Hi 👋

Friends, Italy was unusually wet, but it wasn’t bad enough to dampen my spirits in Rome, Florence, and Venice.1 Most of my time in Italy was spent working, though at night and on my free time, I found myself doing what I love: drifting alone through the crowds, with a camera, observing. I know writing about the traveler as flâneur is a bit tired these days, but I also can respect the fact that not all travelers enjoy or experience solitary walks in foreign places....

Drifters, I write you a short note from the Eternal City, where the rain — when it falls — is not hard enough to keep me inside. I’m here in Rome leading a study abroad trip with 13 eager students. But when the students set off to do student things on their free time, I slip away into the drizzle with my camera. They want nothing to with an old guy like me anyway....

Have you ever thought about what goes into sequencing a photobook or a zine? As some of you know, I’m in the process of making my own photobook The Hill of the Skull. I’m no expert on photo book sequencing, but I have been thinking about it for the last several months and I would like to share with you some points that I’ve learned along the way. I hope it will help make the process for you easier than it was for me....

Friends, Last month, I all but ignored the narrative section of The Hill of the Skull (which I’ll refer to as THOTS below) and turned my attention to image editing and sequencing. In photobookland, image editing doesn’t refer “image processing” using software like Photoshop and Lightroom. Image editing is the tougher job of selecting images. I came back from the Andes with over five thousand images. Three thousand of those photos were taken in Quillacollo during the time period that corresponds with THOTS....

Drifters, A green tourist bus grumbled and hissed to a stop by a large, white anchor on the shore of Lake Titicaca. A group of travelers — some with unkempt, dreaded hair, khaki hiking boots, and brightly colored backpacks — staggered off the bus and settled into lounge chairs facing the lake. They pulled their coats tightly and summoned a server to provide them with steaming cups of coffee. I, on the other hand, walked north along the lake, passing a row of boats and towards a footpath that would lead me around Copacabana’s sacred mountain: Cerro Calvario....