25 years of (my) travel and photography

Part one: 2000-2004

2025 marks, for me, 25 years of international travel focussed on photography. I’d traveled internationally prior to the year 2000, but it was purely recreational. I had a full time job through 1996 (with typically minimal vacation time awarded) and an extended journey was rarely something we could do. By the time I went freelance in 1997 I was traveling extensively – domestically – to build a stock photo library. I first specialized in my home state of Kansas and built a very complete image library of its landscapes, small towns and attractions. Then I expanded into Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and eventually the Great Lakes states and much of the west.

Starting in 2000, I began crossing international borders to gather imagery. Now, 25 years later, I thought I’d do a short series on some of the places I rambled during that time. This may only be of interest to me, but hopefully you can glean some enjoyment out of my nostalgic romp through the last 25 years. It has been fun for me going back through little-seen images from many of these trips.

I mark 2025 as a shift in eras for me. The pandemic shut down my international travel entirely for a couple of years and now, in 2025, I finally feel like I’m getting back to a stronger travel schedule again. More on that later. First let’s look back at how I got here.

2000

A road trip to Banff, Canada, west to Vancouver and Vancouver Island. These first couple of years were still “film years” and I believe I was shooting with an Olympus OM4T. I switched to Nikon and and F100 around that time, but I think it was still the Olympus and transparency film on this trip. The image below is from Fisgard Lighthouse National Historic Site on Fisgard Island at the mouth of Esquimalt Harbour in Colwood, British Columbia.

Countries visited in 2000:

Canada (Banff, Vancouver, Saturna Island, Vancouver Island, etc.)

Gear at that time:

Olympus OM4T (film SLR)

2001

I had no international travel in 2001 but was busy continuing to document Nebraska and the Great Lakes states. I spent a lot of time in Michigan around this time. The shot below is the Mackinac Bridge that connects Michigan’s upper and lower peninsulas. This particular image has sold well over the years and continues to sell to this day. I’m amazed at how many of my old film images still sell through the stock libraries.

I believe this was also the year I licensed my first digital image. I had a request for a photo of a neighborhood just blocks away from my then house. I didn’t have what they needed in my files, but ran down the street with my new Nikon 990 digital and snapped the shot — selling it moments later. Welcome to digital photography!

Countries visited in 2001:

Domestic travel only

Gear at that time:

Nikon F100 (film SLR)

2002

2002 marked my last year to travel internationally with film. That was a trip to Ireland and it was getting so much more challenging to get film through airport security without it being x-rayed that I gladly went all digital to the Yucatan in Mexico later that year.

Mexico was not specifically a photography trip so I didn’t mind having only a small swivel-body point-and-shoot with me. I think it was only 3 megapixels but the images held up fairly well. I later converted that body to infrared (something I would NOT recommend doing yourself, but I was full of youth and it worked out okay).

Countries visited in 2002:

Ireland and Northern Ireland
Mexico (Yucatan Peninsula)

Gear at that time:

Nikon F100 (Ireland)
Nikon 990 digital (Mexico)

2003

My first international trip with a digital SLR was to Greece, starting in Athens and then cruising the islands of Patmos, Mykonos, Santorini, Crete and Rhodes. There was also a brief stop in Kusadasi, Turkey, to visit the ancient site of Ephesus.

Countries visited in 2003:

Greece and Greek Islands
Turkey (Kusadasi & Ephesus only)

Gear at that time:

Nikon D100

2004

Another long drive in 2004 took us to Portland, Maine, where we caught the overnight ferry to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. We drove the long way back home through Nova Scotia and down the St. Lawrence through Quebec and Toronto. We were driving our brand new 2004 Honda Accord that I’m still driving today with over 200,000 miles on it. I no longer have the Nikon D100 that accompanied me on that trip, however. It was a great introduction to DSLRs, though, and made me a lot of good images. The files hold up well when I revisit them now in Lightroom.

Later in the year I attended my first SATW (Society of American Travel Writers) Convention in St. Moriz, Switzerland. After a gondola ride up a mountain, a brief overnight and a pre-sunrise hike higher up in the Alps we shot a magnificent sunrise. After hiking back down we found the gondola out of order so a rescue helicopter was sent up to fly us down two-by-two. That flight proved to be the highlight of the trip for me.

Countries visited in 2004:

Canada (Nova Scotia, Quebec)
Switzerland

Gear at that time:

Nikon D100
Canon PowerShot SD110
(if you asked me if I had ever owned a Canon, I’d have said no, but apparently I did)

Up next: 2005-2009

Once all of this series of posts is on the site I’ll add links here to the other years for easy navigation.