The Spy Who Smelled Like Duty Free

Laos, 2017. A New York Times assignment, a minivan full of backpackers, and the slow realization that I was no longer one of them.

I was 37, wedged into a packed minivan somewhere in Laos, my Domke bag on my lap and my Filson duffle somewhere in the back competing for space with a wall of Osprey megapacks with sandals dangling off them. I spent most of the ride half listening to my late 90s alternative rock and half mentally daring anyone to touch my bag.

The other passengers were backpackers in their twenties — carefree, tanned, and blissfully unaware that the slightly too polished guy sweating next to them was on assignment for the New York Times.

I could taste their sweat. They could probably smell mine, cut with whatever cologne I'd grabbed at duty free at the Bangkok airport from my last assignment. That particular combination — designer fragrance and budget minivan — pretty much sums up where I was in my career at that point. One foot in the gritty photojournalism world that made me, the other foot poolside photographing models for a luxury resort charging $600 a night.

Ten years earlier, I'd have loved every minute of this

The waiting for buses, the packed vans, the uncertainty of it all — that was just how assignment work went and I was thrilled to be doing it. But Laos 2017 was a different version of me. The luxury hotel clients were spoiling me fast and I knew it. I just wasn't ready to admit it out loud yet.

The assignment was to retrace a writer's journey and bring it to life through photographs. I had the printed story shoved in my bag, destined to be destroyed by sweat. I still had my late 90s alternative rock queued up. I had a few thousand dollars worth of cameras and the quiet confidence of someone who had done this exact thing dozens of times before.

I still had the secret. Everyone else on that minivan was on vacation. I was on the job. In my late twenties that felt like power. At 37 it just made me the strange older guy with nice luggage that nobody could quite figure out.

Don Khone

The writer had mentioned a sleepy little island called Don Khone. I rented a motorbike and spent a day or two just riding and shooting, sun up to sun down.

At some point I came across a bridge. Stretched across it, completely unconscious, was a Norwegian backpacker taking a midday nap. The writer had described this place as almost impossibly calm and relaxed. Here was the living proof. I photographed the guy sleeping, moved around him, got low, got close, let the scene breathe.

When he woke up I introduced myself and told him I'd been photographing his nap for the New York Times. He just nodded. Completely unbothered. Exactly as advertised. I jotted his name and details into my Moleskine and moved on.

Further down, a group of kids were throwing themselves into the Mekong River over and over, laughing every time. I started off to the side, quiet, letting them forget I was there. A few minutes later I was lying flat on the dock, camera firing as they ran past me at full speed. That is one of the quiet joys of this job. You get to be part of something you have no right to be part of, and sometimes, if you're lucky, they just let you stay.

The superpowers that actually matter

I was good at this job. Still am. My superpowers have always been work ethic, curiosity, and the ability to make people feel at ease quickly. I'm easy on others and hard on myself. It's a useful combination when your entire job depends on strangers letting you into their lives for a few minutes and knowing when to walk away if you become a nuisance.

No magic trick, no gear, no natural talent. Be patient, be kind, be curious. And when you recognize a scene, stay there and work it. You'll doubt yourself — you always do. But that self-loathing passes a lot faster when you stayed until you got the light, the moment, and the composition right than when you packed up early and left something behind.

Going through the archive

What I sometimes forget is how much I loved the work itself, separate from the travel, separate from the publication, separate from the business of it all. Going through this archive now, I found images I hadn't thought about in years. The Norwegian on the bridge. The kids mid-leap over the Mekong. The light on a temple at six in the morning with no one around.

At 48 I'd still take that assignment. I'd just be slightly more miserable on the minivan. I wouldn't say anything, but my face would tell the whole story. The cologne would be a step up from duty free. Everything else stays exactly the same.

If this resonates with you and you're genuinely committed to improving your photography, my online mentorship program and workshops are built around this exact approach.