Randy Olson, Melissa Farlow Photography

  • Portfolio
  • About
  • Contact
  • Archive
    • All Galleries
    • Search
    • Cart
    • Lightbox
    • Client Area

Search Results

Refine Search
Match all words
Match any word
Prints
Personal Use
Royalty-Free
Rights-Managed
(leave unchecked to
search all images)
Next
3296 images found

Loading ()...

  • A man gets a pedicure at a luxury day spa.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176388.JPG
  • A blurring of cultures as children dance in the street wearing Halloween masks in celebration of Day of the Dead. The American and Hispanic celebrations coincide involving masks and candy in the small Mexican town where families use burros and make mescal from agave plants.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187045.jpg
  • A grandmother works picking flowers with her family under the smoking volcano Popocatepetl in nearby Atlixco, flower capital of Mexico.  Workers harvest bouquets of zempazuchitl flowers for Day of the Dead celebrations.  Fields full of yellow flowers are cultivated to decorate altars and graves for the Mexican fiesta.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187016.jpg
  • A young boy picks flowers with his family who was harvesting to sell for Day of the Dead, the Mexican fiesta celebration. <br />
Workers harvest bouquets of cempasuchil or marigold flowers from fields full of yellow flowers cultivated to decorate altars and graves for the Mexican fiesta.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187064-1.JPG
  • Children play in a small, indoor swimming pool at the day care for the market workers. The facility makes life easier for workers who can drop off their kids nearby and visit with them during their lunch breaks.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2512539.jpg
  • A Quito market worker spends a few minutes visiting her daughter at a day care center during the lunch break at her job. Child care facility is adjacent to the workplace which supports working families.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2512538.jpg
  • Costumed revelers march on the Pan American highway in San Pedro Totolapán, Mexico, on Day of the Dead. They stop traffic to solicit handouts from drivers; if no pesos appear, the driver is generally treated to verbal abuse.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187492.jpg
  • Man sits in front of alter in his home in Xoxocotlan for Day of the Dead. Dia de los Muertos is Mexico's most characteristic fiesta where it is believed that souls of the dead return to the earth.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187074.jpg
  • A young boy carries a bouquet of bright, red zempazuchitl flowers that his family was harvesting to sell for Day of the Dead, the Mexican fiesta celebration. Pickers work late into the evening under the shadow of Popocatépetl, or El Popo as locals call the volcano.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187064.jpg
  • A hat seller helps load a stack of straw hats onto a truck at a market that sells flowers for Day of the Dead fiesta.<br />
Heavily-loaded trucks carry red Terciopelo flowers to celebrate Mexico’s premier fiesta. Atlixco is the flower capital of Mexico exporting roses and gladiolas from the state of Puebla.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187046.jpg
  • Woman places flowers on a graven in Xoxocotlan for the Mexican fiesta, Day of the Dead celebrations. Día de los Muertos is a celebration of life and death and relatives bring food and drink and spend time with their loved ones in the cemetery.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187043.jpg
  • Costumed revelers rest in the shade of a cantina while parading for Day of the Dead celebration in rural Mexico.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187040.jpg
  • Cloistered nuns pray seven times a day and otherwise remain silent.  Contemplation is the most important thing in their lives. Santa Catalina Convent, the Monasterio de Santa Catalina was built in 1580 and enlarged in the 17th century. In the chapel, the 30 cloistered nuns come together who live secluded inside the convent.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187059-1.JPG
  • A day and boarding school in the Nakulabye neighborhood of Kampala.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7890_1386326.TIF
  • A young girl lights a candle at an alter in her home at the beginning of Day of the Dead or Día de los Muertos. It is a Mexican fiesta celebrating life and death of loved ones.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187588.jpg
  • Heirloom tomatoes support a blackboard listing the fare of the day.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MT5959_1312322.jpg
  • Waiting in the paddock before a race is Pat Day who had a career win of over 8000 races.  A jockey’s life is not easy—a member of an elite club of professional athletes who maintain a near inhuman weight restriction that most Americans couldn’t pass.  He speaks with a trainer before a race and is surrounded by the trainers’ sons at Keeneland Race track.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7017_720964.TIF
  • A bride dressed in a traditional gown looks out the window of her family's home before leaving for the church on her wedding day.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2512687.jpg
  • Children of market workers at a Quito day care center burst into laughter with joyous faces as they watch a magician, a clown, and ethnic dancers.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2512537.jpg
  • A young girl lights a candle at an alter in her home at the beginning of Day of the Dead or Día de los Muertos. It is a Mexican fiesta celebrating life and death of loved ones.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187588.jpg
  • Cloistered nuns pray seven times a day and otherwise remain silent.  Contemplation is the most important thing in their lives. Santa Catalina Convent, the Monasterio de Santa Catalina was built in 1580 and enlarged in the 17th century. In the chapel, the 30 cloistered nuns come together who live secluded inside the convent.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187059.jpg
  • A man sits with family members during a Day of the Dead vigil at a family grave in Xoxocotlan with candles and flowers. Dia de los Muertos is Mexico's most characteristic fiesta where it is believed that souls of the dead return to the earth. Families sit in the cemetery and sharing stories, music and their loved ones favorite foods.<br />
Some grave sites such as this one had a three dimensional sand painting done just for the celebration.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187017.jpg
  • Candles light a woman keeping vigil by a grave in Xoxocotlan during Day of the Dead.<br />
Dia de los Muertos is Mexico's most characteristic fiesta where it is believed that souls of the dead return to the earth. Families sit in the cemetery and sharing stories, music and their loved ones favorite foods.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187009.jpg
  • First day of a primary boarding school near Komote in Kenya's Lake Turkana region.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327885.JPG
  • First day of a primary boarding school near Komote in Kenya's Lake Turkana region.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327884.JPG
  • First day of a primary boarding school near Komote in Kenya's Lake Turkana region.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327883.JPG
  • Hamar head to market day on a dirt road to Kaifur.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7661_1306552.TIF
  • Hamar tribespeople in a bar on market day.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7661_1306488.TIF
  • Hamar women in a bar on market day.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7661_1306481.TIF
  • Hamar women in a bar on market day.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7661_1306480.TIF
  • Hamar women on market day in Turmi.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7661_1306453.JPG
  • Hamar women on market day in Turmi.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7661_1306452.JPG
  • A family has a fourth day ceremony for a newborn child.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7661_1306434.TIF
  • A bride gets ready on her wedding day.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7593_1260941.TIF
  • Nearly a million cruise ship passengers visit Alaska, sometimes doubling a town’s population on a summer day. As many as six cruise ships make daily stops in Ketchikan - and as many as 500 a year - bringing tourists on the Inside Passage. Viewed from the air when landing a float plane, the ship is docked near sunset.<br />
<br />
Tourism is Southeast Alaska’s fastest growing industry. Travelers can shop for Native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores along what was a former logging town.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075023.TIF
  • Yvonne’s boutique spas in Shanghai offer 13 types of facials, plus a chocolate pedicure for $48. Her father escaped China in 1949 with his family although two siblings died.<br />
<br />
She has the Diva life designing her own furniture, spa, and clothes. Yvonne spends the morning at the fabric market and meeting with her tailor, and then goes to her office. But the main reason she started the spa is so that she can have hours of spa treatments any day she likes.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176419.TIF
  • Passengers gaze out the windows of a bus in Shanghai. <br />
<br />
This easy migration of people from city to city is still hard for me to get used to. Seventeen years ago when I was traveling between Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, they all had a ring of policemen around them checking identity papers. I was in China trying to get through those rings of security during the Tiananmen Square uprising. I remember traveling with wire service photographers and driving through those checkpoints at 90 mph and seeing the policeman jump up and down on the dais—literally hopping mad—but there was nothing they could do because they did not have guns or radios. After being absent 17 years, I made (technically) five trips to China in about a one-year period. The growth is so fast paced I could feel the energy and the stress on the street. It makes you realize that our empire is over, but you can’t really understand that without being there. Even though the NYT has multiple stories, every day, on the growth and complexity of the Chinese economy, the average American has little idea what this means other than a fear that increased Chinese fuel consumption will somehow affect what they put in the tank of their SUV. Robert Frank photographed twentieth-century America, recording our coming of age—the baby boom, the start of television, car culture, modular housing, and relative wealth distributed throughout the middle class. His photographs are of progress, technology, plenty, but also the weary faces of waitresses and elevator operators who were desperately trying to join the economic party. Those 1950s faces remind me of a line in Leslie Chang’s story about modern China: “What looks like freedom just feels like pressure.”
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176403.TIF
  • Couples ride in a long line of flower-decorated convertibles for a mass wedding in Shanghai. They aspire to the ideal of the billboard above them—the one-child family. <br />
<br />
According to the 2010 census 118.06 boys are born for every 100 girls, and experts warn of increased social instability should this trend continue. For the population born between 1900 and 2000, it is estimated that there could be 35.59 million fewer females than males.  In Beijing, for example, newly prosperous residents are snapping up automobiles at a rate of 1,000 a day. The number of vehicles on the capital’s sclerotic roads has doubled in the past five years, to 3 million, or about a million more vehicles than in all of New York City.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176370.TIF
  • Aerial view of a cruise ship that docks at Ketchikan's harbor bringing a city full of tourists for shopping and sightseeing. The once logging town is dependent on the growing tourism industry. Nearly a million cruise ship passengers visit Alaska, sometimes doubling a town’s population on a summer day. <br />
The ships travel the Inside Passage, a network of waterways between islands along the coast of Alaska, British Columbia and Washington state. <br />
Travelers can shop for native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores along what was a former red-light district during the Gold Rush. The Misty Fjords National Monument is one of the area’s major attractions.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075021.TIF
  • Areas of Borneo have been turned into a moonscape by illegal gold miners in Central Kalimantan. Indonesian farmers turn their hoes to mining, illegally digging for gold on a torn up riverbank in Borneo. For the chance to make five dollars a day, thousands have left their fields to join Indonesia’s gold rush. East Java has high unemployment and there are many migrant workers on Kalimantan (Borneo) that came from Java initially to do artisanal timber work. The government stomped out the little timber guys in favor of two big companies so they could control (read “profit from”) the industry. So all the artisanal timber workers switched to gold. Miners test in the 1000-ppm plus range for mercury (normal is 170 to 300). Eastern Java is severely overcrowded and the government has an official transmigration program over to Kalimantan. In Eastern Java they can earn about 100RP a day hoeing the fields. Here they can earn upwards of 30,000-60,000RP ($3-$6) a day. So it is worth it to camp in this area, having only the water (full of mercury) from the amalgam ponds to bathe and drink.
    Gold_20060420_01098.tif
  • An ecstatic Deb Hedberg is honored with flowers and a banner as Miss Beef Empire, Queen of the Beef Empire Days competition at the Beef Empire Days Rodeo.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8429_2481148.TIF
  • Contestants wear leather and cowboy and cowgirl hats for the Beef Empire Days queen and princess at the Beef Empire Days Rodeo. <br />
<br />
Running for five decades, the tradition is one of the premiere showcases for the industry. It features 16 events including a rodeo, carnival and parade.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8429_2481147.JPG
  • A young contestant wears pink to stand out for the Beef Empire Days princess at the Beef Empire Days Rodeo. Other young women don cowgirl hats and other distinctive colors as they wait for the event to begin.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8429_2481145.JPG
  • A fishing brigade on the Bolshaya River south of the town of Oktyabrski where men make a fish camp out of a beached, ocean-going vessel.  They are not fishing on this day because it allows time for the fish to spawn, and indigenous communities up river in Kamchatka can fish in the area along the Bolshaya River. <br />
<br />
Fishing brigades use tractors to tow one end of a net and then bring it around full circle in the river to capture the fish. A net is  dumped into small boats that have small nets laid in them. A crane picks up the small nets and dumps them into trucks that take the fish to the processing plants in Ust Bolsheretsk. If fishing was allowed every day in the mouths of these rivers just off the Kamchatka shelf, no salmon would get up river to spawn. There are two “passing days” each week when fishing is banned, so these fishermen hang out in their camp and do their laundry. Some fishermen come from as far as Ulan-Ude, which is on the border with Siberia. One of the fishermen in this photo is from PK, two are from Urilutsk, Siberia, and two are from Oktybrski.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7593_1248226.TIF
  • A portrait of a cowboy wearing sunglasses, colored long sleeved shirt, a long handlebar mustache and a large, brimmed straw hat for Beef Empire Days event.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8429_2481117.JPG
  • Children dressed in their costumes ride on a truck through town to celebrate the first da of spring. The Primavera parade is also known as Friendship Day or Children’s Day.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187037-2.JPG
  • It's party time on a hot summer day. River tanking in plastic livestock-watering containers is a popular tourist draw along the shallow Calamus River in central Nebraska. With two-thirds of the Ogallala’s water underlying it, the state’s wealth of groundwater feeds countless springs, streams, and rivers.<br />
<br />
There is so much fossil water available in NE that a couple of cowboys figured out how to float the river in cow tanks. Now ranchers use tourism to supplement ranch income in hard times and as many as 350 tourists float the river on one day. The Calamus is spring fed from the Ogallala aquifer.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8429_2481070-9.TIF
  • In preparation for the Beef Empire Days Rodeo parade, young girls practice for a performance under the tall grain elevator along the railroad tracks.  Corn was taken out town to sell all over the world, but now these tracks bring corn TO Garden City, Kansas  for the feedlots that ring the area.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8429_2481150.TIF
  • Cowboys with hats wait on horses to participate in the Beef Empire Days Rodeo, a long standing tradition in Garden City, Kansas.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8429_2481146.JPG
  • Boys play with toy tractors outside the arena at the Beef Empire Days rodeo where an cowboys compete in an event.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8429_2481122.JPG
  • A rescued ten-day old orphaned foal, born premature and near death, was abandoned by his mother in a wild horse herd.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2737122.jpg
  • Naming ceremony for five-day-old baby in a town outside Ileret.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327969.JPG
  • This is the Kireka area just outside Kampala, Uganda.  Most all of these laborers are from Gulu in the north... insecurity with LRA made them move south and accept jobs that are basically breaking rocks so the gravel can be used for construction materials.  The mothers in these families make about 50 cents a day breaking the rocks their husbands haul out of the quarries.
    MM7890_20100326_01487.tif
  • This is a fisherman village right at the edge of the ocean in St. Louis, Senegal.  The authorities have been trying to get rid of this community, but the fishing is the most important aspect of St. Louis and these folks have fought off the government. This time of year they fish at night and are so successful that they have decided amongst themselves to only have half the boats go out each day. The price of fish was incredibly low because there are so many and because these fishermen are so adept at exploiting the resource. Industrialized fishermen pay a license to fish, but then there is no limit for how much they can catch. The artesenal fishermen are not regulated in any way. 600,000 Senegalese participate in the fishing industry. Eighty percent of the fish caught are caught by artesinal fishermen.
    MM7393_20051211_04390.tif
  • Fishermen unload their catch of the day to sell at the fish market on the beach at San Andres. Women buyers bid on the fish, then load them to sell in Lima.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187588-2.JPG
  • Naming ceremony for five-day-old baby in a town outside Ileret.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327971.JPG
  • Naming ceremony for five-day-old baby in a town outside Ileret.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327970.JPG
  • Naming ceremony for five-day-old baby in a town outside Ileret.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327968.JPG
  • A worker in a hairnet and protective jacket is reflected in a Senevisa shrimp processing factory.<br />
<br />
The plant in Dakar processes 4.5 tons of shrimp a day brought in from artisanal fishermen. The local market consumes only three percent of the production of this plant.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7393_1057919.JPG
  • Informal plastic waste worker makes his rounds in very early morning in Varanasi, India because the city temperatures rise in unbearable heat during the day. This is the Beniyapark neighborhood. Varanasi has government trash workers but not nearly enough for the 1.2 million population and all the tourists. So people put their trash on the street and wait for informal trash workers/recyclers or some government worker to come by and clean up the street. It’s not a great system. Pappu is part of the informal trash picker system and he collects plastic waste to recycle.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702760-4.JPG
  • A cowgirl checks her horse and sits back to relax after a long day in the saddle moving her herd from their winter range in Beef Basin, Utah. Land whipped into dust by a dry winter offers little forage for cattle on this Bureau of Land Management grazing allotment. In the spring, ranchers pay a fee to drive cattle onto higher, wetter ground.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6659_680961-08.jpg
  • A cowgirl sits back to relax with her horses and a ranch hand after a long day in the saddle moving her herd from their winter range in Beef Basin, Utah. Land whipped into dust by a dry winter offers little forage for cattle on this Bureau of Land Management grazing allotment. In the spring, ranchers pay a fee to drive cattle onto higher, wetter ground.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6659_680961-04.jpg
  • In spite of the 200 inches of rain the area receives every year, nearly a million cruise ship passengers visit Alaska, sometimes doubling a town’s population on a summer day. As many as six cruise ships make daily stops - and as many as 500 a year - bringing tourists on the Inside Passage, the route through a network of passages between islands along the coast of Alaska, British Columbia and Washington state. Tourism is Southeast Alaska’s fastest growing industry.<br />
One of the stops in Alaska’s Panhandle is the former logging town of Ketchikan. Travelers can shop for Native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores along what was a former red-light district during the Gold Rush.
    MM7258_20050819_07149.tif
  • A brown bear's claws hang onto the salmon in Kuril Lake.<br />
<br />
Grizzly bears need to eat about 40 fish a day to put on weight to make it through the winter.<br />
<br />
Brown bears in Kamchatka can be 7 to 9 feet in length and weigh 700-800 pounds. Species: U. arctic Genus:Ursus<br />
<br />
Kamchatka has the highest density of brown bears in the world, with almost 15,000 on the Russian peninsula.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7593_1260983-13.TIF
  • Novices play ball in a courtyard during a short break from the strict everyday life in a cloistered convent at Santa Catalina Convent in Arequipa, Peru. Older Catholic nuns allow this scheduled play to help the young nuns adjust more easily to the new rules and a routine: They are always silent, pray seven times a day, and never leave the grounds. Visitors to the convent can attend mass but never see life behind the walls where 23 women ranging in age from 15 to 93 make their home.
    MELISSA FARLOW_SP163_655663.jpg
  • A blue-eyed Palomino mare approaches for a closer look. The U.S. government released Thoroughbred horses at Nevada’s Sheldon range to mix with the Standardbred bloodlines making a bigger, faster “war horse.” During World War I and II, horses were rounded up from Sheldon, loaded onto railroad cars and taken to the East Coast where they were shipped across the Atlantic Ocean. Horses that survived the journey had a bit placed in their mouths and began to pull artillery or serve as a cavalry mount. A shipment of 500 horses left every day and a half to supply American and Allied troops.  Nearly eight million horses died in World War I alone. <br />
Remnants of the “war horse” herds roamed free until they were totally removed from the Sheldon National Wildlife Range.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7517_1222829.jpg
  • A young foal rests in a bed of chamomile flowers creating an idyllic scene as he watches the herd graze. Newborn horses sleep up to twelve hours during the day, but graduate to adults that sleep only three hours -- and often standing.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7517_1222802.jpg
  • A protected wild mustang foal naps in a meadow near his mother. Newborn horses sleep up to twelve hours during the day, but graduate to adults that sleep only three hours -- and often standing.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7517_1222774.jpg
  • The Inside Passage is a draw for cruise ship passengers to shop and sightsee in Ketchikan. Travelers can shop for Native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores.<br />
Once a logging town, the city now depends on a growing tourism industry. Nearly a million cruise ship passengers visit Southeast Alaska every year—sometimes doubling a town’s population in one day.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075051.TIF
  • Cruise ships dock at Ketchikan's harbor, while another waits its' turn. In spite of the 200 inches of rain the region receives every year, nearly a million cruise ship passengers visit Alaska, sometimes doubling a town’s population on a summer day. As many as six cruise ships make daily stops and as many as 500 a year. The Inside Passage is a network of channels between islands along the coast of Alaska, British Columbia and Washington state. Tourism is Southeast Alaska’s fastest growing industry.<br />
The former logging town of Ketchikan, now relies on tourism. Travelers can shop for native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores along what was a former red-light district during the Gold Rush.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1073531.TIF
  • Songs and prayer are how nuns begin their day at Santa Catalina Convent in Arequipa, Peru. The Monasterio de Santa Catalina was built in 1580. Among the 30 cloistered nuns who live in silence are five novices who study for five years to become a nun. The youngest nun is 15. The oldest is 98.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187061.jpg
  • Cloistered nuns work to make wafers for communion at Santa Catalina Convent in Arequipa, Peru. The Monasterio de Santa Catalina was built in 1580 and enlarged in the 17th century. The 30 cloistered nuns who live there have jobs and come together seven times during the day for chorus and prayer.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187058.jpg
  • Colored chips of plastic, collected, washed and sorted by hand, dry on the banks of the Buriganga River. Families wash shredded plastic for profit organizing it by color for recycling in Bangladesh’s informal plastic waste industry. Their hand labor is more accurate than highly industrialized recycling in the USA and the labor costs $2-$4 a day.  Blue bottle caps are sorted from red bottle caps and they are sorted from the green bottle caps. A huge overburden of plastic is thrown away landing in the river and washing out into the Bay of Bengal.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2692109.JPG
  • A neighborhood street where a family with a dry well loads up five-gallon buckets to carry water in the back of their pickup truck for home use. <br />
<br />
They are among 30 families affected by the amount of agricultural use of water from the Ogallala Aquifer. 88,000 wells across the nearby Texas panhandle pump 200 gallons a minute. <br />
<br />
These families rely on around 100 gallons a day for their needs and are hopeful for the pipeline from a reservoir 100 miles away that is being built will relieve the situation.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8429_2481285.TIF
  • River “tanking” in plastic livestock-watering containers is a popular tourist draw along the shallow Calamus River in central Nebraska. With two-thirds of the Ogallala’s water underlying it, the state’s wealth of groundwater feeds countless springs, streams, and rivers.<br />
<br />
There is so much fossil water available in NE that a couple of cowboys figured out how to float the river in cow tanks. Now ranchers use tourism to supplement ranch income in hard times. One hot August day, 350 tourists floated the river. The Calamus is spring fed from the Ogallala aquifer.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8429_2432802.TIF
  • Center-pivot irrigation systems etch circles of grain and other plants in Finney County, Kansas. These self-propelled, rotating sprinklers revolutionized farming, enabling more land to be irrigated efficiently. As the aquifer declines, some farmers only irrigate partial circles.  Each sprinkler needs to draw from a well that produces a minimum of 400 gallons of water a minute.<br />
<br />
Aerial photo showing fields between Dodge City and Garden City, Kansas as a rainbow appears after a storm. Corn is king and a water hungry crop. Switching to milo and bison could save the aquifer for the next generation. A center pivot pumping 694 gallons a minute can pump a million gallons a day. Rain measures roughly 18 inches years  in this region and a center pivot adds an additional 18 inches or more. Most of the pivots in the 70’s pump water out at 1,000 gallons a minute.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8429_2432801.JPG
  • A brown bear catches a salmon fish in Kuril Lake. Bears need to eat about 40 fish a day to put on weight to make it through the winter.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7593_1260964.TIF
  • A brown bear fishing for salmon in Kuril Lake. Bears need to eat about 40 fish a day to put on weight to make it through the winter.<br />
<br />
Brown bears in Kamchatka can be 7 to 9 feet in length and weigh 700-800 pounds. Species: U. arctic Genus:Ursus<br />
<br />
Kamchatka has the highest density of grizzly bears in the world, with almost 15,000 on the Russian peninsula.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7593_1260959.JPG
  • The main fish market street in Petropavlovsk sells Pacific Steelhead, which has been on the Russian Red Book of endangered species since 1983. Even though military, police, and government officials charge through this street all day long, and it is illegal, this endangered salmon is sold with impunity.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7593_1248225.JPG
  • A brown bear, also known as a grizzly, feasts on sockeye salmon, which is a fundamental drama in Kamchatka’s still largely intact ecosystem. <br />
<br />
Salmon—pink, chum, sockeye, coho, chinook, and masu—flood the waters that typically solitary brown bears crowd together to feed at Kuril Lake. Bears need to eat about 40 fish a day to put on weight to make it through the winter.<br />
<br />
Brown bears in Kamchatka can be 7 to 9 feet in length and weigh 700-800 pounds. Species: U. arctic Genus:Ursus<br />
<br />
Kamchatka has the highest density of brown bears in the world, with almost 15,000 on the Russian peninsula.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7593_1248220.TIF
  • A bride irons a bridesmaid's dress. Khailino in Kamchatka, Russia has not had an event in the last three years. The community mustered up a wedding and invited the entire community. Although the bride was seven months pregnant, she worked doing laundry and ironing for all her brothers and sisters on her wedding day.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7593_1248205.TIF
  • Hindus worship a golden deity during the nine day Tirupati Temple Festival. The diety is taken out on colourful processions around the city with hundreds of people following it. People perform Sevas, meaning they offer flowers, fruits, and food to the diety in order to make their lord happy and seek blessings.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1223044.JPG
  • Hindus worship a golden deity during the nine day Tirupati Temple Festival. The diety is taken out on colourful processions around the city with hundreds of people following it. People perform Sevas, meaning they offer flowers, fruits, and food to the diety in order to make their lord happy and seek blessings.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1223043.JPG
  • Miners in a pond mix mercury with ore to separate out the gold. Other miners bathe and brush their teeth in the pond that is laid with mercury. Miners test 1000 ppm and the normal range is 170-300. They earn $5US a day.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1222998.TIF
  • Miners in a pond mixing mercury with ore to separate out the gold. Other miners bathe and brush their teeth in the pond that is laid with mercury. Miners test 1000 ppm and the normal range is 170-300. They earn $5US a day.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1198348.JPG
  • Indonesian farmers illegally dig for gold undercutting a torn up riverbank in Borneo.<br />
Thousands of workers have left their fields to join Indonesia’s gold rush of artisanal mining for the chance to make five dollars a day.<br />
<br />
Eastern Java has high unemployment, and many migrant workers initially came to Kalimantan to do artisanal timber work. But the government stomped out small operations in favor of two big companies so they could control the industry. All the artisanal timber workers switched to gold. <br />
<br />
Eastern Java is overcrowded and the government has an official transmigration program to Kalimantan. Workers earn more so they camp having access only to water from the amalgam ponds where they bath and drink.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1198340.TIF
  • Former wild horses are rewarded with oats after a long day working a Wyoming ranch with sheepherders. Camp is set up near the sheep and herders live on the range.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7517_1222890.jpg
  • Novices studying to become cloistered nuns take a break from their prayers at Santa Catalina Convent to sing in the garden.<br />
The young, cloistered nuns never leave convent grounds and live a life of contemplation in Arequipa, Peru. Older nuns allow the young women free time once a day to help them adjust to the cloistered, regimented life. Having just left their families they will never see again, the vow of commitment the novices take is a serious lifelong decision.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187062.jpg
  • A family with a dry well hauls water in five-gallon buckets in the back of their pickup truck. They need 100 gallons a day to meet their needs. <br />
30 families can no longer get water from their wells since the Ogallala aquifer is running low after being pumped for agricultural use.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8429_2481183.TIF
  • Hindus worship a golden deity during the nine day Tirupati Temple Festival. The diety is taken out on colourful processions around the city with hundreds of people following it. People perform Sevas, meaning they offer flowers, fruits, and food to the diety in order to make their lord happy and seek blessings.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1223045.JPG
  • A worker repairs electrical power lines above pedestrians. <br />
<br />
The need for electrical power is great in Shanghai and migrant workers are hired to hook up cables by strapping a high voltage wire around their waist walking on the actual wires that bring the electricity.  <br />
<br />
A coal-fired power plant comes online every four to five days in China that can power a city the size of San Diego. One hundred cities with populations over 1 million faced extreme water shortages. China’s survival has always been built on the notion of a vastly powerful, infallible center. And yet, air pollution contributed by these plants kills 400,000 people prematurely every year.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176331.TIF
  • The need for electrical power is so great in Shanghai that migrant workers are hired to hook high voltage wires. They strap one around their waist and pull it across an already stressed grid by walking on the actual wires that bring the electricity.  <br />
<br />
A (dirty) coal power plant comes online every four to five days in China that can power a city the size of San Diego.  Air pollution contributed by these plants kills 400,000 people prematurely every year.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176327.TIF
  • With construction booming, there is a joke that the "crane" is the official bird of China.  China (Guangzhou) International Automobile Exhibition has one of the biggest auto shows on the planet. A coal power plant comes online every four to five days in China that could power a city the size of San Diego.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176261.TIF
  • A young girl stands on a plastic chair roping plastic calf in a parking lot during Beef Empire Days in Garden City, Kansas. <br />
<br />
The High Plains culture of cowboys and beef queens are is where a girl can rope a sculpture of a steer and dream of being a cowgirl out on the range.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8429_2481118.TIF
  • Workers transport laundry baskets full of jellyfish at a fishery. They fish on cloudy days when they can see the masses of jelly from their boats.  A cultural difference; the Chinese like to eat jellyfish because of the texture.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7393_1057859.JPG
  • Workers transport laundry baskets full of jellyfish at a Zhapo, China fishery. They fish on cloudy days when they can see masses of jelly from their boats.  A cultural difference; the Chinese like to eat jellyfish because of the texture.<br />
Although low on the food chain, jellyfish thrive and are an important substitute food source as the other species decline.<br />
<br />
Salted and dried jellyfish, however, have long been considered a delicacy by the Chinese. Fish ecologists say where stocks of large fish collapse, jellyfish proliferate, impeding recovery of stocks by feeding on larvae and eggs. They also compete for food such as zooplankton.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7393_1055370.JPG
  • A horse trainer on a wild mustang gallops full tilt across the Nevada desert leaving a cloud of dust. He had thirty days to train a wild horse for a competition in the first Extreme Mustang Makeover established to show off abilities of adopted wild horses.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7517_1200572.TIF
  • Across a ridge top, a farmer follows his burros burdened with firewood to a mescal factory in rural Oaxaca. The region is where 80% of the mescal made in Mexico. Workers harvest the Maguey plant and bury it with dirt placing it in an oven with hot rocks for 36-48 hours. The burned plant is milled with a horse pulling a heavy stone. It is fermented 8-10 days and the manager plays classical music to help the process. It is distilled twice to be about 70% alcohol and stored for 3-6 months.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187490.jpg
  • The Lazbuddie, Texas, superintendent drives the school bus, and a family of three redheaded Mennonite children are last to get off at the end of the route. <br />
<br />
The Texas Panhandle school district which doubles as a public water supplier, is trying to figure out how to keep the school and community alive as they run out of water. Over 200 students are drawn partly to a celebrated robotics program, but there is only 90 days of water left for 16 families. The school received federal funds for a new $360K well, but there are 88,000 wells nearby and the area has the least water from the aquifer underneath, the least regulation, the least recharge and the highest density of wells.<br />
Counties are drawing groundwater faster than the underground aquifers can recharge.  Historically, the state’s aquifers are in a decline which has led to water suppliers drilling and pumping deeper for water.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8429_2481170.TIF
  • After the official ceremony at the Khailino town hall, the newly married couple is followed by the wedding party to visit everyone in town who could not leave their houses to attend the three-day party.  <br />
<br />
Following Russian traditions, they drink a shot of vodka with each shut-in and share a little food, then go to the next home to visit other Kamchatka neighbors who are too elderly or infirm to participate in the event.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7593_1248206.TIF
Next