An ongoing scroll of some images from assignments and projects. Regularly posting from my iPhone on Instagram at @chenpamela, also periodically for @natgeo.
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A migrant worker family in Shanghai supplements their wages selling popcorn on the streets every evening, knocking open a heated pressurized vessel filled with rice and corn kernels as a customer braces for the explosion. (POYi 64 Magazine Feature Picture, second place)
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Wilderness scientists practice survival skills and living off the land in the forests on Lake Champlain, Vermont, including the complete skinning of a bobcat with a knife made from a piece of obsidian rock. The bobcat had been struck and killed by traffic on the nearby highway.
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A father and son enjoy a newly constructed public park in Beijing near one of the remaining hutong communities near the city center.
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A bride serves tea at her own wedding as she meets her new husband’s family for the first time in Tainan, Taiwan. The marriage was arranged by a local fortune teller.
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A betel nut girl brings in a fresh batch to sell from her booth on an expressway in Nantou, Taiwan. The betel nut is the second largest crop produced in Taiwan (after rice) and contains a natural stimulant popular with truck drivers on long journeys.
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A drug user waits for local outreach workers who visit the slums outside Phnom Penh, Cambodia, every week to distribute basic medical supplies and promote harm reduction.
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If we are about to lose our balance, maybe it is better to jump than fall. (China)
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Maybe running away from the truth only finds you alone with it in a faraway place. (China)
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Do you know how fish breathe? “No.”
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A cold sunrise reveals the lake monster’s breath. (Sunrise on the lake at Shelburne Farms, a national historic landmark in Vermont.)
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Xie Xianglong, 99, and his wife eat lunch in the same house they have been living in since they were married in 1943, nestled in the remote mountains in Jiangxi province, China. The mountains here are hailed as the birthplace of the Red Army. Xianglong met the future Chairman when he was 13 years old. ...
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Things that transcend time, place and language: music, monks, the World Cup… (A monk walks through a neighborhood outside of Phnom Penh, Cambodia.)
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Runners barefoot sprint through black mud against sheet metal as the stench of the open sewage rises. “Who lives here?”, I ask him. “Those without a choice,” he replies. (along the tracks)
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The most life-like strokes of a subtle portrait come from the eyes. In the drawing of dragons, it must not be done, lest they fly away from the wall into the sky. (Chinese proverb)
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“Gravity doesn’t go upwards suddenly every Tuesday.” -Eric Maierson February 22, 2008. (Flamingo)
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You find me in the latest crowd of strangers. (forest)
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Don’t look back but for all we ever loved. Look ahead, but for all we will fear. Today’s cravings are but sun-drenched dreams submersed in logic and buoyed by a hope. (Catalonia)
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“To a frog at the bottom of a well, the world is just a blue circle.” Six days and a thousand stories ago, was someone else. Dive deep, but breathe the sky. (Missouri)
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The convenience store clerk studies my American friend guessing gum flavors in their Chinese packages. She waves me over, “Hello. Convince me of something. Convince me why it’s worth going to America, when I can find everything here in Shanghai.” I say, “In America, you can live life going entire days without seeing another person.” ...
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A flour-capped mountain of wet dough is the day’s hourglass: when the dough is gone, the day ends. The noodle maker digs a deep fistful then beats and weaves thick goo into taut threads, from whence my noodle bowl lunch emerges in eleven minutes. “How can you make a living today?” he shakes his head, ...
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A cab driver tells me that he only ever drives when he works. “Frankly, if you don’t see something interesting walking six blocks in your own town, I question your fascination with life,” he says, “What you see going 35 miles per hour is not what you see going five.” “I call architecture frozen music.” ...
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New friends around every corner. (China)
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Smile because we lived, and that we part only to meet again. (goodbye)
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If I were riding my bicycle through the village at daybreak on a frigid September morning, wouldn’t I stop to hear a live opera performance at a noodle stand, too? (Neighbors gather in the early morning to watch or participate in an open air opera practice, central Shanxi province, China.)
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A perfect day. “Love itself is what is left over, when being in love has burned away.” -from the ceremony reading (congrats, Jody and Tom!)
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Learn to love a thing together and become connected by something timeless. “…written polyphonically, meaning that the characters, places, and themes that thread their way through its pages might reappear several times, in different years and contexts.” -Ryszard Kapuscinski (Summer dreams, Riverside Park)
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A wish fulfilled in sleep. “Did anyone ever have a boring dream?” -Ralph Hodgson (overcast day)
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“Pam relies on the good humor of the universe to get from point A to B” -overheard in the office.
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“You don’t have a TV? You must be an artist or something. People who don’t have TV’s are very interesting people. They gotta be! They can’t rely on their TV to make their life interesting. They are inherently interesting.” -Lynette, operator #1871, Time Warner Cable Customer Service “Like dew on the tip of a leaf..” ...
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Reverting to default factory settings. (Portsmouth, VA)
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How can we measure the length of a life? “So let us look upon that clock on the wall, not as measuring minutes, but rather heartbeats of the creature watching it. It turns out that all animals live for roughly a billion heartbeats.” -John Lienhard (Leica yawns, Bushwick)
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On the List of Things To Learn Soon, Added #45: How to Whistle, #46: How to Climb a Rope, and #47: How to Throw Something with Accuracy. (old Yankee Stadium)
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“Just poured a cup of black tea with honey. It’s so cold the honey hardly ran out of the bottle and the tea is some kind of free organic promotion. The package said that ‘Each cup tells a thousand stories’. Who the hell comes up with these stupid things? Everyone knows a cup of tea ...
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A traffic conductor strides into oncoming traffic. Two unmarked cars blow past him and fishtail stop, dramatically forming a barrier. In the same fluid momentum, one car door swings open and a man hits the ground sprinting. Mid-stride he intercepts a flying rubber cable hurtled halfway down the block by someone appeared on the curbside. ...
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Half past dawn. An Upper West Side mom pulling a pink-leashed Yorkie and pushing a stroller-saddled toddler approaches me on the curb. Suddenly the dog darts across the sidewalk, a flash of hot pink turns tripwire and I stumble just as toddler begins yodeling. Mom shouts, “TINA!” and it was impossible to tell whether Tina ...
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Mobile Phone Transcript: pc: I’m out of the subway! Which way do I walk? tk: Do you see this plane flying overhead? pc: No, but I can hear it. tk: Wait for the plane to fly overhead. <plane flies overhead> pc: OK I see it. tk: Walk in the opposite direction the plane’s going until ...
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One autumn night in upstate New York, we all made a fire and discussed superpowers. “Can I tell you something I have never told anyone?” asked the fire-tender, “I was very young at the time. When I shook my head, my ears would ring a little, and I believed this was the start of becoming ...
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Flight home was made possible by my dear sister who, upon being abruptly shaken from peaceful Saturday morning slumber, raced from the upper west side to JFK to deliver the entire contents of my forgotten wallet.Born Year of the Industrious Ox, meet Born Year of the Careless Pig. “Moo may represent an idea, but only ...
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In the exit row, a friendly young liver surgeon from New Zealand confirms my dreams: Middle Earth does indeed resemble The South Island. I confirm that some photojournalists shoot weddings on the side, and he nods knowingly. “I am a liver specialist. But on the side,” he muses, “I do kidneys.” “They saw the sky ...
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from the travel log: February 5, 2007. Senegal is new and cryptic. The air smells of concrete and sea salt in the early dawn, pickled fish in the evening twilight. There was a man selling trinkets by the shore who introduced himself as Mor Nging. “Yes,” he clarified, “Like the sunrise. Here is my dog. ...
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From the Log of Inexplicable Dreams: We all raced to the green cliff and when we leapt off the edge turned into various seabirds, dived gracefully into the ocean and resurfaced as humans. I think I was a tiny penguin, but you my friends were species most impressive. Wide awake. (a summit in Piatra Neamt)
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I have been informed that it is still football season. Census strategy by Joubert, taxi driver, Coconut Grove, FL: “You can find out just how many New Yorkers live in Miami when the Dolphins play the Jets.” “…Whose brains are in their hands and in their heels…” -Tennyson (Roanoke, VA)
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Watch the moments pass. (Williamsburg)
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I love to leave this place I love returning to. Happy Thanksgiving, (the L train, for ten15am.com)
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Strangers do bond over lighters and doorways. “Love is a smoke made with the fumes of sighs.” -Shakespeare (Soho)
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Strange dreams are a safety valve. (2005 Portsmouth, VA)
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Missing parts. “A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.” -Debussy (Divers prepare to recover submerged ship wreckage off the coast of Dakar, Senegal.)
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Loving the romp through a jumbled tumble of ideas today. “Using words to describe magic is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef” -Tom Robbins (The Bund)
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Joined the proudest queue of strangers and neighbors at dawn today. “Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.” -EB White (125 West 109th St)
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So much change, so little time. (cliff by the lake)
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A day like any other, but a city night through rose-colored glasses. “I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.” -Henry David Thoreau (Fifth Ave after dark)
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Intently searching for the refresh button on the browser window of the soul. (Taichung, Taiwan)
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We saw a thunderstorm at a distance. They were dark storm clouds like a herd on the range, overtaking blue pastures of hazy summer skies. Then glass noodle rain dangling in mid-air, darkened by buffalo clouds, backlit by sunlight sparkle. I think you might have loved to see. (somewhere over the Mid-Southwest)
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Thinking of people who aren’t here. Come back! (Barcelona)
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Happy Monday. If at the end your cheerfulness is not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful. -HG Wells (Vanatori, Romania)
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Loving autumn in New York. (West 35th Street)
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Congrats Katye and Joe! It seems like only yesterday… (2008 Laguna Beach, CA)
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Memories of summer. “October had come in like a lamb chop, breaded in golden crumbs and gently sauteed in a splash of blue oil.” -Tom Robbins (Fire Island, NY)