makes him a more important feature in the picture than if he were in the exact center. Horizontal elements in the lush greeness strengthen the picture.I tried for several minutes to find something in a Buddhist temple in Hong Kong that would show what I was seeing and feeling. Of course, I got some colorful shots of people and some vivid pictures of the entire temple from across the street; but this simple photograph of burning incense coils is more interesting than any of the others.The little boy in the public bus in Olongapo, Phillipines, saves this picture from being just ordinary.The triangular shape of the Aborigine and his horn are a strong element in this photograph. I took the photograph in Sydney, not in the Australian Outback. I couldn't get a picture that didn't include tourists, who kept standing alongside the man to have their picture taken with him. For night shots you need patience, luck, and a good tripod. Hong Kong Harbor is colorful day or night, and QE II makes a dramatic night photograph with Sydney's Harbor Bridge in the background.It's probably harder in Mikonos and Santorini to take a bad picture than in any other place on earth.The monastery at Khizi Island in Russia is one of the most frustratingly beautiful buildings on earth. A photographer can never get enough.