We encountered only one rainy day during our three weeks in Asia. Usually there was never even a cloud in the sky, which ruled out using the sky itself to tell a story. However on this particular evening, nature had a treat in store for photographers. I nearly missed the entire show. For several hours, I had been working at the desk in our stateroom, editing my photographs that I had made earlier. The curtains had been tightly drawn to darken the room. I had no idea what was going on outside . As luck would have it, I stopped editing to take a break. I happened to brush against the curtain as I got up, and a pinkish gold burst of light flowed into the the room. I saw that the sky was filled with drifting clouds over a golden Bay of Bengal, grabbed my small camera with the wideangle zoom lens, and stepped out onto our veranda to make this picture. Ir proved to be one of my most successful landscapes of the entire trip.

Shortly after our oceangoing cruise ship entered the Irrawadddy, and started its four hour journey upriver to Rangoon, we encountered this fishing village. The houses were built on piers, allowing for changing tides. Dozens of small fishing boats were berthed below the houses, each of them flying a red or yellow flag. I was photographing from the highest deck of our ship, which gave me an excellent vantage point. I used a long telephoto lens to make the important details more visible.

Shwedagon is the most sacred Buddhist pagoda in Burma. Made of brick, but covered in gold plates, the 325 foot tall structure dominates the skyline of Rangoon. I photographed it from a distance, giving it a sense of place. I used nearby Kandawgyi Lake to place the great pagoda into perspective. The pair of fountains in the foreground repeat the vertical thrust of the distant spire, and the late afternoon light allows me to throw the surrounding landscape into shadow.

Using my telephoto lens, I zoom in on the incredible gilded details present in the spectacularly carved roofs of the pagoda. Displayed against a deep blue sky, the golden swirling details dazzle the eye and numb the brain. This image makes us appreciate the extent of human imagination that went into the design and construction of this thousand-year old pagoda.

This image is a study in double incongruity. I photographed these people, complete strangers to each other, as they waited for a bus within a city bus stop shelter. The shelter displays an advertisement for a local cellular service provider. It features a pair of growling costumed characters standing upon the screen of a large cell phone painted along the bottom of the advertisement. I moved my vantage point to place those characters on either side of the woman seated on the right. She is also costumed, wearing an illustrated blouse. Painted on her her face are two large yellowish circles, a cosmetic paste made from ground bark called Thanaka. It is intended both as decoration and protection from the Burmese sun. The man seated next to her wears a long skirt. Both Thanaka and long men’s skirts are Burmese cultural staples, but when viewed by foreigners, they seem strange and certainly incongruous. Neither person reacts to each other or to those incongruities, but we, as outsiders, can appreciate the humor here. By placing such incongruities into what is already an incongruous setting, I’ve created an image that stimulates the imagination by simultaneously contrasting a set of both cultural and commercial incongruities

This is the first in a seven picture series that I made at the Kalaywa Buddhist Monastery in Rangoon. The monks here spend their lives studying and practicing the teachings of Buddha, but before doing so, they must undergo a Shinbyu, the term for a novitiation ceremony. It is one of the most important moments in a Buddhist’s life. In this case, all of the inductees were young boys. I was among the guests attending such a ceremony, and began by photographing a parade of family members that came towards me through the golden gate of the Monastery.