Our Water World in 30 Travel Photographs

An endangered green turtle rises to the surface for air, while a SCUBA diver descends upon entry into the water
“You’re going the wrong way” An endangered green turtle rises to the surface for air, while a SCUBA diver descends upon entry into the water

The calendar has turned to October, and if the crisp air in New York is any indication, autumn has kicked summer to the curb. I want to say thanks for a very busy September here at The Gentleman Backpacker, where you visited us more than ever before. It’s a nice feeling to see people viewing what we put out. I’d like to encourage you to please leave us comments and ask plenty of questions. I want to help make traveling as enjoyable for you as it is for me. I’ve been busy the past few weeks as some big changes are coming in my life (stay tuned), but I’ve also been swamped with selecting entries for some photography contests. “Water” was the topic of one of these contests, and as broad as that one word is, there are so many meanings. If we take the frozen kind, for example, the Inuit People of the Arctic are famously known to have 50 words for snow. So I took to thinking about water from different perspectives as I sorted through some 30,000 photographs to weed out perhaps 5,000 water photographs, before culling my list down to 30. For the contest, I finally submitted just a handful from that penultimate list of 30, but I thought I would share these with you in the form of a post. I was surprised at just how many different places these photos came from, and they made for a very interesting look at our world. I’ve included a few lines about each photo to describe to you the place and time, and what I felt as I captured the scene. If you had to enter a contest and submit only five photos, which ones would you pick? Please let me know in the comments section below! Please note I worked really hard and traveled to many places at great personal expense to capture these photos. If you want to use one, please contact me at [email protected] and we can discuss the matter. Please don’t just download them for your own commercial use. They are copyrighted and all rights are reserved.

8 thoughts on “Our Water World in 30 Travel Photographs”

    1. Thank you, Natalia. Appreciate it. I know you’ve been to many of these places yourself and many others and take fabulous photos as well, so it means a lot.

  1. Amazing shots. The underwater shots of the fish and turtle that look like they’re glowing are hypnotizing. I particularly like the windsurfers jumping the wave. Great stuff

    1. Thanks, Nick. That shot is pretty much as it was. Those fusiliers (the fish) really stand out in the water with their brilliant colours. I didn’t have my red filter on my go pro when I shot that, so I added that layer after in post-processing and that’s pretty much it.
      Got a lot of votes for the windsurfers. The kite surfers are fun, too. They remind me of gulls in the air. Thanks again.

  2. Here are the ones that really jump out at me (in order of jumpiness, if that is a word):
    1. Blue Lagoons and white sand
    2. Mosi Oa Tunya
    3. Dramatic Entrance
    4. Creation of Life
    5. Abiquiu Waters

    Lots of great shots though, hard to choose, so this list is a visceral one, not a studied one.

    1. I think “jumpiness” is indeed a word. Thank you very much. I like your choices. They’re from all over the map, really, covering the US, Zambia, Argentina, and far northern Brazil.

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