Neelum Chand carries her son, Shuvam, 1, through the Nutrition Rehabilitation Home (NRH) in Dhangadhi, Nepal, after lunch on Sunday, April 29, 2012. The NRH, a project of the Rural Women’s Development and Unity Centre, a Nepali NGO, works to restore malnourished children to health. Forty-one percent of Nepali children under age 5 are short for their age (stunted), according to the preliminary 2011 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey. Stunting is an indicator of malnutrition, and ensuring children are properly nourished in the 1,000 days between pregnancy and age 2 are vital to a child’s development.

Photo by Laura Elizabeth Pohl/Bread for the World

Swayambunath, a grand Buddhist temple overlooking the Kathmandu Valley, is a wonderful place to contemplate life. I was lucky enough to visit two weeks ago while on a reporting trip to Asia for Bread for the World. My colleague and friend Molly and I spent one morning here during our brief sojourn in Kathmandu before heading out west.

I visited the temple when I lived in Kathmandu five years ago. As I walked around Swayambunath this time, I thought about how to photograph the scene differently than before. Did I succeed? (Apologies for the strange formatting of the archived post.)

One thing I realized on this pilgrimage to Swayambunath: I’m a little obsessed with pictures of birds flying into scenes, like this photo in Peru and this one in Italy.

The rain cleared and the sun came out just in time for Helen and Joel’s beautiful wedding at the Newton White Mansion in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Thanks to the very talented Amanda Lucidon for second shooting this wedding with me.

Congratulations to the newlyweds!

I’m glad we detoured through the Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks on our way to Santa Fe. I’d seen pictures of these before but I couldn’t have imagined the beauty and wonder of hiking through the rocks myself. We hadn’t planned to hike to the top. I hadn’t planned on taking hundreds of pictures. Afterwards I wished we’d brought a picnic and I’d taken more photographs.

Riding Seoul’s Subway line 2 in January 2012. I think of Line 2 as the Green Line because this is its color on the Seoul subway map.

I didn’t imagine that owning an iPhone would change the way I photograph.

Pre-iPhone, I carried one of my big pro cameras with me everywhere. Bringing my 5D Mark II to a birthday party or a friend’s barbecue automatically put me in “professional photographer mode.” Every picture had to be perfectly composed, in perfect light, at the perfect time. I photographed many memorable moments but wasn’t really in the moment.

A couple years ago I bought a Canon G11, a small point-and-shoot camera. Since this wasn’t a professional camera, I thought I wouldn’t feel compelled to make perfect pictures with it. I would photograph on program mode, let the camera control everything. Wrong.

Last year I bought an iPhone. I didn’t give a thought to the phone’s camera, which it turns out produces pictures that are as high-quality as the ones that came out of my first digital SLR (the Canon 10D, for you gear geeks out there). I love the iPhone camera. I have almost no control over the exposure settings. Turns out this was what I needed to set me free. Now I’m more experimental. I make more photographs. I still think about composition, light and moment; I think it would be impossible for me not to think about those. But I don’t obsess over them. I just let the pictures happen and I’m more willing to make mistakes.

Thanks, iPhone.

A fake parachutist hangs over a temporary children’s exhibit at the Korean War Memorial museum in Seoul.

Bicycles rent for 3,000 won (about $3) per hour at Yeouido Park in Seoul.

Bus reflection in Seoul.

Riding the bus from Sokcho, on South Korea’s far northeastern coast, to Daegu, I took this picture where everything seems to bend toward the center of the photograph. I still can’t figure out what happened but I like the effect.

He was totally into Little Women. Then he noticed me photographing him and smiled his big smile.

Helen and Joel really couldn’t have picked a more stunning fall day than today for their engagement pictures. What a fun and beautiful afternoon we had walking around Meridian Hill Park, the National Mall and the Tidal Basin for pictures. Oh, how I love living in DC with all its wonderful places to photograph.