Courtesy of John Stanmeyer

In what will become a multi-month series, I’ll try to demys­tify the expe­ri­ence, shar­ing insight and nuances on how such long-term projects orig­i­nate until the mag­a­zine arrives in your mail slot, start­ing now with a lat­est story I’m about to begin for National Geographic.

I’ve met and befriended John dur­ing his vis­its to Indonesia in recent years, and he has, on many occa­sions, shared some tid­bits and inter­est­ing anec­dotes of his daily pass­ings, intrigued by the nature of the sto­ries, I made a lit­tle sug­ges­tion that he should pub­lish a weblog and write about it.

So he did.

He opens his doors to an oth­er­wise insiders-only details on the often-asked ques­tion of “What is it like shoot­ing for the National Geographic Magazine?”. While dreams can be big and impres­sions, big­ger, like many real things in life, it “is not always what we might think.”, he said.

Go grab a cup of cof­fee. Your day is going to be exciting.