These two series of photos are available for publication as
essays with captions or to illustrate the texts of articles.

Please contact Dennis Cox for high res files
if you would like to publish either of them.

All Photos © Dennis Cox / WorldViews, All Rights Reserved

The Universal Selfie

....This first series of photos asks some questions and pokes some fun at a cultural practice that baffles and confuses many people, but I think many will find it of much interest, ..... even those who disdain it. > Is making a "selfie" a universal phenomenon? As evidence that it is, I traveled to six continents to document the universal appeal of the self-portrait experience. > It appears that men and women of all ages, friends and families, people from various diverse ethnic groups, are all making selfies. It is not just a narcissistic practice isolated to teen girls as some imagine. > Portraits made while traveling, either self-made or taken by others, probably began with the "Kodak moment," the making of a picture documenting someone at a place and time to be preserved and not forgotten. Later, when digital imaging replaced photographing with film and cameras were included in every cell phone, the moments for a self-portrait experience grew exponentially. > How vast is universal? From the roof of Europe, across the equator to the plains of Africa, to the tip of South America, the Far East and Down Under, in canals large and Grand, with backgrounds carved by nature and by those carved by ancient and modern man, these photos demonstrate the widespread selfie appeal. > Either with a camera held from an outstretched arm or on the end of a stick, the urge to have a photograph one's self, with or without companions, at places significant or trivial, is now seemingly ubiquitous.

Australian couple photographing themselves using a... "selfie stick" with the Twelve Apostles rock formations.. along the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, Australia.......	Young woman uses a "selfie stick" to include Half Dome in her selfie image at Yosemite National Park in California, USA. .........
A girl apparently hiding her older brother's identity during a family selfie photo session in Torres del Paine National Park, Chile..	..A one-child Chinese family recording a selfie with a background of .. spring plum blossoms in the park in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China.
Cruise ship passenger documenting his transit through the Suez Canal in line behind the Queen Mary 2. .	..The Gatun Locks of the Panama Canal is the ..background for this cruise ship passenger's selfie.
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Friends cooperate on a selfie with the Grand Canal as a background from the Rialto Bridge to record their visit to Venice, Italy..	Venice's Rialto Bridge attracts crowds of selfie makers.
Friends at the Parthenon in Athens, Greece, striking a not-too-serious selfie pose..	Dueling selfie sticks at the Parthenon.
..A couple making a romantic night-time selfie on the Spanish Steps in Rome, Italy..	Using the best in selfie equipment, a stylish Chinese couple make a portrait at Mad King Ludwig's Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, Germany...
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..A tourist presumably from the Far East presumably impersonating .. an Arab with his camels at The Treasury of Petra, Jordan...	..Dressed in traditional clothing of the Caucasus Mountains, a couple ..makes a selfie at the Tower of Love, Upper Svaneti, Republic of Georgia.
A young couple aboard a Norwegian Sun cruise around the tip of South America doing a selfie with a glacier in Argentina's Beagle Channel.	Using as a background what passes for a tourist attraction in the town of Port Stanley in The Falklands, A family makes their we-were-there-Brit-phone-box-visit selfie.
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.Taking a break from serious wildlife photography to photograph themeselves, ...a couple on safari do a selfie in the southern Serengeti, Tanzania...	Young men from the United Arab Emirates doing a selfie during their rafting excursion at Thailand's James Bond Island.
Getting a giant tortoise to pose for a selfie was quite an accomplishment for this tourist in Zanzibar, Tanzania....	..This monkey at Monkey Beach on the island of Phi Pho Don in Thailand seems .. more interested in the photographer than the camera during this selfie session.

Ugandan tourists having fun with their selfie at the Equator.	A tour guide during a boating excursion on Uganda's Lake Bunyonyi .. makes certain he's looking good for this selfie.
Yes, there is an element of narcississm as well as fun in making a selfie with friends, as this group demonstrates in Zanzibar, Tanzania....	..Doing a selfie of one's self on the beach in Zanzibar is probably .. just an act of narcissism.

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Seeing Red in Black & White

In traditional Chinese landscape painting, there is a principle to include "a spark of red in a sea of green." During the Cultural Revolution in the 60s and 70s this often meant the inclusion of a revolutionary carrying a red flag somewhere in the landscape. Since I often look for reds and yellows as a focal point in my photos, I have been known to go to the extreme occasionally when setting up a shot (known as "photo illustration" as opposed to pure travel photojournalism). Once I went all out by paying $50 for a red sail to be made for a boat to be floating in the background of portraits of cormorant fishermen on China's Li River (some wearing photographer-supplied red t-shirts). That one came back to haunt me when that red sail, which had never been seen previously on that river, began appearing in the photos of photographers worldwide. A couple of years ago I discovered that one of the special Picture Effects settings included in my Sony camera was for creating black and white images where a single color would be retained in the photograph. Of course this awakened me to being cognizant of opportunities where red could not only be the focal point in my image, but the subject of it. The first opportunity I came upon was at a gas station in a remote area of Armenia. A rusting old Russian sedan and a gas sign, both with red that set them off against a plain colorless background. Later the Aussie Santas in their traditional red suits caused me to become cognizant of more ubiquitous red subjects such as military band unforms, the clothing of the Maasai, Coca-Cola advertising, spiral designs on poles, hearts, the Union Jack, and those iconic British phone boxes which I had encountered in London, outposts of the Commonwealth such as Gibraltar, and most recently, in Port Stanley in The Falklands. The only set-up photo here (AKA photo illustration) is the tango dancing couple in Buenos Aires. I knew that there would be plenty of red to be found in the famous La Boca neighborhood. Graphic patches of red were on walls everywhere. I just needed an iconic subjet, like tango dancers of course. When a couple offered to pose for me, for a negotiated modeling fee, I made sure they both sported enough suitable red attire by having the man switch his black hat for one in red. We all then moved to a wall where I could position the couple at an intersection where two red areas balanced and complemented the reds of the woman's dress and the man's tie and hat. --Dennis Cox