17

A few months ago, I spent a week in Cambodia shooting a small reportage piece for an inflight magazine.  Late one afternoon -- as the sun began sliding behind the rooftops -- I finished my assignment and snuck out onto the frenetic streets of Phnom Penh during the golden hour.

As I roamed the buzzing boulevards of the Khmer capital, I came upon a schoolyard.  The property was abandoned, save for a volleyball game being contested by half-a-dozen young men over in the corner of the field, and a young girl playing by herself on a statue of a small horse near the playground.  I watched her from afar, then slowly approached with my camera.

She smiled; I smiled.  She continued playing; I started shooting.  This is the series that I captured in those few seconds.

As I look back at this quadtych, as well as review a lot of my recent commissioned and personal work from the past year or so, I am seeing a pattern emerging in my lighting/compositional technique: I often shoot straight into the sun.  I really like the softness of the subject created by the sun's flare; it's this ethereal, nostalgic effect that moves me to keep practicing and working with this photographic style.