A Road Less Travelled

The First-Born ceremony is still practiced with great pride in Palau. New mothers undertake a private cleansing ceremony after giving birth, then emerge to an audience of family and friends in a traditional grass skirt, covered in ginger and oils – yellow from the Turmeric that has been painted over their bodies. In one hand they carry a single leaf to symbolise the cleansing process. One arm deliberately cups the breasts which are large and full of milk, giving prominence to the mother’s nurturing power.

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This is an amazing experience; snorkelling through a lake teeming with jellyfish – harmless, thanks to a rare combination of environmental and evolutionary circumstances.

Swimming in Palau’s Jelly fish Lake begins when your boat is parked on the edge of an island and you wander up and over the steep volcanic slope that separates the lagoon from the lake. After a 200 metre paddle, you’re drifting through a wonder world of jellyfish – millions of them – gently jostling and shunting each other aside as they glide in the direction of the sun’s trajectory to complete their daily migratory pattern. Its a surreal experience, a cross between something you’d see in the movie Avatar and being immersed in one of David Attenborough’s nature documentaries, only you can feel the jellyfish roll off your body and see them sliding off to one side of your face mask as you move through the water. When you dive down and turn upwards, you can see the sunlight shining through a constellation of golden orbs, so thick you can barely see the sky.

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It’s with theme in mind that I’m now wandering the 15 South Pacific and Micronesian countries looking to capture – among the thousands of tourism images I’ll shoot for the project – at least one image per destination which will become part of the Sensual Islands Exhibition I’ll mount to promote the beauty of island culture. Hopefully, the exhibition itself will go some way towards promoting the countries I’m photographing.

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Again its been a productive assignment. Despite the erratic weather, we did manage to balance the overcast weather shots (waterfalls and people etc) with the sunny shots (scenery and landmarks etc ) to produce a broad portfolio of promotional images. And we got some nice “people-interracting-with-the-locals-pics” thanks to Ben and Sam. The only shortfall: I wish I got the Manta shot I was chasing (and nearly died for when I vomited into my regulator at 30ft trying to get ahead of three Manta Rays in strong currents) and maybe some paradise island pics which were nearby but I just didn’t get time to shoot.

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By his own admission, Ben is not your regular “model type” but he’d volunteered for the shoot to help out the local tourism office.  An impish-looking, 28 year old Peace Corp worker, he has a slight build, tattoos and thinning hair. When I met him, he had an Al-Queda looking beard going on. “I know...

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