Okay, so it wasn’t frosty, but the nights were a little chilly, I swear. I am uploading some not-so-recent travelogues to the the world wide interweb, and realized this trip to Western Ethiopia from January 2011 had some amusing images. I have made quite a few trips out there since but this was the first time I landed in the farther reaches of Illubabor, as well as covering Jimma pretty well. There is a lot of promise for wet-processed coffee in the West, which was traditionally sold as low grade, undifferentiated dry-process coffee. With the new work we are doing there, farmers are receiving premiums far beyond what they ever could get for natural coffees of a commercial level, and much of this is based on the fantastic work of Technoserve to provide business advice, agricultural assistance, and market support to these cooperatives. -Tom

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I have been taking photos in multiple exposure and HDR modes for at least a year.  It’s not only about handing over the results to an algorithm.  It was about changing the role of myself as the picture-taker and whomever was on the other end of the lens as the subject.  They resist being known (as if an image could know). I free myself from the presumption of knowing.  How could I anyway?  The speed is recorded.  It’s a failure in so many ways, as traditional photographic content, ethnography, and landscape.  There’s more but I won’t go on.  These are from Ethiopia Jan-Feb 2014.