Outskirts of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan in the spring

Today I finally got around to going through the pictures from the Germany trip I took with my brother. I was actually forced to, because a newspaper is asking for it. Matt was hired to do a global warming piece for German Life magazine and a few other outlets…some newspapers and hopefully a travel article for National Geographic Adventure magazine. As it happened, there was just enough in the budget to include a photographer on the trip.. and it just so happened I had about 9 days of vacation coming to me from my other job. So off we went to Munich to catch a bit of the Octoberfest and then to Bavaria, one of the most beautiful places on the face of the earth.

Matt (left) and I on top of Mt Watzman, the third highest peak in Germany.

It pains me a great deal that my my camera failed me on a recent trip to Tajikistan. I was forced to use my camera phone which challenged me to no end. To get a sharp image you have to shoot subjects that are relatively stationary. “Stealing” pictures of people’s front sides proved to be very difficult, hence the following back shots. Urgh! As disappointed as I am, I thought these dresses were too interesting not to share. Nearly all women there own and wear these dresses which look a lot like bathrobes from the 1970′s.

The country is in an early Spring after one of the most brutal winters on record. The women seemed especially happy to be out and about enjoying the 70 degree day.

Hiking the Muir trail in 2007 was the hardest, longest hike I have ever done. My brother and I hiked the lower half, totaling about 100 miles, while while cousins Andy and Zac hiked the entire thing. Plus some side excursions, they totaled over 220 miles of hiking. Both Zac and I ended up hiking in our sandals because our boots caused red-hot blisters. There’s no easy exit off the trail either so we committed to finishing it with climbing Whitney on the last day. My brother Matt, the writer of the family, wrote an article on our trip for Sierra Heritage magazine which is set to publish the piece this summer (2010).

My camera failed me on this past trip to Tajikistan so I made do with my camera-phone. What amazed me about Tajikistan was the colorful dresses that nearly all women wear. I was frustrated not to be able to get any faces here, but since the dresses themselves were interesting, perhaps its worthwhile to post.

Next week I’ll pass through one of my favorite places. Xinjiang Province in far western China is home to numerous people groups. Wikipedia helps me out here with a rundown of the groups: Muslim Turkic groups including the Uyghurs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tatars and the Kazakhs, and a few Indo-European Iranic groups, such as the Tajiks and the Sarikolis/Wakhis (often mis-identified as Tajiks). Other PRC minority ethnic groups include Hui Chinese, the Mongols, the Russians, the Xibes, and the Manchus.

Translation: It’s an amazing dichotomy of people groups, cultures, and languages. Photographing such diversity is heaven, especially when I was here two years ago in the spring. There’s something about this time of year that made people naturally smile and let down their guard in front of a camera. Ok, not all of these were taken in Xianjing, but all were within 100 miles of there.

Framing a picture is pretty straight forward when you can direct your subjects to move around. But capturing candid pictures that are framed with natural surroundings is rare (at least for me!). As luck would have it, this girl from the Philippines was just sitting in the right spot.

The flights from Manila to San Francisco can often be routed through Hawaii for a few dollars less than a direct flight. Since I’m always into saving money, I’ve opted for the oh-so burdensome stopover in Honolulu. It works out well when my friends and supporters are in town… but one time they weren’t and I decided to use some miles for a jaunt on the Big Island. At Volcanoes National park there is flowing lava that spills into the sea. On this particular morning I was rained out and could not complete the 2 mile hike to where active lava flows. Instead I headed over to the coast line where oddly the weather was clear enough for this amazing sunrise.

I was in Bishkek again last month and the temperatures varied between -18f and 25f. Just before sunrise I took this picture from the stairway window that had the glass broken out, on the top floor of my friends apartment building. While snapping away a few shots and adjusting some settings, my hands turned purple from the cold. Wind was howling through the opening which muffled the sounds of a large man who came up from behind me. In Russian he asked me what was I doing (which I could only infer since my Russian stinks). Startled and intimidated, I could only show him the preview of the last picture I took (this one here) — to which he replied in broken English “no camera here — go!” Guess he didn’t like the picture.

Have you ever watched a news story and observed the camera folks filming each other? It’s like when they run out of things to shoot they pan the camera to the press pool to show the other people covering the event. I always wondered why they do that until I started walking around Bishkek with my friend Paul, a fellow photographer. In Bishkek there are hardly any places which inspire us, especially in winter when everything is so bleak. Bleakness is sometimes cool to photograph but Bishkek takes the definition to a whole new level which even modern cameras can’t capture.

So it wasn’t long before we were shooting each other. Here we are respectively. Paul got a nicely framed shot of me photographing him while standing atop a broken hot water pipe. I got him on the railroad tracks heading back.