Scenes from my 2-week trip in Cambodia July-August 2001, the greatest time of my life; Clockwise from upper left - Me with some children who live on a lake, sunrise over Angkor Wat, a Ta Prohm silk cotton tree before it was made famous by the Tomb Raider movie, yours truly surveying the jungle from Angkor WatI cannot state strongly enough how important I think it is to travel abroad, even better, to live abroad. In July of 2001 I crossed the western Cambodia border from Thailand in the bed of a small truck. This was my first time to visit Southeast Asia and the first time to really use my new digital camera, an Olympus 2040 EZ (2.1 megapixels). This was still the very beginning of digital cameras, very, very few people had one. I cite this event as my true birth into photography.
Therefore, my photography tip is a simple one: travel abroad for as long as possible
By long, I mean at least one month (four weeks). If you have not yet gotten into photography as much as you would like, there is nothing like traveling abroad to be the catalyst to do it. If you are already a frequent photographer, having a whole new world of subject matter will boost your creative output like nothing else can.
You might just end up having the greatest experience of your life, and having the photographs to remember it years later.
--I have never yet written extensively about my time in Cambodia, but creating a long photo story from my archives and journals is always on my mind.