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To explore more of Chess' personal and travel photography
you can visit his personal photo gallery.
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I
am an explorer. I am always on the search for ways to
deepen my connection with this life that I am blessed to live. For
me it is primarily about Awareness. If I can stop, look around, and increase my
level of awareness of the abundant beauties and mysteries that
occur in every moment, then I live more richly and in alignment with my core truth, beauty and essence.
Photography allows me to stop, to look around and to pay attention.
I have been organizing
and leading adventure travel programs for over 25 years to
some of the planet's most
inspiring locations
including Nepal, Tibet, the wilderness of Baja, Peru and Africa. My photographic pursuits have taken me to six continents and
more countries than I can remember. But then of course...
"Like
all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember;
and
I remember
more than I have seen."
- Benjamin Disraeli
I do this because what truly inspires and motivates me is to
assist others in becoming more intimate with the lives that they
lead, to help people connect with this luscious world in a way
that deepens their ability to celebrate each and every moment.
When traveling, people will see that I am
typically interacting with my surroundings from behind the camera
and I am often asked if I am not limiting my experience by viewing
it all through the narrow focus of the lens. The truth is that
I am experiencing just the opposite.
When I photograph I am trying
to capture the entire essence or feeling or mood of a place through
one single photograph. This causes me to really examine and
consider all that is happening around and within me. How do
I feel? Why
does this place and situation effect me as it does? How is
it that this wide collection of sights, smells, sounds, interactions
and
character of a place carries with it a certain 'feeling'? As
I explore this on both a cognitive and emotional level, I use my
camera to find and focus in on some small moment that communicates
the whole.
I don't really know just what it is I am looking
for when I create the photograph. My camera is much like a
divining rod - it just takes over and without me hardly thinking
about it, I find that I am composing an image. Ideally it is
an image that conveys a true sense of place and culture and those
are the photographs that I offer here.
All my best,
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"Twenty
years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you
didn't do than by the
ones you did do.
So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch
the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover."
-Mark Twain
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