I found these athletes working out on a sandy beach adjacent to the Persian Gulf. They were striking a balletic pose as I made this photograph. Yet each of them approaches the task differently. Some rigidly lift their linked hands high over their heads. Others create a graceful circle with their arms. Some seem to be dancing, while others are rooted in place. However all of them wear bright yellow shirts that link them as teammates and bond the individual athletes together as a single team. I cropped this image into a horizontal frame, echoing the horizontal arrangement of their bodies.

I made this image by shooting straight down from the observatory tower at the top of the world’s highest building, the Burj Khalifa. The view from 124 stories above the city is dizzying, and this wide-angle photograph replicates that feeling. The cars at the intersecting streets below us look smaller than ants, and the huge buildings that flank the intersection seem trivial.

Water taxis crowd this creek at rush hour. Commuters leave their 21st century office suites to sit on wooden benches running down the center of a rickety craft that was probably designed in the 19th century. The creek has few bridges, making these taxis the quickest way to cross it. Clouds of seagulls engulf the taxis, looking for nourishment churned to the water’s surface by the taxi’s engine. I made this frenetic image from the bow of a water taxi, and photographed another just in front of us while using a long telephoto lens.

I made this photograph at the end of a ten-hour bus tour through much of Dubai. As the sun went down over the mosques of Old Dubai, seagulls make their way across a flaming sky as the Muslim call to prayer sounds over the loud speakers of a towering minaret. The architecture in this older area is that of a traditional Middle Eastern city, a far cry from the curving and soaring Las Vegas style towers of downtown Dubai. In this image, we see the essence of the city as it used to be.

A spice market such as this one can stimulate all the senses simultaneously. We can see the vivid colors, smell the fragrant odors, hear the cries of the vendors, and if we should choose to buy, we can even touch the texture and taste the flavor. This image makes us aware of these sensations, and brings these spices into our presence. The textures, colors, shapes and arrangement of colors do more than just draw the eye. They prod the imagination.

This is just a small section of Dubai’s commercial center. The Dubai Metro transit line runs through the foreground, and as I made this image, a train swept through my frame. The huge buildings offer a range of architectural tastes, dominated by a blue structure — its design both looks back to Art Deco, and ahead to the “City of the Future. It seems as if it is made of Legos. This image is saturated with primary colors. The blue sky provides a backdrop for the buildings, some of which also use blue for decorative emphasis. The train is blue as well. A row of commemorative banners, celebrating the 45th Anniversary of UAE, feature three red areas that that march horizontally across the image, matching the horizontal flow of the Dubai Metro and the skyline.

The UAE is a federation of seven states that has grown from a quiet backwater into one of the Middle East’s most important economic centers. Dubai is its business hub. I made this image in the lobby of our Dubai hotel, featuring the blending of cultures that gives the UAE its character and purpose. I anchor the image with an abstracted man in Arabic dress. He is using a cell phone, while seated in a massive golden swivel chair. In contrast, the six people in the background are wearing western dress. A wall of glass elevator shafts fills out the image. In this photograph, east meets west in a luxurious commercial setting.

Fujairah is one of seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates. It is among the smallest, with a population of less than 200,000 people. Many of them cater to the tourists that enjoy its beaches along the Gulf of Oman. This man is selling rugs and bags made of colorful fabrics. He was standing in the entrance of his shop, looking for customers. As I was about to make this picture, he turned towards me and struck this odd pose. He froze for a brief moment in this position, probably wondering why I would want to make a photograph of him. His body language is expressive – he stands with one hand in a pocket, and touches his neck with the other. Of Fujairah’s 200,000 people, he was the only one who earned a spot in this gallery.

This splendid building was built in 1887 to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of England’s Queen Victoria, also known as the “Empress of India.” This Victorian Gothic building still stands in the center of Bombay, India’s largest city. Since 1995, Bombay has been called Mumbai, and the railroad station is now the “Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.” This building became world famous in November, 2008, when two terrorists murdered 58 people and injured 104 others in its central passenger hall. I abstract this historic structure by showing only its central dome. The “Statue of Progress” stands at the top, while our eyes are left to feast on a wealth of extravagant Victorian detail. Among the detail is the flag of India, bringing one of the few spots of color to the soot-colored dome.

This grand old home, built when India was a British colony, stands just around corner from the house that Gandhi occupied when he lived in Bombay. I express its character by moving in on the faded colors and decaying decorations. The color and details are abstracted in the dappled shadows, leaving us with only a hint of its former beauty.

By 2020, there will be more than two hundred million motorbikes and motorcycles on the road in India. Bombay is already flooded with them. I made this photo of a small motorbike shop in Bombay’s Muslim Quarter. Motorized cycles seem to flow through the midst of it. Some are halted for the moment, while others are either parked or are in motion. The yellow and red sign above the shop leaps out at us. We see a man in Muslim dress relaxing in a chair, watching the parade of cyclists roar past. The window of this shop is filled with helmets, but woman riding in the back of the motorcycle in the foreground does not wear one. Cycling accidents take many lives each year in Mumbai, the growl and sputter of engines is constant, and this city’s infamous air pollution is not getting any better.

At rush hour, Bombay’s public transportation system is stretched to its limit. This crowd, already stacked five deep, is jammed between a billboard and a cable as they await the next bus. In this image, I found a range of expressions, body language, and costume. A man in the very rear of the crowd is even hoisting a stack of cooking pots over his head as he waits. I made this image from the window of my own bus – one designed for tourism rather than for commuters.

The Dhobi Ghat is the world’s largest outdoor laundry. Built in 1895, this laundry washes thousands of clothes each day. The city of Bombay rents over 800 washing pens, each of them fitted with a “beating stone.” Clothes are soaked, slapped, spun, and even ironed in this this massive laundry, which is spread over 10 acres in the middle of Bombay. I caught this washerman standing in a tub of water adjacent to his washing pen. It is probably the only laundry in the world where the workers labor in their undershorts. Each “dhobi” stands at his washing stone for up to 16 hours.

Bombay, India’s largest city, is the fourth largest in the world. Its population has nearly doubled since my first visit in 1990. Today, more than 22 million people, many of them migrants from rural areas of India, live and work here. The primary mode of travel within the city is by train. Bombay’s local train system is the oldest railway system in Asia. It now has the most outdated electric rail system in the world, still running on power from overhead wires instead of a third rail or fuel. A commuter train can carry up to 5,000 people during peak hours. The total number of people those trains carry each day is larger than the population of some countries. Some passengers may travel up to five hours every day to get to and from work. This photograph of rush hour crowds packing the staircases leading to the city’s Mahalaxmi Station expresses the very essence of Bombay’s archaic transportation system. The station was built 90 years ago, when electric trains first began to serve the city. At that time, just over one million people lived in Bombay. Today, more than ten times that number live here. This image speaks for itself.

Trust is at the core of Bombay’s amazing lunchbox delivery system. A housewife packs a freshly made lunch in a “Dabba,” a tin or aluminum container. A Dabbawala then picks it up at her house, and after changing hands three, four, or even five times, the lunch arrives on time at a distant office. Each Dabba on this litter is sorted by destination, according to the Dabbawala coding system. Passing from one Dabbawala to another, these lunches will be carried on bikes, heads, hands and arms. They almost always arrive at the right place and at the right time. (A mistake is made on only one out of six million deliveries.) After lunch, the empty Dabbas are picked up by Dabbawalas and delivered back to the homes of their customers that same day.

Since its establishment in 1873, Bombay’s port has been the gateway to India. This image, which I made at sunset as we sailed out of the harbor, creates a metaphor for that very “gateway” by framing a distant Indian sailboat precisely between a pair of giant cranes. I centered the setting sun just above them, using its halo effect to create a huge curve in the sky that echoes the curve of the sun itself. This image offers a final salute to Bombay, spanning my three visits to India’s largest city over the last quarter of a century.

This marketplace is housed in a large hall, filled dozens of stalls selling produce and household goods. There is a balcony circling the entire length and width of the hall, and that is where I spent my time here as a photographer. Using my long telephoto lens, I could zoom in on both vendors and shoppers as they sold and purchased goods. This young man was neither a vendor nor a shopper. He was part of a family enterprise that sold fruits and vegetables here. I caught him as he took a well-deserved break from his work before heading off to school. He is both sitting and lying upon a pile of bundles in the back of the family’s stall. I watched him from the balcony as he tried to find a comfortable position on the makeshift bedding. He rubs his head with one hand as studies the screen of a phone in his other hand. His backpack rests next to him. Although scene is a busy one, it’s colors pull it together as an expressive image. A stained brown tarp covers half of the white bundles. He wears a blue shirt and lies upon a red garment. A crate sits near his head, while vividly colored Indian fabrics are used to make the bundles at the left hand edge of the frame. His brown pants and shiny black shoe seem perfectly at home in this setting. His body language forms a diagonal focal point that ties the entire image together, and making it one of my favorite photographs from this journey.

Most cities in India offer auto-rickshaw service. These tiny vehicles are used to travel short distances, run on compressed natural gas, and provide cheap and efficient transportation. In this image, an auto-rickshaw driver is waiting for a customer. He seems as curious about me as I was about his vehicle.

I made this portrait in a market covered with canvas awnings, which provided me with soft, dappled shadows as well as a deeply shadowed background to work with. I waited until this woman, who was shopping for bananas at the moment, stepped out of the dark shadows and into the softly filtered sunlight. She turned in my direction and as she did, I made this image. I always look at several different places while I am shooting people, thereby avoiding confrontation. She sees me, but she may not be sure of what I may be photographing. There is no trace of a smile. Meanwhile, my long telephoto lens throws the bananas in the background into soft focus, lending context to the image. The bright yellow bananas and her brilliantly colored dress drew attention away from her expressive eyes. I solved this problem by converting the image to black and white, giving the eyes prominence.

Cochin is the second most important city on the West Coast of India after Bombay. This gateway to the prosperous Indian state of Kerala is known as the “Queen of the Arabian Sea.” Fish are pulled from this sea by huge nets along the edge of the city. I found this grouping of egrets standing below those nets, waiting for a handout. Their white and gray feathers contrast to the rich and muted colors of the rope coils and machinery that surround tem.

I spent an hour or so making pictures from a tourist boat while touring Cochin’s harbor. This is my favorite image of that tour. There were at least nine fishermen coming at me, all of them crowded into a small boat. The contrasting expressions and clothing tell a diverse story, but even more important to this image is the energy provided by flying towel that the man in the back of the boat is wrapping around himself.

This temple is among the most revered Buddhist temples of the Orient. It is said that Buddha visited here around 500 B.C. I moved in on this offering stand to emphasize smoke from the burning incense left by worshippers, which represents the fragrant scent of morality. The bowl is filled with floral offerings as well. I made this image to appeal to both the imagination and the sense of smell. The fragrance of burning incense is at the core of this image.

I made this image in a very dark room. It was filled with visitors, many of them standing reverently before a seated statue of Buddha. I turned my wideangle lens vertically, to embrace the visitors, the statue, and the enormous arch that soars overhead. Using my spot meter, I exposed this image for the snow covered mountain peak dominating the illuminated painting behind the statue. As a result, most of my image goes dark, symbolizing the hushed, holy atmosphere within this chamber. Only this backdrop and the golden statue are clearly defined. As for the visitors, they are mostly darkened, except for the man with his back to us in the center of the bottom of this image. He seems to be softly glowing, which could symbolize the effect this experience may be having upon him.

Sri Lanka (formerly called Ceylon) is one of the most religious countries on earth. It is an island country just south of India, which has 90 per cent of the world’s Hindus. While Sri Lanka is mostly Buddhist, there are many Hindus living there as well, including this woman who has come to a temple to bring offerings. I photographed her just as she was about to get out of the auto-rickshaw that brought her to the temple. Holding her bags, she looks at us intently as she is about to emerge from the auto-rickshaw. Her expressive features are intensified by the symbolic markings upon her forehead. Given this intensity, this photograph proved to be one of the most expressive portraits I made on this trip.

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.

After the parade, the platforms are returned to the Monastery’s courtyard, where the young boys await the beginning of the ceremony. This one wears an elaborate head-dress that covers not only his head, but the entire front of his chest. His face is painted with Thanaka, a paste made of tree bark. I noticed the way his hands still grasped the arms of his tiny throne, and made sure that I included just the hands and arms of the adults arrayed behind him.

Wearing their robes, three of these four new monks seem to take this event quite seriously. However one of them does not. He is very young, and can’t restrain the urge to respond to the applause that is coming his way. I photographed this incongruous moment in the midst of very serious religious ceremony.

In this, my final image of this ceremony, I capture its final moment. The new monks stand before the assemblage. Each holds a large embroidered fan. The solemnity of the moment is evident, however one of the new monks has just noticed me composing my image from a distance. He turns his head and stares at us. We can only wonder what might be going through his mind.

I made this image from a tour bus as we passed through a busy intersection. The stalled traffic includes a phalanx of cyclists in the foreground of this rush hour portrait of Phuket’s homeward bound commuters on a rainy evening. The cyclists vary in age, gender, headgear, costume, and the kind of motor-bike they straddle. The line of cyclists extends back between the waiting cars, carrying our eye into the deep background.

Our string of three weeks of perfect weather ended here in Phuket on the very last day of our final shoot. The sporadic rain showers and cloudy skies that we endured eventually proved providential. Photography on Phang Nga Bay is essentially landscape photography, which requires the interplay of light, shadow, color, and texture to tell its story. This image, which I made by hanging over the stern of our boat, contrasts the color and texture of the cloud cover to the interplay of light and shadow on the water and wake of the boat. The flat light also abstracts the huge limestone cliffs that rise out of the bay. If it had been a sunny day, this photograph would have been a candidate for a post card. The “bad” weather helped me make this image into an abstraction that conveys the mysterious atmosphere and mood of this unique place.

This remote Muslim fishing village welcomes thousands of tourists each year. All guided tours to Phang Nga Bay National Park stop here to visit, eat, and buy gifts and souvenirs. I made hundreds of images during the hour we toured the village, and this one was my favorite. I saw this toddler sitting on the floor of her family’s gift shop, reading a magazine upside down. That alone is an incongruity. However as I continued to photograph this child, she began to yell at the magazine, which was even more incongruous. She is seated astride floor tiles that draw us deeply into the image. The little pigtails on either side of her head echo the position of her legs and her arms. I have no idea what she is saying to the magazine at this moment. Perhaps she is angry at it for being upside down, and does not know how to turn it around?

This shallow bay holds 42 islands in the Strait of Malacca. It flows between the island of Phuket and the mainland of Southern Thailand’s Malay Peninsula. About 10,000 years ago, when the sea level was lower, it would have been possible to walk from Phuket to what is now Phang Nga Bay. I converted what was originally a drab color image made under rainy skies, into an abstracted sepia impression. A Thai boat, its prow moving towards us in the center of the image, is dwarfed by the landscape that fills the background. The huge limestone monoliths rising from the waters of Phang Nga Bay were made over thousands of years by the passing of time itself. Meanwhile my camera stops time here, as this small boat towards us from out of the misty mountainscape. The sepia tone gives this image the air of a early photograph. It easily could have been made in the 19th century, when photography was still a primitive medium. A light mist rises behind the island on the left hand edge of the frame, adding a touch of atmosphere that flavors the image. The washed out gray sky is exactly the same kind of sky that once filled the landscape photographs of that era. This image, which was among the last photographs I made on this, my final overseas photo shoot, offers an appropriate ending to this gallery.