(This blog post first apeared on December 21, 2011)

My decision to seriously pursue fine art photography gave a sense of purpose to my photography. Considering that I was compelled to make photographs, having this purpose focused my creative effort and ambition. Furthermore, at about the same time that I committed to the pursuit of fine art photography, I also experienced an increased opportunity to travel both domestically and internationally. For this I feel truly fortunate. Because photography, it turns out, gave an added purpose to my travels.

It is difficult for me to imagine a more fertile creative influence for photography than the emotions associated with finding myself in an unfamiliar culture in the midst of a city surrounded by natural wonders where I was in the minority and did not speak the language. Everything from social and political influences, to the architecture and art inspired by the national park-like landscapes, to the economic conditions of ordinary people in the cities and the countryside was outside of my previous personal experience. I found myself both moved and inspired by the emotions associated with these experiences.

To a large degree it is the emotions associated with travel that motives me to continue to seek out travel experiences on regular basis. Whether domestic or international, travel always carries with it the sense that this is a place to which I may never return. Were this to be true, what visual images of the place can I capture that may convey some essence of the emotions associated with the experience of being there? This is a question that, for me, spurs a creative photographic process.

My photograph, Rainy Day, Li River, was made in 2006 and processed in 2010. I was in the thick of the kind of emotions that I associate with travel when I made the photograph. This was an early international travel experience for me. I was half-way around the world on the top of a boat on a dark and rainy day floating past enclaves of peasants, accompanied by their water buffalo and pet dogs, hanging out on sandbars under makeshift shelters of tarps and umbrellas waiting for the rain to pass. It was then that I made this photograph.

Tell us about your emotions associated with travel. Beyond that, if you find that travel inspires a creative process that influences your production of artwork, please share the experience with us.

The photograph that accompanies this blog post was selected by juror Sandra Chen Weinstein for the on-line gallery annex exhibition and publication by the PhotoPlace Gallery in Middlebury, Vermont, for the book On the Road: Travel Photography (January, 2012). Sandra Chen Weinstein is an award winning travel photographer who has curated Magnum photographers in international photography exhibitions in Asia.