In this episode I’m going to be focusing on a few of my photos and the stories behind them. I had mentioned that I’d start doing this quite a while ago and I received some positive feedback about this idea, and then it got delayed due to a few factors, some of which were the incredible interviews I’ve been able to schedule. I’m so grateful to David Long, Greg Benz, the PhotogAdventures Guys, Richard Bernabe, Timothy Allen, Alyce Bender, Christiaan van Heijst and the others that are coming up. I just love talking with all these very talented photographers and am thrilled to share their stories with you. But today’s show will be a bit different. I’ll be referencing images from my blog over on my personal website. I’ve got some of the stories written there too so you can read it if you’d like that format as well.  So, let’s start off with the post called “The Presence of Humanity” https://brentbergherm.com/the-presence-of-humanity/ This image actually doesn’t have any people of it. But there’s certainly evidence of the human presence. We have a fountain or a wash basin outside the main prayer room at a mosque in Coquimbo, Chile. The tile work is quite ornate and detailed. There’s a pattern for the floor, a different pattern for the wall and yet still another pattern for the wash basin, which is the same pattern as the column found in the upper left corner of the image.  The wash basin is an 8-pointed star shape and it has a copper inverted bowl-shaped item in the center. No water is running but it’s obvious this is for distributing water for washing one’s hands. At the far right of the image you can see the threshold of a doorway and a bit of the door itself. And right there, at the threshold is a pair of black shoes. They aren’t entirely clean, but certainly not dirty either. They are somewhat worn, and their level of detail is just enough to satisfy the mind’s need of being able to properly interpret what they are.  As I wrote in the blog, I feel they are somewhat odd because, “They’re shoes after all, possibly smelly, and they point out of the frame. They are black; we’re often taught that if we want to bring attention to a subject that the eye tends to be drawn towards bright objects with detail. But here we have a dark object with little detail. These shoes, however, complete the story.” And that’s their point. They complete the story. That’s the part that really seals the deal for this image for me. It’s one image. But there’s multiple stories behind it. Most of the questions we may have we’ll never know the answers to. Such as, to whom do these shoes belong? Why are they here? There’s no one to be seen, either inside or out, but yet, here they are. Were they forgotten? Everything in this room feels like it belongs. And to a degree, the shoes belong too. They certainly don’t belong in the prayer room.  The mosque is called Centro Cultural Mohamed VI on Google Maps. It’s found at the top of a small hill in Coquimbo. There’s a paved walkway that takes you up to this mosque. You can’t miss it. There’re only two “towers” in town, one is the minaret on this mosque, the other is the much larger Cross of the Third Millennium.  As I walked in the front door, this washing area was the first thing you see. I’ve got another pic on the blog showing the door partway open and the other door into the prayer room completely open, but no shoes. So, when I arrived, they weren’t there. This is still a mystery to me though. We hardly did anything. We walked in, took a look around, snapped a few pics in this outer room, took our shoes off and went into the prayer room. We saw one fellow in there. He welcomed us in. He already had his shoes off. We took a few pics and we were done. This all happened in less than 30 minutes. Someone else must have shown up that we didn’t realize.  The prayer room had the same pattern of tile work on the columns as the wash basin. The tiles go up about 7 feet on the columns, then they stop and there’s other decor