Mario Dirks - Our World Tour: A Photographic Journey Around the Earth

Our World Tour

A Photographic Journey Around the World

Mario Dirks

Mario Dirks (www.our-world-tour.com)

Editor: Joan Dixon

Project Editor: Jocelyn Howell

Copyeditor: Jocelyn Howell

Translator: David Schlesinger

Layout: Jan Mart, Command Z

Cover Design: Helmut Kraus, www.exclam.de

Printer: Friesens

Printed in Canada

ISBN 978-1-937538-36-1

1st Edition 2014

2014 by Mario Dirks

Rocky Nook Inc.

802 East Cota St., 3rd Floor

Santa Barbara, CA 93103

www.rockynook.com

Copyright 2014 by dpunkt.verlag GmbH, Heidelberg, Germany.

Title of the German original: Our World Tour

ISBN 978-3-86490-073-0

Translation Copyright 2014 by Rocky Nook. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dirks, Mario.

[Photographs. Selections]

Our world tour : a photographic journey around the Earth / by Mario Dirks.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-937538-36-1 (paperback)

1. Travel photography. 2. Dirks, MarioTravel. I. Title.

TR790.D57 2014

779dc23

2013047614

Distributed by OReilly Media

1005 Gravenstein Highway North

Sebastopol, CA 95472

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This book is printed on acid-free paper.

The greatest sight to see of all is the worldso take a look at it!

(Kurt Tucholsky)

Im sitting on a swaying ferry headed for Norderney, the island of my home. Its dark, stormy, and cold outside, and I begin to lose myself in my memories as I jot down the first lines to my book Our World Tour. Just three months ago I returned home to Germany after a yearlong tour that took me across nearly the entire globe. This book gives me the chance to relive my exceptional journey and to share with you, dear readers, my exciting photographic tour of the world.

On a warm summer evening in June 2011, I was sitting on my balcony surfing the Internet. I had just returned from a long trip a few weeks earlier and I was already wistfully scanning travel brochures on the web. My wife and I had spent some time speculating about what it would be like to travel professionally as a photographer. I was replaying our conversations in my head when I stumbled across an unusual advertisement from the lens and camera manufacturer SIGMA:

SIGMA Corporation is advertising for the best job in the world. Have you always wanted to travel to distant places, discover foreign lands and people, and be amazed by the worlds most remarkable attractions? Then we have the perfect job for you. Living up to SIGMAs Our World motto, were sending you on a world tour. As a SIGMA World Scout you will travel for 50 weeks, starting at the end of October 2011, on an organized tour around the entire world, visiting 50 of the worlds most beautiful sites on six continents. Natural wonders, famous structures, and beloved locations are the destinations for the Our World Tour. Your main responsibility as a World Scout is to discover these breathtaking locations and to share your fascination with others. In addition to your travel costs, you will receive a fixed honorarium as well as the professional-grade mirror-reflex SIGMA SD1 camera with various lenses and accessories. In exchange, you will document your tour in photos and text for the public. Travelling the world for 50 weeks is an incredible experience in itself. But you will also be compensated. The remuneration package for the entire duration is 50,000 euro (~68,000 dollars). We will plan the itinerary, cover your hotel and travel expenses, and assemble the necessary photo equipment, including the SIGMA SD1.

I couldnt believe my eyes; this was my dream job. But I wondered, in this day and age, was it actually a real job, or was it an advertising gimmick to gather as much contact information from entrants as possible? Part of me thought I should ignore the website and devote myself to more important matters. But my interest was hopelessly piqued and I called my wife Miriam, who was staying on Norderney at the time.

Miriam had just applied for a teaching job but had yet to receive an offer. I told her about the SIGMA job, and as soon as I mentioned that bringing a companion along for the journey was an option, she was gung ho. I quickly became as excited as her and submitted my online application. I had to submit an informative video in addition to the standard application forms and rsum. My friend Jens, a cameraman by trade, immediately declared his support for my new undertaking and offered to help me create a video. After collecting a few hours of footage along the beaches of Norderney, we had enough material to splice together an interesting film. I finalized my application materials and submitted them just as the deadline approached. And then I waited.

Winning pictures from the photography challenge in Frankfurt, representing three categories: creative (l), people (m), and city/landscape (r).

According to the Internet, more than 1,000 photographers applied for this remarkable job as a globetrotting photographer. SIGMA had to painstakingly evaluate each of these applications because, in the end, there could be only one World Scout. Days and weeks passed, and then finally news came that I had made the short list and had to prove my mettle against nine other applicants in a photography competition in Frankfurt!!

9.5.2011 Down to the 10 Best!!

It was 4:30 in the morning when my alarm clock abruptly woke me from sleep. I had been asleep for only three hours and I seriously considered whether I really wanted to deal with the stress of the day or just close my eyes and stay put. After a moments consideration, sanity prevailed and I boarded a train headed for Frankfurt with a heavy bag of photo equipment and a serious case of sleep deprivation. I had a five-hour trip ahead of me and I used the time to read through a travel guide for the city that I had purchased the day before. Since I had never visited Frankfurt, I paid close attention to the map so that I would be able to orient myself at least a little bit. My train was delayed so I did not give the best first impression as I ended up being the last of the contestants to reach the twenty-first floor of the Innside Eurotheum Hotel. Thats when the rubber hit the road. I had an hour and a half to explore Frankfurt and shoot three photos that fell within the categories of city, people, and creative. It was the most stressful 90 minutes of my life, and a little taste of what was to come over the next several months. I ran through the city in search of the most unusual subjects with a heavy pack on my back, an old Canon EOS 20D for wide-angle photos, and my full-format Canon EOS 5D for portraits hanging around my neck. In the end, the effort and faith paid off. Some three hours later I was presented with an oversized travel voucher and a new camera as I grinned with joy and stared into various cameras and video cameras.