“A good photograph
is knowing where to stand.”
— Ansel Adams
Over 2,000 natural sandstone arches give this U.S. National Park in Utah the highest density of natural arches in the world.
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Icon of India, the “Crown Palace” is a jewel of Muslim art and one of the New7Wonders of the World. Built 1632–53, the Taj Mahal is an ivory-white marble mausoleum in Agra, India.
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The Golden Pavilion — lined with real gold — graces this Shinto shrine in Kyoto, Japan.
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Thousands of red torii gates cover a two-mile-long path at this Shinto shrine in Kyoto, Japan.
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Alaska offers photographers glaciers, brown bears and gold-rush era towns. There are eight national parks and the tallest land-based mountain on Earth, Denali.
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The Statue of Liberty is the icon of New York and of freedom.
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The capital of Greece, Athens and one of the world’s oldest cities, Athens allows you to photograph the home of Western civilization, particularly the Acropolis hill and its Parthenon temple.
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Berlin, home of the Brandenburg Gate and Reichstag building, is the capital and the largest city of Germany.
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Into Phang Nga Bay I ventured, on a boat trip past magnificent limestone cliffs. We saw a cave and some outcrops, and the towering walls came closer. It felt like another movie I loved, The Land That Time Forgot (1975). Perhaps there were long-lost dinosaurs behind the vegetation.
The boat entered the mouth of a small bay and I glimpsed the pinnacle of my trip and imagaination. Improbably jutting out from the center of the bay was a 66-foot tall (20 m) limestone tower known as Ko Ta Pu.
Cruising past the rocky column, we headed toward a curving, sandy beach. The spectacular scenery truly could have been the lair of a Bond villain. Then, just like James Bond, I landed on Scaramanga’s island.
I was in the most faraway and exotic place I knew of; a dream since childhood. The one thing I had to do, and wanted to do, was to capture the spirit of adventure with the one thing I could remember this by: a photo.
And here’s the shot that I traveled around the world to get.
The most visited unit of the National Park System, the Blue Ridge Parkway is a scenic mountain road running 469 miles along the Blue Ridge Mountains through Virginia and North Carolina.
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I landed in Phuket, Thailand. I knew the beach was around here somewhere, but where? I looked in local books. No. Postcards? No. Finally I found it, in a tour brochure: Phang Nga Bay.
The most photographed bridge in the world is the icon of San Francisco, USA.
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One of the most remote inhabited islands in the world, Easter Island is famous for its 887 iconic monumental human statues, called moai. Carved by the Rapa Nui people between the years 1250 and 1500, these distinctive monoliths surround the island and feature stylized faces.
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While waiting for a visa at the Indian Embassy in Singapore, I researched my next destination, and the inspiration for the trip: James Bond Island.
In the 1974 movie “The Man with the Golden Gun”, James Bond duels with Francisco Scaramanga, the famed assassin who uses a golden gun.
As a child in England, this beach was the most exotic and faraway place I’d ever seen, and I had always wanted to go there.
But none of the guidebooks I had showed the beach, or even mentioned it. Even my trusty Lonely Planet Southeast Asia on a Shoestring.
I thought, “what you really need is a Lonely Planet book but with pictures instead of text, so you can flick through, find the view, and get a map to the location. It could be called “PhotoSecrets”.
Aalborg is a Danish city famous for its half-timbered mansions and Viking history.
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Abruzzo in Italy is known as “the greenest region in Europe” as one third of its territory, the largest in Europe, is set aside as three national parks and 38 protected nature reserves.
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Abu Dhabi is the capital and the second most populous city of the United Arab Emirates. Planned in 1967, the city has large hotels and modern architecture, notably the Sheikh Zayed Mosque.
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July 24: 24 years ago today, I was in Bali on a round-the-world trip. Here I am helping in the rice fields.
A week earlier, I departed LAX (July 16), seen off by then-girlfriend and now-wife and business partner, Jennie. Gee, my hair had color then, and Jennie hasn’t aged since.
Making friends in China (July 19).
Created in 1759, Kew Gardens comprises 121 hectares of gardens and botanical glasshouses in outer London.
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Henry VIII’s pleasure palace, dating from 1515, lies 13 miles southwest of central London. This photo guide contains:
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24 years ago this week, PhotoSecrets was inspired by the pursuit of this iconic image from a James Bond movie. The next few blog posts will tell the story, as it happened day-by-day.