Far and Away Gallery

Eye-catching images taken overseas by art photographer Scott Takeda.

  • Before Reality-TV invaded the TV landscape, I had my own 'Survivo'r experience on Koh Chang (Chang Island). It sits on the coastal border between Thailand and Burma. You’ll only find it on a map if you look very hard. At peak season, this tiny, secluded island houses two native families and 20 visitors in two rustic shelters. You virtually need an invitation to go there. Once there, however, I saw it was a paradise lost with island behavior typical to cutthroat, Reality-TV: visitor infighting and suspicion. (The only thing missing was a tribal council to vote people off.) I took this photo on the day before I left. The strangely peaceful setting shows two sisters playing beach volleyball against their Dad and a visitor. A rumbling storm is building overseas – foreshadowing my abrupt departure from so-called paradise.
  • When people tell me to go to my "Happy Place," I think of Siem Reap, Cambodia. The people were the happiest I’d ever met. On every street corner, people were laughing and playing. The rivers were full of butt-naked kids swimming joyously. Grown men played hacky-sack on the sidewalks. And I was greeted by smiling people everywhere. It wasn’t always happy or peaceful. The people are only a few years removed from a civil war that ravaged the country. And in the 70's, the Khmer Rouge tried to systematically "cleanse" this country, creating an Asian Holocaust. Those two events erased two million people – an entire generation. This woman’s face demonstrates the history of this proud country. I see creases caused by pain and loss as well as a relaxed contentment of knowing she can calmly walk to and from market at sunset with food for her giggling grandchildren.
  • Everyday at the Tsukiji Fish Market, fish buyers walk around rows of 600 pound sushi-grade tuna. The market is the biggest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world. I walked around it for hours and saw nothing but fresh fish in rows upon rows of football field-sized warehouses. Shown are the latest hauls from fishermen who head out to sea for weeks to catch tuna. They flash freeze them upon capture and house them in the ship hull until bringing them to market. The buyers bid on each fish based on the quality of the meat – shown by the open slice near the tail. After their purchase, the fish is flown to the best sushi restaurants around the world and usually served within 24 hours of purchase.
  • I’ve always liked this image. I took it on Thanksgiving Day 2001 during a short excursion to the Taranga Village that surrounded our Habitat for Humanity build in Surkhet, Nepal. The village farmers were harvesting their rice – often carrying it on their heads to a nearby mill. In this snapshot, you can see rice fields in all stages of harvest. (growing, cutting, drying, transporting). Later in the day, we cooked a traditional Thanksgiving meal (substituting chicken for turkey) for all of the villagers who took us in for our month-long stay.
  • Several hundred meters below Sydney, Australia lies its smooth-running City Rail subway system. Sometimes, the only way to get to the trains is by escalators, which seem to stretch forever and beyond. While heading home to my guesthouse at King Crossing, this guy whipped past me and the lady in front. By instinct, I pressed the shutter, and you can see the resulting image. It was past midnight at the time, so his frantic rush disturbed what was actually a rather monotonous ride. I have no idea where he was headed, and by the time I got to the top of the long escalator, he was gone...leaving a nearly abandoned tube stop.
  • On the northeastern edge of downtown (Altstadt) Munich lies the amazing English Gardens. It is a green oasis from Munich’s frenetic streets, stretching from the center of town up north along the Isee River. It’s the largest park in the world (longer than 4.5 miles) – with beer gardens, restaurants, pastures of wildflowers, and lakes. It even has rushing rivers full of surfers and kayakers for those who really need to get away. I discovered this mother and daughter during a rainy bike ride through the park. Had the day been sunny, like the forecasters were predicting, the resulting high-contrast light would have overwhelmed a delicate image like this. However the overcast skies provided the perfect subtle lighting to capture this snippet of urban life in Munich.
  • This is what morning rush hour looks like in Surkhet, Nepal. Workers walk to town amidst a thick haze created by the wood stoves used to heat the houses and cook the food. Some of them stand by the road waiting for the bus to pick them up. Every morning, our clothes smelled of smoke from the haze.

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