Letting instinct be my guide through Southeast Asia.

Letting instinct be my guide.

I approached my first trip to Southeast Asia in a different manner than my previous international trips. Even though I purchased the airplane tickets back in December, about 10 months before departure, I only booked hotels for the first two nights in each city. I left the remaining nights to chance. Unlike previous trips, I purposely didn’t research, map out, or schedule anything. Every morning I would get lost for a few hours by letting my instinct be my guide. Unlike my hectic life in New York City, where every day and week is carefully planned and literally every minute maximized, I wanted to drastically change gears and slow down, allowing life, and light, to hold my hand and walk me through uncertainty.

As always, I was hunting for meaningful images, beautiful faces, and remarkable locations. While doing that, I was tasting new, affordable, and outstanding food.

As I walked through the cities, I was mentally writing this journal, hoping it would inform and enhance my images. I chose not to shoot more than a few minutes of video during this trip as it would take a more rigorous approach, and it certainly would require more time and gear to do it right. As my only tool I used a tiny Fuji X100S.

The final product is a truly multimedia piece; ambient sounds recorded by us with an H4n, a few video clips, my journal transformed into a voice-over narration, and many photographs, some of which became a book carefully edited and beautifully designed by the super talented Gaia Danieli.

Part 1 (From New York to Tokyo) is now available here.

We truly appreciate your support for this and similar project by purchasing My Asia • Photo eBook (iPad)
The PDF Version is herePDF version is available here, and the printed version from Blurb is here.