A brief break in the midst of a long and volatile cyclone season at Aitutaki Lagoon, Cook Islands, Polynesia.

Clear shallow tidal waters and an emerald-green lagoon extend to white breaking waves on a coral reef fringe in the distant horizon as another cyclone system brews overhead.

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Returning the photographer's gaze - sometimes with a proud and knowing smile, an indignant look of resistance and mimicry, or a long studied stare as the observer becomes the observed. The gaze is returned, the observer othered. Subject owns the gaze for a frozen moment.

Young Tsemai woman with tattooed facial markings at the weekly market in Key Afer, a small multi-ethnic frontier town in the remote lower Omo Valley of southwestern Ethiopia. Shot near the end of a long hot dry season regularly exceeding 40°C in the shade.

The Tsemai are one of the least known ethnic groups in the valley, numbering around 5000 people concentrated in settlements along the west bank of Weito River.

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Peoples of the Omo Valley

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Sambeke, a proud Maasai herder (warrior age-set), comes from a small pastoral settlement nestled in the Kenyan foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro (near Amboseli National Park, Rift Valley Province).

He travels each year to the island of Lamu off Keyna’s Swahili Coast to work as a security guard. The money he earns goes towards the upkeep of his family and cattle back in the homeland.

Elegently adorned with glass-beaded collars and stretched earlobes with glass-beaded sleeves.

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A late autumn sun sets behind the towering red-granite pinnacles and phantasmagoric rock formations of Les Calanques on Corsica's rugged west coast. A dramatic red shadow is cast over the craggy granite staircase leading to the ancient Genoese Tour de Porto.

The 16th-century watchtower stands guard at the entrance to the Gulf of Porto - one of 85 towers built around the island in the same period. The series of towers served as part of an elaborate coastal defence system constructed by the merchant state of Genoa when it was a dominant power in the Mediterranean.

A classic Corsican vista. Took nearly three months to catch the setting sun at this exact position under a clear autumn sky. High-resolution Noritsu Koki QSS-31 digital slide scan, shot with an Asahi Pentax Spotmatic (SMC Pentax Zoom 45~125mm f/4). explore#144

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Twilight under the mountain wall

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