Notes From A Nomad travel photography blog
I was sixteen and living with my friend’s family in Asturias, Spain for the summer. This early experience ignited a travel lust in me that has never since been satiated. I realized that the world was a placed I needed to see, smell, feel and be a part of in order to understand the complexities of life. The world opened up to me that summer, revealing an expansive wealth of opportunities that can only be realized through continued life experience.
Bisecting Europe and Asia, Cyprus is an island full of sights and history. This visual blog takes the viewer from the famous archaeological ruins in Paphos to the far reaches of the island along the Akamas Peninusula, and winds through the Troodos Mountains and Mt. Olympus to end in the ports of Larnaca.
Catania was gritty and dingy in the most alluring way that some Italian cities can attain. After a few days wandering through the graffiti-covered streets and a wild goose chase for street horse meat that sent us to the far reaches of the city, we began to understand Catania’s mafia-riddled past. The dilapidated buildings and lack of green spaces and parks speaks to the mafia-controlled urban planning efforts undertaken by criminals.
Malta is a tiny island littered with archaeological ruins, age-old infrastructure, and melt-your-heart cute villages. Situated in the Mediterranean between North Africa and Sicily, it is one of the oldest inhabited places in the world. The ruins there are older than the Egyptian pyramids and the Maltese people have changed little about their lifestyle on their beautiful rock in the sea since centuries ago.
As the working, beating heart of Colombia, Bogotá is a capitol city that truly reflects its country. With 9 million inhabitants and the capitol of South America’s 2nd most populous nation, Bogotá pulses with activity throughout the varied neighborhoods It is easy to become bewitched by this captivating urban jungle.
Antioquia is a verdant department scattered with coffee fincas nestled into mountain sides, quaint colonial villages, and thick tropical forests. We viewed the countryside by moto from winding mountain roads; putting rain jackets on when it poured, drinking coffee when we stopped in villages, taking backroads to discover hidden swimming holes, and saw every kind of transport imaginable on the roads.
From the numerous pirate ships that raided the city in search of booty; to the biggest emerald trade in the world; to the violent history of cocaine transport; to supporting international tourism, Cartegena has been a city of many faces. It remains to be seen what face Cartagena will acquire as this valiant, flourishing city approaches a time of comparative calm.
I can’t speak the language, I have a love-hate relationship with the cuisine, and the stiff, rule-abiding mentality is 100 percent opposite of how I grew up, but somehow, unarguably, Austria is HOME as much as any home I’ve known. The German word, Gemütlichkeit, describes it best - the state of mind of being cozy, comfortable, relaxed and content with a sense of belonging and community.
From the beaches along the Pacific ocean in the west, to the deserts of the southwest, to the corn fields of the midwest to the deltas in the South, every child in the USA grows up hearing about New York City. Over the span of 48 hours in Manhattan I used my camera as a vehicle to understand New York City in my own way.
Walking through the tall grass, stepping over arrowheads and pottery shards, breathing the fresh scent of juniper berries beginning to ripen, I imagine how many other people have walked where I now stand. History is engraved in these hills, both literally and figuratively. This land has seen many people come and go, many stories unfold, and has supported many a life.
Bones breaking, bones broken? Dizzy, definitely broken bones. Cold, so very cold… and hot, so very hot. The super typhoon made contact with the earth a few hundred miles away on a nearby island, grounding boat and air traffic. Hospitals were hundreds of miles away from me in my illusory state in a tiny, dingy town on a remote island in the Sulu Sea.
Amid the sea of chaos and movement that makes Tsukiji, there are fleeting moments of quiet and calm. The pot of tea whistling in the corner, the gloves tossed to the side, the woman's blade as it makes contact with the fish skin. These are the moments I sought to capture, as well as the hustle and bustle of market life.
For a moment, the shop fell silent and everyone gazed at the photo and the smiling ex-geisha in front of us, perhaps imagining, as I was, what it would have been like to be a geisha in the forties and fifties following World War II. No wonder she had so adamantly served us and entertained us by showing off her gorgeous kimono silks.
I kept moving with the crowd but the snow beneath my feet was turning to ice with every step due to the heat radiating from the raging fire and the pulse of a thousand bodies. The fire festival arena in the small mountain town of Nozawa Onsen, nestled high in the Japan Alps was packed with revelers. It was January 15th and the annual Dosojin fire festival was in full swing
“I think this is the right way, yes! it’s just past that cow…”. Our friends led us through a small wooden gate with a crooked sign that read ‘cheese’ in Montengrin. We had come upon a small family farm that was perched on the side of the rugged mountain that overlooked Kotor. To get there we had hiked a few hundred stairs, wound through a dilapidated castle, and a stone fortress, and trekked along the rocky mountainside. Our destination had become clear, our friends wanted us to try the “best cheese in Montenegro” and it was found here on this tiny mountainside family farm.
The salmon sizzled, spitting hot olive oil from the striations in its flesh. The fish was so fresh, you could not smell that it was fish, rather it smelled of salt water and cold—the way a deep breathe on a frosty morning smells. The small restaurant in Split, Croatia was abuzz with activity, plates were being passed around, beers imbibed. The heavy wooden front door locked out the chilly November air and the breathe of well-fed patrons fogged the small windows, blocking the view to the street.
The door closed and locked behind us shutting out the noise from the busy city street that now felt a world away. We were standing in a small bar lined with floor to ceiling bookcases filled with bottles of clear mezcal. The labels on the bottles looked like the old library cards that were used to check books in and out back in the eighties. It gave the bottles an appearance of having been shelved as though they were books in a library – each one an ode to a life’s work.
I recently had the opportunity to work alongside a group wildland firefighters on a controlled broadcast burn. As a forest ecologist this experience taught me a lot about fire behavior and how fire moves across a landscape. As a photographer, it was an amazing experience to be on the fireline equipped with a drip torch, hand tool and a camera. This is what I saw.
