Flickr has been my photo album since 2010 when I moved to Beijing, China. My photo album contains mostly family pics, but you might find the photographic record of my three-year adventure of living, working and traveling in Asia interesting. I returned to Ottawa, Canada, in 2013, where I continue to log the adventures of my travel-loving family. The easiest way to find a subject of interest is to browse through my albums, my tags or my map.

Sometimes, when I am struck by my surroundings or have one of those "what's with that?" moments that are the fodder of the stand-up comic, I snap a photo and then write at length about the experience. (See the descriptions of photos tagged Essay.) Although the photographs that accompany the essays are often pedestrian and certainly not what I would call my best, according Flickr statistics they are some of my most-viewed pics – or are they my most-read photo descriptions? Some essays are serial works, so readers sometimes need to follow the thread by starting with the description of the album that contains the essay-tagged photo and then read the descriptions of the other photos in the album. But many essays are stand-alone stories. So far, two of my essays and their photos have been published in newspapers. I hope to publish more.

I like to write because I like to observe – and because I enjoy sharing what I observe, I am trying to learn the art of digital photography. If you peruse my photostream, you will see that I am attempting to master panorama photography, including immersive 360° x 180° photos, RAW processing, and off-camera flash photography.

I believe that I can learn much about capture and processing from the work of others, so I review Flickr Explore nearly every day to find photos that I think are exceptional. You can see them in my favorites. I also believe I can learn from my own successes and failures – about what works and what doesn't. You can see the photos that I took that I like best (tagged K-favourite) in the album K.'S FAVES.

Perhaps it's because I like to travel, but when I look at a photograph the first thing I want to know after ISO, aperture, shutter speed and focal length is: where was this picture taken? Many photographers forget to include the location information and some purposely omit the exposure data. Not me. I learned from what others have shared; I share in the same spirit.

Almost all my photos are geo-tagged so you can see where I was when I pressed the shutter. (Sensitive locations are only shared with friends.) Be aware that for photos taken in China, the latitude and longitude shown in the EXIF data are always correct, but the position shown on maps may appear to be off by several hundred metres for reasons that are explained at the bottom of the description of this photo.

The question "where was this taken?" is naturally followed by "when was this taken?" – a question that travellers like me can have difficulty answering, because most cameras do not include the time zone in EXIF data. All times on my photos are local times. You can determine the time zone in which a photo was taken from its GPS location.

I appreciate you taking the time to visit and I hope you enjoy what you see.