I learned early on in my travels that thanks to iconic photographs, we oftentimes have a romanticized idea in our heads of a place or thing that is VERY DIFFERENT from what it's like to experience that thing in reality. I showed up to the Sistine Chapel thinking I was going to have some kind of spiritual experience, gazing up at the ceiling. Turns out -- so did like 10,000 other people. Looking up for long periods of time makes me dizzy and hurts my neck, plus, you are basically trying to do this in a mosh pit of other spiritual thrill seekers. Just try to have any sort of meaningful religious experience here. I dare you.

Similarly, have you ever wondered why so many photographs of ancient Greek and Roman temples always look super old, like they're from the 1970s? It's probably because they are. In reality, most of these ruins are now perpetually undergoing some kind of restoration process and are completely covered in some kind of scaffolding. Great.

Or maybe you've shown up to an iconic waterfall thinking you were going to have some kind of transcendental, communal experience with nature, only to find that it's hard to do this when "The Nature" is crawling like an ant pile, overrun with so many tourists and tour busses, you can barely even see it.

So you start to manipulate things.

This is a slippery slope, and I used to have qualms about employing too much manipulation or influence over my surroundings or subjects... but that ship has long since sailed. I would argue that more often than not, in order to capture the true essence of a thing, it is necessary to alter reality. The famous Cliffs of Moher in ireland didn't always have a gift shop, maybe my photograph doesn't have to have one either.

Recently in Morocco, I just straight-up paid a SNAKE CHARMER to let me photograph him. I liked what he was doing, I just wanted him to do it over here, where the light was better. I paid another man to control the crowd and keep people out of my photograph while I got down on the ground with the snake.

Small manipulations.

If I were to win the lottery, I have a long list of places I would pay to revisit -- minus the crowds of people. Crowds are maddening! But when I find I'm getting unbelievably frustrated, because people keep bumbling into my frame and ruining my composition, I remind myself of something someone told me once when I was sitting in LA traffic: it’s ironic to get mad at traffic, Ryan, because if you're in it, you're part of the problem. You are someone else's traffic!

I'm sure there are multiple people on multiple continents who hate me, since the photo they have in their camera is undoubtedly a picture of me, ruining their photograph, while in the process of taking a much better one.

So I am going to leave you with some wisdom. It's the greatest advice I have to give, the best photography hack I know, possibly even a Life Hack. It solves lighting issues, crowd issues, possibly even marital issues! And yet, so many people are unwilling to do this, even though I think you'll find it solves about 99% of all your problems:

Always wake up super goddamn early.

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How this relates to the photo above, is that I ended up loving my shots of this dilapidated and half-finished building at sunrise exponentially more than any of my photos of the crowded PYRAMIDS.

Similarly, this quiet ZEBRA photo wouldn't have been possible at any time other than daybreak, not to mention, it's really nothing without that fantastic, golden morning light.

Getting this shot in the OZARKS, just after sunrise, involved hiking in the cold, damp, darkness. But as the day progresses, so does the mist. It becomes overwhelming and undesirable visually, so you have to get there super early.

Sometimes first thing in the morning, your only friend might be just a solo stray dog, and I love that! I hated the congestion on the trek to EVEREST BASE CAMP that would always happen later in the day. Fellow trekkers are great for morale, but they ruin your shots. Same with the streets of Chefchaoen in Morocco. To get the streets beautifully devoid of people, I'm up at 5:00 A.M., just me and this here pup.

In the photos from MOROCCO above, you can see in the background that even some people living on the streets aren't fully awake yet. Being out and about at odd/early hours, you will invariably encounter a greater number of homeless people than you otherwise might.

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If you'd like to read some of my more technical photography advice, go HERE.

As a VETERAN ALCOHOLIC who's slept in many a bush himself, I am not so naive as to think everyone who's passed out on the street must be a homeless person. However, if you'd care to read my thoughts about destitution and the homeless population (which, sadly, still includes my own brother) go HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE or HERE.

Wow. I write about this a lot, it seems.