MY NAME IS KIRSTEN

I’m a freelance travel photographer and blogger based in Los Angeles. I’ve worked in more than 50 countries on 6 continents. Scroll down and let’s connect, Shop my Store or Learn more…

Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.

– WALKER EVANS

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Follow my posts to see where I am and what I’m currently working on! I also provide travel tips and historical details in my captions so you can use my feed like your own personal guide book.

Recently went shopping here in LA at one of my fav

Recently went shopping here in LA at one of my favorite warehouses called “Berbere World-Imports.” Favorite in the sense that shopping there is like taking a trip around the world - and if you’re a subscriber, you know how much I love traveling the world - from Moroccan rugs to inlaid mirrors from India to Turkish jugs and masks from countries all around the continent of Africa….

it’s “Around the World in 80 Days” or 80 minutes, depending on how fast you browse.

My style has always tended toward the international and I’ve never felt “at home” in the US like I do whenever I leave the borders of this country.

And yet this most recent stop at Berbere had me thinking deeply about the ethics of a warehouse so filled to the brim with artifacts and items from other countries that, could mean… said countries have been plundered of their cultural riches to please and service shoppers like myself? Is that ok? Is that even ethical? It reminds me of India’s requests to to return the Kohinoor Diamond and calls for the British Museum to return many of their stolen artifacts. Maybe it’s not the same. But there’s surely some similarity in the issue of what belongs to whom and who has the right to ownership of things large or small.

I don’t have the answers. These are just the questions I woke up with this morning and since I’m finally lucid enough to do any writing after rounds of heavy medication, I thought I’d share.

🤔 What do you think? ❤️

Follow the yellow brick road… an outtake from @c

Follow the yellow brick road… an outtake from @ceskykrumlovofficial for you subscribers that didn’t make it into the slideshow I posted this morning.

This little alley is full of odd sculptures that have an almost creepy element to them, attached to the wall and tucked away on a side street that’s just off the river in a part of town which seems to be lesser-visited and almost empty.

Several long google sessions about this spot turned up not a thing. Though it seems like it must be significant since someone has gone to the trouble to paint the old cobblestones in a yellow line leading to this spot, or away from it (?), and taken the time to do the art.

If you ever come across anything that seems to reference this, let me know?

Till then, just another mystery in a world full of wonder and curiosity. ❤️

🇨🇿 The town of Český Krumlov is in the Sou

🇨🇿 The town of Český Krumlov is in the South Bohemia region of Czechia and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1992. Google will tell you that, “It’s bisected by the Vltava River, and dominated by its 13th-century castle. The castle has Gothic, Renaissance and baroque elements, an 11-hectare garden and an original 17th-century baroque theater. There are panoramic views of the old town and the river from the top of its round belltower.” There’s been a town or settlement in the area since at least the Older Stone Age (70,000–50,000 BC). The castle itself, the jewel in the crown that is the town, was founded shortly before 1250 by a local branch of the noble Vítkovci family. I’ve now visited twice, and I still want to go back. Each time I visit, the town reveals a different facet of itself to me. This time, the weather and the skies changed every few minutes and it made it fascinating as a photographer to see a visual diary of all the different moods reflected in the sky of varying images.

📝 When you go: make sure to eat open-faced sandwiches and sip amber wine at Topinka, ride a raft down the river with Maleček, shop for Czech antiques at Antique Starožitnosti and enjoy coffee at Kolektiv. Bookmark this post so you don’t forget 😉  ❤️ Thank you @visitcz and @visitsouthbohemia for hosting me this time in @ceskykrumlovofficial. #VisitCzechRepublic #VisitCZ #SouthBohemia #CeskyKrumlovRegion

I wasn’t sure what to expect from a visit to an

Currently feeling stress manifest itself as intens

When I was in Estonia, one of the places we went w

When I was in Estonia, one of the places we went was the Eesti Kaevandusmuuseum. It’s east of Tallinn, closer to the Russian border than to Tallinn. I haven’t posted about that part of my trip at all because the way the whole thing was presented made me uncomfortable. Particularly as someone who can write but struggles to ever make any living from writing. It’s been damn near impossible to try to unpack what made me uncomfortable. To put it into words. I’m probably going to fail again here. To summarize super vaguely:
• it seemed to glorify Russia
• and fossil fuels
• even going so far as to feel like we should mourn the days when mining was a huge employer.

Now travel is a highly personal thing and you, reading this, might visit and have a completely different experience.

That’s travel. We can all go to the same places and all emerge with wildly different feelings about it.

One of the things I do remember is the way Ÿuri, pictured here, seemed as baffled by us - one American, one Swede, one young French man - as we were by the whole process of putting on miners clothes, walking through the mine, riding the coal train, eating a miner’s lunch and watching him use the machines that used to employ hundreds of his fellow Estonians in truly dangerous conditions miles underground.

His was an experience I will never understand no matter how closely my hours as an observer are made to mimic his past life. But not being born wealthy, I do very much understand the need to work and earn a living. Every day.

Meeting him made me wonder what future generations will think of how we made a living - and a life - in another 50 years, or 100. Maybe even just 5 or 10.

The world is changing fast. And yet some basic things about human life may never change. We all need clean air to breathe, food to eat, safe shelter in which to rest and recharge…

we make borders and defend borders but there are none to separate us as humans that need these same basic things, excepting the ones which we artificially create.

🍂 because I’m not quite ready to let go of th

🍂 because I’m not quite ready to let go of the lovely stay @schlossfall here’s another Estonia post just for you 👑 subscribers 👑

🙏 Thank you for supporting me and what I do by subscribing! ✨

“We’re forest people.” is a refrain I heard

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Recently went shopping here in LA at one of my fav

Recently went shopping here in LA at one of my favorite warehouses called “Berbere World-Imports.” Favorite in the sense that shopping there is like taking a trip around the world - and if you’re a subscriber, you know how much I love traveling the world - from Moroccan rugs to inlaid mirrors from India to Turkish jugs and masks from countries all around the continent of Africa….

it’s “Around the World in 80 Days” or 80 minutes, depending on how fast you browse.

My style has always tended toward the international and I’ve never felt “at home” in the US like I do whenever I leave the borders of this country.

And yet this most recent stop at Berbere had me thinking deeply about the ethics of a warehouse so filled to the brim with artifacts and items from other countries that, could mean… said countries have been plundered of their cultural riches to please and service shoppers like myself? Is that ok? Is that even ethical? It reminds me of India’s requests to to return the Kohinoor Diamond and calls for the British Museum to return many of their stolen artifacts. Maybe it’s not the same. But there’s surely some similarity in the issue of what belongs to whom and who has the right to ownership of things large or small.

I don’t have the answers. These are just the questions I woke up with this morning and since I’m finally lucid enough to do any writing after rounds of heavy medication, I thought I’d share.

🤔 What do you think? ❤️

Follow the yellow brick road… an outtake from @c

Follow the yellow brick road… an outtake from @ceskykrumlovofficial for you subscribers that didn’t make it into the slideshow I posted this morning.

This little alley is full of odd sculptures that have an almost creepy element to them, attached to the wall and tucked away on a side street that’s just off the river in a part of town which seems to be lesser-visited and almost empty.

Several long google sessions about this spot turned up not a thing. Though it seems like it must be significant since someone has gone to the trouble to paint the old cobblestones in a yellow line leading to this spot, or away from it (?), and taken the time to do the art.

If you ever come across anything that seems to reference this, let me know?

Till then, just another mystery in a world full of wonder and curiosity. ❤️

🇨🇿 The town of Český Krumlov is in the Sou

🇨🇿 The town of Český Krumlov is in the South Bohemia region of Czechia and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1992. Google will tell you that, “It’s bisected by the Vltava River, and dominated by its 13th-century castle. The castle has Gothic, Renaissance and baroque elements, an 11-hectare garden and an original 17th-century baroque theater. There are panoramic views of the old town and the river from the top of its round belltower.” There’s been a town or settlement in the area since at least the Older Stone Age (70,000–50,000 BC). The castle itself, the jewel in the crown that is the town, was founded shortly before 1250 by a local branch of the noble Vítkovci family. I’ve now visited twice, and I still want to go back. Each time I visit, the town reveals a different facet of itself to me. This time, the weather and the skies changed every few minutes and it made it fascinating as a photographer to see a visual diary of all the different moods reflected in the sky of varying images.

📝 When you go: make sure to eat open-faced sandwiches and sip amber wine at Topinka, ride a raft down the river with Maleček, shop for Czech antiques at Antique Starožitnosti and enjoy coffee at Kolektiv. Bookmark this post so you don’t forget 😉  ❤️ Thank you @visitcz and @visitsouthbohemia for hosting me this time in @ceskykrumlovofficial. #VisitCzechRepublic #VisitCZ #SouthBohemia #CeskyKrumlovRegion

I wasn’t sure what to expect from a visit to an

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