From late August to December 2015 during the Fall 2011 Voyage of Semester at Sea, we visited 14 countries and circumnavigated the Earth, 32,000 miles across, including the Panama Canal. In so doing, we were twice on the exact opposite sides of the earth, months apart! As someone lucky enough to be married to someone fortunate enough to have traveled the world at a relatively young age, I now can’t possibly overestimate the value of this voyage to both myself, and to my sons. Many people I know travel extensively for work and are able to experience other cultures often. I was never given the gift of travel as a kid, nor did I take advantage of it as young adult with disposable income, though I always wanted to see other parts of the world…
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In the following galleries, some of the links below have associated text relaying a select few of our experiences during the Voyage. Look for links at the end of each country if you’d like to visit my original Blogspot post documenting the location.
With that, a few words on my travel photography once we had begun our adventure:
“If, however, you are one of those people, like me, who have not yet been able to extensively travel the world thus far in your life, I sincerely hope you’ll bear with me. I’ll continue to show some pretty pictures, portraits of people and life in other places, of things both mundane and surreal that we cannot experience in the U.S. But, I’m going to try and give you bits and pieces of these other places, as I experience them, in a way that hopefully gives you unique insight, considering that we may come from similar experiential backgrounds. Or maybe not? Lofty goal, I’m sure, but for those of you who have traveled the world, I similarly hope that you will stick around and see how these experiences affect me; perhaps reflect upon how your past experiences have affected you, how you have or have not been guided by those experiences to either make or not make a change in your life, however superficial or substantive said changes may or may not be…”
“Jeez, I came here to see pretty pictures, what a freakin’ downer!”
10/2/11: Well, I’m sorry, but the internet is full of them. Just google any one of the subjects I’ve photographed in the last month to see images both more striking and more plentiful than I’ve been able to capture. I’d originally envisioned [this trip] to enable a showcase for my photography of international locations, places I’ve never been and may never again be, places you may or may not experience in your lifetime. Three ports into the Fall ’11 SAS voyage, however, I decided to take a different approach, or rather, my approach has necessarily morphed into something more apt, at least to me, than pretty pictures. It has completely to do with the people.”