“you should go… live the fantasies!...” – the comment in my last post echoed in my mind through the last week… We are almost on new year’s eve and I tend to get too introspective this time of the year…

From my student days I remember that whenever I’m stuck with a problem for too long, I end up figuring the solution in my dreams… Heck!!!... I don’t remember the last time I dreamt with something…

As time goes by, we tend to force ourselves to live too much into the real side of things, and due to this we train ourselves into posing the correct questions upfront… Things like “how will I pay the bills without a regular job?” end up blocking the sight of all the good things that might come with a radical change…

These last months have been hard, and I have made them worse… I used to fight the world just to have five seconds of photographic quality time, but these last times I’ve been thinking too much and living too little…

Not living too much lately is the evidence I’m carrying through this passage in time… One more year and I’m still too far away… I might never get anywhere, but I should get going anyway…

"you should go hide..." - a wise voice from overseas suggests that a cottage somewehere near a lake in northern Ontario would be a bigger help than a jumbo sized cup of coffe...

I wrote and deleted this post serveral times... Every sentence I write sounds like something that I said before... I'm repeating myself when I say I'm tired and really need a trip out of here in order to get back to myself...

There are promisses that 2007 will start wildelly with a series of trips... The perspective sounds too far away to be real, but it's what I have for now...

Sometimes I think to myself I should grow up and get out of these traveling fantasies, but staying at home for too long is like cutting the fuel that makes me run after more and more experiences and story telling immages...

“is everything all right?...” – It’s almost mid night and someone asks me why am I still in the office…

“it comes and goes”… I think to myself while spending some time playing around with icons in my desktop after sending the last email… I’m tired and the trip back home looks longer than usual…

I finally get home and serve myself with a microwave heated delicacy along with the rest of the Australian white wine bottle that stayed in the fridge from the day before…

Late in the night, tired and high on alcohol, even the 3’rd class reality show shown on TV seams interesting… I’m not really seeing it, so I'm not to be blamed...

"i'm surprised that with so many expensive cameras at the company event, the pictures aren't any good!!!..." - My boss comments his perceived quality of the pictures taken at our annual company event...


Where we talking about cars, this would sound something like: "you have a Ferrari, why can't you drive faster than the rest of the crowd inside a traffic jam?"...

There's an annoying barrier between passionate and normal people in understanding that photography has different meanings rather than the common jargon of "capturing a moment" or worse than that "capturing reality"...

Generically, and risking being to critic, sometimes I feel that for normal people, photography is something you do with a camera... Whereas for someone passionate photography can be about experiencing the dance of nature and ligtht during their best moments, touching the invisible, discovering movement in the world's smallest details, feeling invisible in the middle of a crowd, discover someone's story, breaking limits...

Good equipment and sharp technical skills will probably get you nice pictures... You'll also get really bad ones, this is the way things go... Put passion into the equation and the experience will take you closer to yourself and far away from how good you camera is... Most probably 99,9% of your pictures will still suck... But what the heck! You'll be there for experiencing the world and when you do so you'll find out how 0,1% of your time may become timeless...

"you should come here on a better day, today the weather is not good enough for pictures"... - I'm thinking about the amount of times I've heard this, as the flooding in the center region of Portugal prevents me from getting to the place I wanted to explore...

I'm tired after a strange night with a little too much alcohol and less sleep than advised... The blue sky and the warm color of sunset are almost contradictory with the vision of a road disappearing under the water... I recall Antonio saying that there's some kind of light that drives photographers crazy and makes them wander around until they get something that can be matched with it... And here it was, but this time the strength was not there...

I could have driven my car through one meter deep waters in order to pursue some piece of destiny, but respect and some kind of fear kept me back...

Still I drove around, looking for something else to shoot, but... Too many thoughts blinded me: What am I doing here... Those clouds are amazing... Ups... Stay on the road... I can't help admiring those who depart with nothing in mind and just a glimpse of love in the heart...

"was Portugal a cake, this would be my favorite slice..." - Antonio starts the initial briefing of his photo workshop in Montesinho Natural Park, one of the most remote locations in inner Portugal...

Tree days of intense rain and shooting went through faster than my ability to absorb all that there was to experience in this place under the weather's endearing influence...

It's a fact: Photography changes our perception of the world. Comfort or the absence of it gains a completely new meaning, rain and cold are no more than opportunities for the creation of images and strange enough they are usually the best when it comes to color details... Being wet is part of the process just as letting our equipment through the same "level of abuse"...

In the end I drive back home for eight hours in the rain... The loneliness of an empty car under heavy rains looks like the ideal environment for meditation... "Coming back to real life is becoming harder each time"…

"you migth be able to get there through the river, but it will take a long time..." - I had stoped in a grocery store in the Alvão Natural Park area in northern Portugal and the store keeper is telling me about how to get near one of the parks waterfalls...

Comparing the Portuguese natural park system with those of the US and Canada is like comparing an old Ford Model T with the most recent Mercedes S... Forget the cabin in the entrance of the park where rangers welcome you and give you all the information you need in order to find whatever place you're looking for...

In Portugal you are left with the joy of discovery, sometimes you find the places you’re looking for, sometimes you find something else, often that not you meet interesting people that are glad to help you find what you’re looking for… This approach although romantic and closer to someone that is looking for the subtleties of places off the beaten track is only ruined by the lack of care the Portuguese government shows towards the conservation of natural areas...

Anyway, after walking some kilometers I got near the place I was looking for, but the vantage point from where I wanted to shoot the falls was too difficult to get to without risking falling some hundred meters into a frightening gorge… Where I in the US, I’d have a walking path to get me just there and a guide that would tell me the right time of day and where to place my tripod for the best shot…

“heck I’ll have to come back with more time, friends and climbing equipment!!!...” – The last rays from the sun where striking the earth as the full moon rose above the horizon and I still had some hundred kilometers to drive to my next destination…

“after the cities we’ve crossed during the trip I don’t know if I want to visit New York” – We where on our last day before coming back home, looking down from Seattle’s Space Needle when Patricia drew some conclusions regarding North American cities…


There’s a big difference between European and North American cities. In Europe, we are assured that every city builds it’s identity from the course of thousands of years and all the buildings and stories they left behind. In North America, time still did not play its role in defining each city’s identity. I can associate different ideas to each city, but they are more influenced by people and the way they live in each place…

More and more, cities look pretty much the same everywhere I go… They exist near the airports I fly to… But almost disappear from memories when I get immersed into the wilds...

“he usually spends nine months a year traveling all over the world and stays at home for tree months mostly to test pick up new equipment”… The attendant at the Art Wolfe gallery in Seattle had just answered my question on the amount of time Art usually spends traveling around...

Art is an extreme case of someone that does what I’d like to do with the added bonus of being successful and well payed. I left his gallery wondering about what would be right sequence of steps to get there… I know I might have the image creating potential, but all the rest and mainly the question on how to be a photographer along with being able to pay the bills and having the power to decide on whatever images I want to create turn a single step into an unbeatable barrier…

On the other side is Nuno, the Portuguese biker traveling along the Pan American Highway (check his website here), doing his destiny just out of the will to be free…

Although in extreme positions Art and Nuno are similar in the sense of disturbing my peace of mind. “What am I doing here?” is a common question as three weeks after coming back from the Rockies reality really hurts my temporary sense of freedom…

“We have rooms available for two nights, but after that you have to leave because we’ll be closing for the season….” - The man at the front desk of the St. Mary Lodge kindly informed us regarding our possibilities for staying in the east side of Glacier National Park (US – Montana)…

This did not sound too bad after the having heard from the customs officers at the US border that it would be difficult to find something open in the east part of the park this time of the year… The border would also close in the next day…

The rain did not come back, but the strong winds in the region prove to be worse than rain for the simple purpose of creating images… The trip needed an alternative schedule as we started counting backwards towards the end of the holydays… Does my writing sound depressing?... Well I may be…

"Glaciers recede a couple of meters every year, if you come here in 150 years, you’ll be having a boat trip instead of an Ice Explorer trip" - The guide at the Columbia Ice Fields is letting us know about some facts while driving us up the glacier in some kind of bus that seams to have came out of a science fiction movie...

Most of the time we take what we see for granted, but it’s a fact that the world is changing and what we saw during the trip will no longer be there if we ever go back...

I’m back to my daily life now, and as everybody may figure out my posts are coming out a little too late... Everything went too fast during the trip in such a way that each night I would fall asleep without the strength to write at the same rate we where fed with new experiences...

I left every place wishing to come back for more and less... More time, experiences, light, weather, water on waterfalls, snow... Less tourists...

As we travel south from Jasper to Banff there’s a notorious increase in the number of tourists, wanting to have less tourists feels quite contradictory as I’m a tourist myself and I have no more rights to go to those places than all the others... Still I’d like to see Lake Louise without the "Fairmont Chateau" and all the man made infrastructures built around it... Although in a different league, this place left me with the same sensation of a "dominated piece of nature" as the Niagara Falls did...

Amazingly, Yoho National Park is just 25 km west of Lake Louise and although the tourist buses still get there, there’s some sensation of isolation in the air that puts this place in the role of those that I can go back to over and over again...

Heck... What am I going in the office!..

“I quit my job, rented my house and will be spending the next 18 months going from Canada’s northern territories to Argentina by bicycle” – We finally found a Portuguese since starting the trip and this one had a big story to tell…

All over the world I met a reduced set of persons with the right proportion of courage and insanity in order to jump into the adventures that most of us dream of…

Sometimes we say that in the next day “we’ll radically change life”… But after a night of sleep we loose courage and there we go again to the same routine all over again…

We saw Nuno going away to continue with his venture with different mind sets… José was probably thinking about how much he would like to do the same, Maria was questioning herself on how would such a person manage to pack all the clothes needed for the trip and still be able to carry them on a bike… I found my comfort level troubled again by facing someone that had enough courage to take the “radical step”…

“You should get the yearly park pass” – The park ranger at Jasper National Park welcomes us to the beginning of our journey through the Canadian Rockies… Going into the park center of a Canadian or US national park and paying for the park pass is an almost religious ceremony… My admiration towards the way these countries handle and protect natural areas falls into frustration whenever I’m faced with the reality we have back home…

Our three day stay in Jasper can be described in two words: cold and rainy… As Henrique says: “We have some issues to settle with Jasper”… So there goes another place to our already big list of “come back to places”…

For some time I’m to uncomfortable and worried about the five stitches and the pain in my left foot and the effects they can impose to my pictures that I forget that usually these are the weather conditions that bring me to life… I finally come back to myself on a cold mooring while waiting for the light in front of a glacier… The light never came, but I got back to the usual mind set of feeling that the cold wind and the silence of a mountain bring peace of mind even if we do not get nice looking pictures...

“You have two choices: you can suffer and not be able to walk much during your holydays or you can go into surgery now, suffer for one week and still having some quality time afterwards”… - The diagnostic looked clear. Two days before leaving for my trip to the Canadian Rockies I decided to ask another doctor regarding the problem I was having in my left foot… And yes, I opted for the surgery option…

Two days after the surgery I go trough the 14 hour trip that separates Lisbon from Vancouver with five stitches on the foot and a full arsenal of pills, band aids and bistouries… Other than this, everything goes ok: We are able to go through London Heathrow with our camera equipment, no luggage is lost, we have almost no problem with the car rental, the car is super, we can fit everybody’s luggage in, the hotel is ok, but the rain does not stop falling…

We finally welcomed the first sunny day when traveling towards Jasper National Park...

“Temperatures are going sub-zero, I need to repack my bag…” – Maria tells me about the last arrangements, we’ve spent the last weeks planning our trip to the Canadian Rockies…

“I’m on the departure lounge again” - Bag that fits BA’s hand baggage policy: check; clothing layers for temperatures ranging from -10 to 30 degrees Celsius: check; Hiking boots: check; Pain killers (for my recent foot problem): check; Plane ticket: check; Passport: check; Film: check; more Film: check; vehicle big enough to put al five of us in: check; 200 GB worth of digital storage: ch… well almost…

The limitations on hand baggage are forcing me into some difficult decisions… For the first time I wont be able to take my trusty 35mm film camera with me… I’m left with the Digital with a dead pixel and dust on the sensor that I’ve given up trying to remove before the trip fearing that it will get worse and the medium format that has not proven completely trusty over time… Still these will have to do the trick…

Other than this, the amount of issues that need to be arranged in the office are increasing day by day and the remaining week seams to last forever… What else is new...

“All hand luggage should go into the cargo hold” – The message from British Airways and the UK travel security agency was clear… I was supposed to travel out of India in less than 24 hours, when the Scotland Yard stopped a terrorist attempt… It seamed like this was about to become a trip to remember and I sill had lots of stuff to finish at the office…

My first reaction was to concentrate on the tasks I had to finish… I needed to keep by mind focused on something in order to detract what would be happening in the following hours…

I asked fro some help from the main office but I knew in advance that in times like these we end up having to count only on what the present holds… For some time I stopped writing, because to a certain extent I just could not organize my thoughts in order to do so…

In previous posts I mentioned two very important issues: one was that when traveling there are three very important things that we should always take care of (passport, plane ticket and credit cards) the other was that life keeps pushing our limits and even when we think that we can’t stand things anymore we discover that our capacity to adapt is always there to surprise us…

Well to put a long story short, these where the two realities that I’ve been facing ever since I left India…

As instructed I place all my possessions in my big suitcase (yes, including camera, lenses, laptop, cell phone, glasses, you name it!)… I traveled through London Heathrow under red alert and had to get rid of the two issues of the outdoor photographer magazine I was carrying along with my note book and pen… I finally understood what was to be left with noting else than those I consider the essential items for a trip...

My connecting flight was canceled and I spent several hours without knowing when and if there would be a flight to carry me home… After some hours it seamed I was lucky and there was an almost empty plane taking me home… After landing I waited several hours for my suitcase to arrive, but it didn’t…

Has you might imagine my humor was not in the best shape during the following days… I still do not know what’s worse: the idea to loose my photo equipment or the idea that my next trip is near and I need to make decisions fast in order to keep going…

The suitcase was finally found and delivered to my home after five long days…

During this long process and the long waiting hours at the airport I had time to rethink some of my traveling concepts like: after the tree essentials, a pen is the most important item (you need it to fill the lost baggage claim forms when you get to your destination), and after this, cell phones or any means that enable you to communicate with your family, friends or event your company also come quite handy. In this case, the British government did not give me much chance regarding having any of these items with me, the Airport in Lisbon didn’t help either as they did not have pens to lend and most payphones did not work…

Life goes on and in tree weeks I’ll be flying to Canada on holydays… Guess who am I flying with?... Hint: there are no direct flights from Lisbon to Vancouver and I’ll have to transfer somewhere in Europe…

"Did you have dinner sir?" - It’s midnight and I’m arriving to the hotel - "Room service is still on, you can order from your room" - I hate room service as much as I hate eating in hotel rooms (restaurants where made for that purpose), but it seams that today I have no choice...


Today I told someone about the dark side of my trips: sometimes there’s time to enjoy and discover the place, sometimes there’s just work to be done and it seams that every minute until the check-in closing time will be spent pushing every limit beyond what you’d ever think possible...

Extreme situations bring the awareness that limits are always much more far away that what we’d think at the beginning... There’s always room for one more problem, one more exceptional situation and even for surprisingly creative solutions...

People in India are no exception to this rule, from the distance this reality seams to be beyond reason, but here, we get surprised all the time by the strangest events and the creative solutions found to match...

"The bar is already closed sir, we can’t serve beer anymore" - It’s almost midnight and I just got back from work, I’m having dinner with the PC in front of me thinking about what to write in this post...


It’s only when we leave home that we find out that most things we take for granted are not so in other parts of the world... Every place got its own way while civilizations evolved randomly over time showing that destiny is an unknown place...

Take body language: where I come from a person shakes the head for saying yes or no... In India someone shaking the head one way or the other means nothing at all... It took some time for me to understand this and for my instincts to adapt in order not to react to those situations... Still it feels strange seeing confidence on the eyes of someone that negatively shakes the head...

I’d like to tell you more about Chennai, but time runs out and I fear I won’t have the chance to go out with the camera... And heart... In every trip to or from the office I’m faced with multiple situations I still did not picture: crowded buses, the live cow parade, the infinite range of eye expressions that seam to did deep into one’s memories... Young, not so young... New, old... Here, there...

"Your hotel taxi will be ready to take you to the office by 10 am tomorrow" - An envelope was slipped bellow my room’s door with this message on it... At the beginning I was quite apprehensive with this "all is being taken care for you and you do not need to know details attitude" as I'm used to control every detail like hotel addresses, office addresses, maps, etc...

Now, after getting to three hotels from whom I did not know the address, and after getting to the client's office without even knowing where I am, without needing a single phone call, it's not that I'm used to live with it, but I'm getting the idea that things don't always go wrong...


I also feel that most of my traveler instincts have to be reformulated for India... It may me a mistake, but I'm starting to trust more than what I'd expect to...

Anyway, I still consider I have a highly filtered view of the place... I know the weather in Chennai is unbearably hot and wet, but I have not been exposed to it for more than half an hour... I know the pollution in Bangalore was unbearable, but still I caught a cold from its air conditionings... Basically all the control and organization I'm appreciating come from services that cost more per day than the average citizen will make in a month...

I now think that most of my questions and doubts about this place are not about the place itself, but on how I see and judge the world: the point is not on what I want to know; on the contrary, it's on what I usually don't want to...

Have some water sir - I’m, entering the car the hotel sent to pick me up at the Chennai airport... The weather feels like Rio and the water is welcome... One more stage is gone, one more hotel, a good one this time...


The day was intense in Bangalore, my friends started by taking me to wild life sanctuary where we did a photo safari, at the sight of my camera I was invited to sit near the driver... It seamed almost on purpose that most animals showed up on the driver’s side and I could not take their pictures from where I was...

The driver offered to take pictures for me and I handed him the camera... I was using one of my old manual lenses so the driver did not have much success on focusing, but each time he handed the camera back he was smiling as if he had taken the best picture of his life...

In the end of the trip the guide came to me and told me discretely that I should tip the driver... - Now I get it - I thought to myself... I hand him twenty rupees but he does not look happy, I leave the bus and ask my friends if I just did anything wrong, and they tell me I didn’t - it’s just that because you’re from other country everybody expects you to be generous in terms of tipping, a typical Indian would have given him half of what you gave...

Several times I’m reminded that my reality sits years and several dimensions away... In one way it seams that I’m watching a movie, but on the other, my presence seams to have too much effect on people... Yes I’m here... Yes the pollution burns my eyes and they still hurt... Yes I think if I should take pictures or not... Some people tell me they do not want their picture taken, some feel honored to do so... It looks that I’ll carry these memories through my life; they seam to strong to vanish suddenly after my flight out of here...


We skip lunch and head to Bangalore’s botanical garden, the place looks tidy and organized in a way I still had not seen here... People sit on the floor walk or run like they would on the central parks of this world...

Some time later we have a last beer and I head to the airport... The flight gets delayed... We finally depart... And arrive... Once more I did not wait long for the suitcase and the driver as easy to find...

At dinner after asking for a local beer I’m offered a 650 ml bottle - I’ll pretend its water, tells the bad boy in me before the good boy reminds me that I did not have anything for lunch - Anyway I decide to give my stomach a break and for the first time in some days I have non spicy food... I’m offered a glass of wine... I accept... Coffee carries me back to the room...

Are you going for program sir? - I’m leaving the hotel heading to the office, and yesterday’s rickshaw man is chasing me again... I tell him that I’m going to work and he promptly answers: It’s Saturday sir!!!... He continues with me until I finally enter the office building...


Stating my guide book: nobody comes to Bangalore for sightseeing, people come here for shopping heating and drinking - basically this is a traffic city, with everything that comes with it...

I’m able to show movement, but I can’t show noise in my images - I think to myself while walking with the camera in hand... I think about the last days... Time flies, but simultaneously it feels like I’ve been out of home for ages... Anyway, half of this trip is over now...

Would you like to have something to drink mister? - The flight attendant has just awakened me, I’m flying from Delhi to Bangalore and I’m tired of too much bushtit meetings... At this point my friends: the old captain and the supplies officer are flying back home through Mumbai... My solo trip is about to start...


The plane lands at Bangalore and surprisingly I wait no more than 2 minutes before I get my suitcase... The baggage hall opens directly to the outside of the airport and outside the usual multitude waits with millions of boards with unreadable names... Surprisingly I can easily spot my name in one of those boards... A small wave to the driver lets him know I’m the one he’s looking for...

The weather is quite mild - it almost feels like home - I think to myself... The driver brings the car and we have a nice conversation while heading to the hotel... Everything looks good and I start liking the place... I get to the hotel, and at the reception they tell me that they’ll upgrade me to a deluxe suite, I’m happy again... I get to the room and I think to myself: is this the f... upgrade? The room looks unclean although it’s just old and untreated... I start trying to find my way around, the TV is not working, the safe can’t be opened, I call the reception and I wait two hours before everything is fixed... Still the internet connection is not working properly, I finally go to dinner at mid night and I’m really pissed of...

Back from dinner, I stay up until two am preparing next day’s meetings... I wake next mooring feeling I was hit by a train, I meet my new interlocutors and we spend the whole day discussing technology and prices for the Indian price - India is a price driven country - they say... Yes, I know, I’ve been listening to that since I got here...


In the end of the day I’m exhausted, but I still decide to go out... It’s late and the traffic seams impossible to stand... I go back and forth before I have courage to cross the first street in the middle of intrepid moto-riquexos that do not respect red signs... I’m really feeling out of context, I’m too tired to handle this in a good mood... The horns, the noise and the movement start echoing inside my mind... I insist and walk a little more, and more... It takes some time for me to understand the city map someone handed me at the hotel (once again I’m betrayed by the big scale of Indian cities)... I get to the shopping area... More movement... I try to create some images but I’m definitely not in the mood... I end up giving up and walk back to the hotel...

I end the day having dinner at the restaurant on the last floor looking to the city down bellow... I get to try Indian wine: a white chardonnay and a red merlot - they still need to be worked out, but they’ll get there some day - I think... The food is awesome as always in this country, be it Indian food or some Indian interpretation of international food these people really know how to please my taste... I end with a mix of crème brule and coffee... I’m thinking I really need to sleep when I receive an SMS from the head quarters...

We have no laws - said the taxi driver when I asked him about the Indian way of driving... He is from the Punjab, actually the third taxi driver I found coming from this region...



Today we went trough an intrepid trip through some of Delhi’s shopping experiences. From the fancy shopping mall to the spice and fruit market in half an hour, passing through a bunker turned gift shop, with no time and no chance to talk with people...

Here one feels almost frivolous when taking pictures without asking for permission. People just go on with their lives as if I was not there, but every face shows the sharp expression of someone that has a story to tell... And just like there’s no purpose on judging without having my questions answered, there’s no sense in creating senseless images that can’t be completed with words...

"India is the second most populous country and one of the economies with the highest growth in the world... Of course the society is highly segmented, but this country is being run by the two top layers (high and medium-high) and these two are bigger than the population of the UK and Australia together..." - Someone was trying to clear some of my doubts about this country. This was in the middle of a business conversation and we did not get to great conclusions... I probably aimed too high, maybe I should have started with simpler questions...


Maybe I should stop with adult and polite questions and let my inner child go ahead with the urge to understand the basis of day by day life... Why does everyone horn?... How do they dare to drive like they do, did nobody explain them that the Portuguese are the worst drivers in the face of the earth?...

Hello sir, welcome to the Oberoi Hotel, are you comfortable inside the car? – Said the voice on the other side of the cell-phone the driver had strangely handed to me… I’m still dizzy from the flight and happy to have my entire luggage and that the hotel really sent someone to pick me up at the Airport… Could I wish for more?

I come out of the car at the hotel and I’m saluted by a pleasant young lady treating me by my name… On my way into the hotel, four other persons will salute me that same way…

Later on I’ll have sushi for lunch, I’ll go for a city tour and at night I’m having an Italian dinner with the finest risotto, a fresh salad, and a glass of red wine…

In case you did not notice it before I’m in India!!!... By the time I received the call in the car my mind was already bubbling with more questions than those I think I‘ll ever get answers for…

Why… How… What are these persons doing sitting on the ground at 7am???... Why do buses have bars over the windows???… When did time stop in this part of the world???... Even so there seams to be more order and understanding in this strange flavor of chaos than in other realities I face in my daily life…

Still… At dinner I paid more for a single glass of wine than for a four hour drive with a taxi driver… I do not know if I’ll ever find the answers, I know I can’t change reality as I see it, but the conflict still arrests my thoughts…

Today I chose not to show pictures I still have no explanation for… Of course, there are nice monuments in Delhi, colorful Shari’s and all the pictures you might have imagined but still I see to much barriers arresting this people as I’m also too much looking at all this though a looking glass…

Ok, we can confirm flights - Someone said… The agenda and the itinerary have been checked so many times that I’m sure I’ll forget something on my way there…

As the world spins down bellow my notion of what’s essential is reduced to three simple items: Plane Ticket, Passport and Credit Card… All the rest, including photo equipment, can be bought, downloaded or replaced with more or less effort…

Obviously there are compromises and money imposes its limits, but I wouldn’t have the peace of mind to even get a disposable camera and go through the game of dealing with the limit of 36 photos in one week after finding out I had to deal with all the paperwork that comes with loosing a passport…

"How are you? - someone asked after not being with me for more than 7 years - I know you travel a lot and take lots of pictures"...

I thought twice before answering that I could be better. It's a strange feeling that in certain perspectives our lives just couldn't be better; but when we live them the definitions just don't come close to the real experience...

We tend to envy other people without wondering the price they pay for being whatever they are... I love traveling and creating images, but in my case that comes with a dose of uncertainty that sometimes just seams unbearable: where will I be next week, will I have an hotel when I get there, when and how I'll be back are matters that no longer show in my priority list... Still, I can't stop this and live another life...

In some strange way I find my balance in the middle of this chaos of not knowing or to controlling whatever comes tomorrow...

Someone asked me what I was doing in the office at 7 pm on a Friday... I'm on the departure lounge - I said to myself - while answering politely that I was helping someone on the other side of the world...

I'm entering the emptiness state of mind that usually precedes great trips... I'm tired and just stopped caring about what I'm leaving behind, tomorrow I might need more strength, so there's no point on thinking about whatever I should think about...