But I’m not sure which me is me — Isn’t everyone the same? The young, the old, The bought and sold, The shy and bold? At night, all cats are black, The Spanish say, But each of us holds back Our honest thoughts by day. Is it a game we play? Do we know what words to say To be…

Street art: we are what we see — Something there is that doesn’t love a wall: a bare wall. I’ve enjoyed viewing posts on Medium that display graffiti. I am impressed by the universal nature of what has been called the people’s art. Is graffiti art or is it defacement? Don’t many of us abhor an empty wall…

Destination photography tips — Photographers often go for the gold — the golden hours when the sun is rising or setting. As a tourism magazine editor, I received (captured) and rejected countless sunrise and sunset photos. I even posted a story about them here on Medium. …

A six word photo story: freestyle —

A six word photo story: freestyle — Where there’s a will, there’s a…. For years, residents of Barrio Ciénaga, an outlying area of Guánica in southern Puerto Rico, tired of traipsing around a narrow stretch of the bay to get to town. They got together and fashioned a wooden foot bridge — but rising waters kept washing it away. In 1956 the town…

Destination photography tips — One technique for making a photo stand out is to have balance in the frame. This sort of ignores the rule of thirds and some other concepts — but rules are made to be broken, right? By including things that match, like mirror images, magic can be made. It can…

Destination photography tips — Yes, I know. Rules are made to be broken. I am a firm believer in that. But I also believe it’s a good idea to know a rule first. What fun is it to break it if you don’t know it? One of the first things a beginning photographer learns…

Destination photography tips — “You gotta?” Of course you do, even if it is just holding a point and shoot camera up to your eye and snapping a subject. That’s an angle! Problem is it’s the angle most people use. As a Puerto Rico tourism and travel magazine editor and photographer, I often challenged…

A Six Word Photo Story: Freestyle — On the Tagus, ripples of time When I was a graduate student in the Spanish, Italian and Portuguese Department of Penn State University, many eons ago, one of my major papers was on Luís de Camões (1524–1580), Portugal’s greatest poet. His work is as venerated as that of Shakespeare, Vondel, Homer, Virgil and Dante. In Lisbon…