If you’ve ever backpacked in Southeast Asia or have undertaken casual research into the global party scene, you’re familiar with Thailand’s Full Moon Party. Whenever that lunar ball is all lit up in the heavens, alcohol and travelers wash ashore on Ko Phangan, an island in the Gulf of Thailand. My first experience at the […]
Meeting Forrest Gump in Nicaragua
In November 2008, on the steps of the cathedral in León, Nicaragua, I came across a man who reminded me more of Forrest Gump than a beggar. When I asked if I could take his picture he was gracious in his reply and never once expressed interest in me giving him money. Picture complete, we […]
Thoughts on Extremes (or, Blinded on a Costa Rican Beach)
If you visit Costa Rica’s Marino Ballena National Park late in the afternoon and see a couple walking down the beach into the blazing light of a setting sun, you might take a picture. Later, in looking at the picture, you might decide you like how it could lead one to ask, “Is this couple on […]
12 Photos: Europe’s Migrant Crisis on Lesbos, Greece
Looking back on 2015, I think the hardest thing I did was spend only parts of three days on the Greek island of Lesbos, when the drama of the migrant crisis playing out there demanded more time than this. One million asylum seekers, many of them refugees from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, crossed to Europe by sea […]