The Mayan Ruins of Tulum (Mexico 3 of 4)

One of Tulum's most popular destinations are the Mayan Ruins. Situated on bluffs overlooking the Caribbean Sea, the ruins create a setting that transport visitors to another world.
Tulum, which is a Mayan word for "walled city" served as a trading port and commerce center for the city of Coba, which is situated further into the interior of Mexico. History suggests that prior to its discovery by European explorers, Tulum was called "Zama" by its citizens. Zamas is Mayan for "dawn". Though we were too lazy to get up to see the city live out its original namesake, the above photo taken around 10am, can give you an idea of the breathtaking view that Zama enjoyed each morning.

Tulum boomed between 1200-1500 AD, but was later abandoned as new diseases carried by Spanish explorers decimated Tulum's native inhabitants. The above photos depict details of the facade of the Castillo. It is the largest building situated in the center of the city. Historians maintain that it was mostly used as a ceremonial site and as the main lookout post for the city.
The above photo is the Castillo from the front. The Italian family posing in the right end of this image spotted me as I took this photo. Before long they asked me to take their picture ...seven times with seven different cameras.
Once again, the above image shows the Castillo from a side vantage point. From this angle, you can clearly see a portion of the city wall that is still intact. While at the ruins, I was really drawn to the texture and color of the stone used to hand-build the structures in the city. A stone found on this site in the 19th century bared a chiseled date of 564 AD indicating that the city may have existed centuries before its heyday.
I have to come clean with the photo above. As we were walking, I inadvertently pressed the trigger on my camera as it dangled at my hip. What resulted was an accidental shot of Laura walking through the ruins. Sometimes art just happens, and it seems that this photo is a good example. The texture and movement of Laura's skirt placed in the context of the ancient Mayan path creates a mood that allows something from the present to fit perfectly in an ancient backdrop.
The placard for the above building explained that the structure was most likely a multifamily dwelling.

Architecture Akumal (Mexico 2 of 4)

Akumal is a small resort community just about halfway between Cancun and Tulum. On Wednesday, we taxied to Akumal for a day to snorkel. After about an hour of swimming around with the fishes, we realized that our sunburns were a bit more tender than we had first noticed, so we decided to cover up and take a long walk from the lagoon into town.

The walk into Akumal turned out to be a highlight of the week in Mexico. The air was still, the road was quiet, and the architecture was stunning. With the exception of some Mexican flourishes, I quickly noticed how similarly the architecture in Akumal mirrored the buildings in Greece.

I originally took the above photo in color, but converted it to grey scale when I realized that the lowest portion of the wall so closely resembles the sweeping motion of the lowest exterior wall of Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim in NYC. The Guggenheim photo in my NYC post does not show this congruency directly, but if you compare the two images you'll notice the similarities.

Akumal is a Mayan word that translates to "place of the turtles". Though this region is a prime breeding ground for sea turtles, due to the time of year of our trip, I unfortunately do not have any photos of sea turtles. My next post, however, is dedicated to the Mayan history of the region.

The Beaches of Tulum (Mexico 1 of 4)

In the immediate days after I return from traveling to a new, exotic location, I find it difficult to wrap my head around how distant a recent experience can feel. As I sit down to write this blog entry today in snowy Massachusetts, I welcome back that same sensation when I reflect upon my last week's travels to the pristine beaches of Tulum, Mexico. On a whim, Laura and I decided to take advantage of some free time, and booked a four day escape to tropical waters and equatorial breezes.

This week, I'll be updating The Viewfinder with four posts from our trip. Keeping true to the themes of previous posts, the entries will include photos of festivals; portraits of locals; and snapshots of architecture... both modern and ancient.

This post, however, is dedicated to something I've never stepped foot on (let alone take photos of) before last week... a Caribbean beach.

Though only two hours south Cancun, Tulum represents a different world. Condos and high rise resorts are replaced by solar-powered, thatched-roof cabanas; and Anglophone tourists are required to attempt their rusty Spanish in order to get around. The above photo was taken on Hemingway Beach.

The week we were in Tulum (December 8th-12th) is considered "shoulder season" for the hospitality industry of the region. American tourists down for the Thanksgiving holiday are back to reality in the north, and visitors for the winter holidays are yet to arrive. During our long walks, intersecting another vacationer was a rare occurrence.

Though this lone palm tree made a great photographic subject, I later read that a bending palm tree is an indication of poor health.

Above is Zamas, a restaurant and beach that was about a city block north of the first cabana in which we stayed. On our third night in Mexico, we had drinks at Zamas and listened to a live band called "Latin Taxi".

On multiple occasions we came across small fishing boats that had been partially submerged by abnormally high tides during hurricane season.

Boats were not the only victims of hurricane season. The above piece of driftwood was roughly the length of a pickup truck. (Click on the image for a larger view)

During our week in Mexico, the moon was the closest to the Earth it had been in 15 years. This made the nights on Tulum's beaches extremely bright. For this image, keeping my shutter open for only 30 seconds revealed a milky surf and the true color of the stars. Two of the brightest stars in this image are beginning to streak, which is a visual way to document the rotation of the Earth.

Cosmas & Damien 2008 (You're Caught Up: 11 of 11)

When I moved to Boston, I got an apartment in the quiet neighborhood of East Cambridge. Most of its residents are elderly Italian and Portuguese-Americans. Though Boston's North End is famed for its Italian festivals honoring Roman Catholic saints, East Cambridge celebrates (for 82 consecutive years) a cultural jewel of a holiday... The Italian Festival of the Healing honoring saints Cosmas and Damien.

My affinity to this festival originates from its similarity to the block parties I used to attend as a child with my grandmother in Shamokin, PA. There's incredible authentic food, a out of tune marching band that follows a procession, carnival games, and curious rituals like pinning money on the saints for good luck.

The Italian immigrants that began settling in my neighborhood in the early years of the 20th century were predominantly seaside dwelling fishermen from Gaeta, Italy. In Cambridge, they became landlocked meat packers. In an attempt to retain a piece of their cultural identity, a group of 100 East Cambridge residents established the Society of Saints Cosmas and Damien, the patron saints of Gaeta.

Walking around East Cambridge's streets during the celebration it becomes clear that the future of the festival is uncertain. Its organizers and attendees are almost entirely over the age of 60; and anyone under the age of 40 that you can find at the festival are peeping gentrifies like myself.
Saint Alfo's Band from Lawrence, MA plays many of the Italian festivals throughout Massachusetts.


If you sleep in on Saturday on the feast of Saints Cosmas & Damien, there's a good chance that your alarm clock will be the "oompa oompa" of St Alfio's band marching down the street outside your window. Above, the band prepares to process and a playful band member pretends to attack a festival onlooker with his tuba bell.

Montreal 2008 (Catching You Up: 10 of 11)

My friends and I traveled to Montreal for a long weekend in June of this year. Having never been there, I expected Montreal to be a time warp back to a romantic old city with strong European influence. Though parts of the historic section of town did have the old world charm I expected, I was struck more by the grittiness of Montreal. Though some images of Montreal could resemble the classic Parisian photographs of Cartier-Bresson, I was more inspired by the ubiquitous graffitied buildings and the rawness of the city.


We stayed at a shabby-chic apartment on Rue Ste Catherine called Maison Loft. It was owned by a friendly, entrepreneurial young woman named Noémie. Though initially surprised by the loft (it kind of gives you the feeling that you are staying at a place that could have once been a crack house) we gave in to its gritty charm and were won over by the warmth of our hosts. The above photo, is the view from my room looking down on Rue Ste Catherine.

The graffiti in Montreal was like ivy on buildings.

I am drawn to this photo for a number of reasons. I love the weathered expression on the man's face. He's doing cement work to the front of a shop, and it looks like he's been doing it his whole life. The pattern on his shirt blends in with the reflection of the clouds, blurring the distinction between the man and his environment. Though he's tired and slouched, and probably not the vision that Michelangelo had in mind, when I look at him, the posture of his hand makes me think of the Statue of David. My friends are reflected in the window.

Barack Obama 2007-2008 (Catching You Up: 9 of 11)

I can remember exactly where I was when I first heard Barack Obama speak at the DNC convention in 2004. I remember what I ate for dinner that night... I even remember what shirt I was wearing. After his address, I was on the phone with my dad asking if he had watched, and telling him that this guy needed to be our next president.

The four years that followed that speech to the night that the Obamas took the stage in Grant Park in Chicago, I've been a bit obsessed... maybe too obsessed depending on who you ask. Obama's articulations of the issues facing our country were exactly how I had formulated them in my mind on countless nights as I fell asleep. To me, his campaign ran on the platform of common sense... middle class tax cuts; talking to your enemies; personal responsibility and accountability; equitable access to education; actionable environmental safeguards. When he became our 44th President, I was once again proud to be in a country of hope and progress.

The first time I heard Barack Obama in person was in the fall of 2007 in the Boston Common. Earlier that day, I actually called the campaign and a few newspapers in Boston in a futile attempt to get a press pass to be in the unobstructed press box to snap some photos. I of course was denied. Looking back, I'm glad I had the view that appears in the above photo. To me, the photo has a 1960s political aesthetic. Obama had embodied the urgency of Martin Luther King and the solidarity of Bobby Kennedy, and rebranded and repackaged it into a new voice and message. He was operating on all cylinders that night and he left the crowd electrified.

I don't know if I can take credit for the above photo. It's possible that my friend Andrew Martin took this shot. We were standing next to each other that night sharing one camera. I saw Barack Obama speak for the 2nd time on the evening that Ted and Caroline Kennedy endorsed Obama. Unlike the speech in the Boston Common in 2007 where I waited in line for about 30 minutes to get into the event, this night included a four and a half hour wait. Obama had gained some serious momentum having won a slew of states on Super Tuesday, February 5th. Though his speech had me once again transfixed, this time it was the crowd that reinforced my belief that this man needed to be our 44th. I knew it when I saw teenagers hanging on every word about getting a break from college costs only if they serve their communities. I knew it when I looked back at the crowd and saw a perfectly diverse sample of our Union. I knew it when I saw tears stream down the faces of elderly black men and women who knew that waiting in line for four hours in the cold was nothing compared to their lifelong wait.

Boston 2007-present (Catching You Up: 8 of 11)

After I completed grad school, I moved to Boston in the summer of 2007. I was looking for a new scene to call home for a little bit and Boston seemed like a great stop. Despite the unfairly long winters, and various run-ins with some New Englanders' whose general outlooks on life match the icy temperatures, I'd have to say it's been a great place to be.


From a photography perspective, Boston has quite a bit to offer. Simultaneously a 200 year old city and a fully functioning modern metropolis, Bostons' architecture offers a unique melting pot of the old and the new, while remaining uniquely American.


The above photo is an apartment building in Boston's historic Beacon Hill. This image is actually a series of about 13 close-up images of the building stitched together. If you look closely, you can see some imperfections in the stitch job, but when pieced together, I thought they created a really strong visual effect and mood.

On one of my first weekends in Boston, and as a surprise, my sister and brother-in-law drove me to a spot where you can photograph the Zakim Bridge from underneath. For those not familiar with Boston, this is a pretty incredible vantage point considering that only about 50 feet above you a span of six-lane highway is holding up thousands of speeding cars. My awareness of this, coupled with the intimate access we had to the bridge, created a real adrenaline rush that made for an exciting couple hours.


One of Boston's greatest assets besides the Sox and the Bruins, is its close proximity to some of the East Coast's most beautiful coastline. Only about a two hour drive to Maine, lies the Portland Head Lighthouse on Cape Elizabeth (pictured above).

In August of 2008, my family vacationed in Wellfleet, Cape Cod. It was my first time on the Cape, and almost every landscape could have been an impressionist painting.

India 2007 (Catching You Up: 7 of 11)

I could write a book about my short month in India. Everything I experienced in India seemed new to me. You know those stories of blind kids who get eye surgeries that enable them to see for the first time? I always wondered what they felt like at the moment that the doctor removes their eye bandages for the first time. How does their brain make sense of the visual overload? Being in India is the closest thing I have had in my life that makes me feel like I can attempt to answer that question.

I went to India during my last year of grad school with a small group of crazy-smart students led by one of the most incredible professors I've ever had the privileged to learn from. We went to study urban sustainability in the cities of Mumbai, Pune, and Bangalore. As globalization continues to transform these cities in India, we saw how this effects the livelihoods of India's massive population.

If I could sum up the people I met in India using only one word, that word is resilient. Life in places like Bangalore are literally changing right before its citizens eyes. Superhighways are constantly under construction, and new IT centers are growing out of farmland. Though millions in India are falling between the cracks of this unsustainable growth, others are resiliently adapting. The gentleman above is a prime example. The building below him and to his right is his home and shop. He has acquired and installed five solar panels that he uses to charge the batteries of auto rickshaws, or taxis (pictured at the bottom left corner of this photograph). The auto rickshaw drivers pay him for this sustainable energy source... his business is booming and he's making a contribution to reduce the air pollution that chokes his city.

The genius business model of the previously mentioned entrepreneur does not stop at auto rickshaws. He has also employed his solar panels to charge solar lanterns for merchants at a local market in Bangalore. You can see the lanterns shining bright in the above photo underneath the tents of this night market.

This photograph is my personal favorite in my library of images. This young boy is of the Katkari tribe in Maharashtra. The Katkari is a small community of ultra-rural dwellers whose livelihood is facing near extinction. They are challenged by a number of factors including the lack of an accessible water supply, an uneducated population, and access to health care. However daunting these challenges, it was clear to me after speaking to these people that they want to maintain their specific Katkari identity.

The photograph of the boy pictured above embodies the will and resilience of his community. His clothes are tattered and he is dirty. Behind him are the basics of his reality: livestock, dirt floors stained with goat urine, and mud walls that bear the emblems of traditional Hinduism. He is literally leaning on his environment. Yet, his face and his posture demand respect from the viewer. He is looking clear-eyed to the horizon with sheer determination. It was as if he wanted to tell me that he has pride. In his right hand he is holding a slingshot.

Thailand & Vietnam 2006 (Catching You Up: 6 of 11)

By the time 2006 came along, I was ready to get my passport out again and shoot internationally. After many domestic excursions, I was convinced that photojournalism was more my style and I wanted to bear witness to people living in countries in the throes of development. I was a graduate student at the time, and my adviser presented me an incredibly generous opportunity to join her in Thailand and Vietnam for a research trip. She was studying labor rights in the fashion and apparel industries, and she needed a trip photographer to photo-document factories and production facilities. Unfortunately for this blog, my university now owns the rights to those images, and therefore I am unable to publish any photographs depicting factory life. Life outside of factories in Thailand and Vietnam however, presented some wonderful opportunities to capture some everyday living in these two culturally rich countries.

I was fascinated by the Buddhism that I witnessed being practiced in Bangkok. I had studied Buddhism in school, but what I was not expecting was the formality and ritualism that permeated the religion. All adult men wore amulets depicting Buddha and every young boy experienced compulsory monastic and military service by adulthood. The contradiction of that duel requirement still sticks with me. Also, for a religion that espoused nonattachment, the structures (both literally and figuratively) built around the Buddhism practiced in Bangkok, were a salient presence in Bangkok. As someone who was raised as a Catholic, the similarities between these two very different religious traditions reinforced a growing belief that globally we are much more alike than we are different.

In Vietnam, I was most stuck by the people living along the Mekong Delta. The delta played a critical role in the Vietnam War, and while on a boat trip up the river, I could not help but reflect on the randomness of history and circumstance. Had I been born 25-30 years earlier, I would not have been a 20something tourist on a tourist boat pointing a camera, I'd have been a 20something US soldier on a swift boat, pointing a gun.

It is amazing how much things can change in 30 years. Life along the Mekong River in 2006 was peaceful, quiet, and simple. Families ran small eateries, sold bottled snake wine and honey, and catered to tourists like me for income. At one stop, I met this young girl lazily rocking in a hammock. Unlike the kids in South Africa, she was extremely shy and barely gave me an opportunity to get a clear glimpse of her face. Next to her, her brothers played cards, mimicking old men with bluffing facial expressions and overconfident betting gestures. Though rough and basic, the childhood for these kids seems all too normal.

When not on a boat in the river, the bicycle is the preferred mode of transportation along the Mekong. The above photo is one of those truly lucky moments when your timing behind the viewfinder is spot on. The fact that this woman looked my way was icing on the cake.

Laura (Catching You Up: 5 of 11)

My girlfriend of nearly three years, Laura, deserves her own post for a few reasons. So I don't gush, I'll limit them to three. First, she's beautiful and photographers appreciate beauty. Secondly, she's the creative mind behind The Viewfinder's sweet header design found at the top of this blog. She's an amazing graphic and web designer, and her site can be found here. Thirdly (and most importantly) she is someone who completely believes in my photography, and for that, I am entirely grateful. No matter what crazy or 'pie in the sky' photography scheme I'm concocting, Laura looks at me seriously and believes that I can do it. I think when you boil it down to one thing, love is really about believing in the other person, and that's what Laura does. In fact, we launched The Viewfinder from her kitchen table over coffee on a Saturday morning.

Cross Country 2005 (Catching You Up: 4 of 11)

I'm a sucker for a few clichés associated with the American experience. Driving cross country is one of them. After I graduated from college, my good friend, Sam Foy, and I took off in her Honda CRV... California-bound. We survived a flash-flood in South Dakota; a cooking mishap in Redwood National Park; the odometer rollover of 100K miles in Denver; and my growing of a very sketchy mustache in Oregon that finally got shaved 24 long hours later in a poorly lit latrine in a campsite in California. Throughout all our adventure and misadventures, my new Canon DSLR was there documenting our days, and teaching me more about the composition, lighting, and landscapes.

The above photograph is a stretch of road in Yellowstone National Park approximately an hour after sunrise. To our right (out of view) was a huge herd of bison.

For most of our drive down Oregon's Coastal Highway, we were wrapped in a thick blanket of fog. For a few hours during our last 20 miles in Oregon, the sun cleared and we got our first true glimpse at the vast Pacific. The light that day was legendary. On the shore below a lone woman flew a kite.

Bryce Canyon looked completely fabricated, almost like a realist painter's depiction of the real thing. The color was as if some giant paintbrush slathered the rock formations (hoodoos) with paprika. We were only in Bryce for a day and a half, and I don't remember enough about how this place came to be (it has something to do with frost-wedging and a long, long duration of time). What I do remember after seeing a place like Bryce is how absolutely lucky I felt to be able to call this diverse and beautiful country my home.

The Franks 2004 - present (Catching You Up: 3 of 11)

This blog post is a shout out to two architectural inspirations, Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry. To me, these two men are the yin and yang of building design... but together, they make for a photography field day. While Wright created structures that found perfect balance with their surroundings, Gehry's edifices stick out from their environments as if they were artifacts from another time and culture.

The above photo is the renowned Falling Water. This home is not far from my home in western Pennsylvania and it made for a great day trip during a visit to my parents. This photo, like every other postcard of Falling Water, does not scratch the surface of its genius. The home, with it cantilever brilliance, is tucked precisely in a lush valley and precariously over a waterfall. It still blows my mind how something as unnatural as a building can look so right for its environment.

The Guggenheim on Museum Mile in NYC was my first in-person exposure to Frank Lloyd Wright. What strikes me most about the Guggenheim is it completely contradicts almost every other FLW design... it does not fit in with its surroundings. Its top protrudes onto 5th Avenue and from blocks away, you can feel the arrogance of its design. If Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry were a Ven diagram, this building would be where the two Frank circles overlap.

I found Frank Gehry by accident on my cross country trip in 2005 (next post). I was in Chicago and my friend Sam and I stumbled upon Millennium Park and Gehry's amphitheater. About two weeks later, a Frank Gehry building met us in Seattle under the Space Needle. Having never seen a Gehry creation before the trip, the moment I saw the Experience Music Project, I knew it was his.

I live about a quarter mile from MIT and Gehry's Stata Center. Though it has found itself in the midst of some legal battles over the malfunctions associated with its auspicious design, this structure is still as visionary as it is controversial. Each viewing angle of the Stata Center reveals a completely different building that could alone stand as a singular contribution to the world of architecture. From the front (above), windows bulge like random Jenga blocks, while the back resembles something out of Dr. Seuss' Whoville.