This gracious woman, who runs a coffee plantation in the south of Laos, knows I am making a picture of her, and seems very comfortable with it. This is a three quarters view portrait. The subject does not look at the camera, nor does she face fully away. She stands comfortably, smiling and relaxed. While her eyes look away, she still shows her full face to me. I organized this portrait with as much, if not more, emphasis on environmental details as on the woman. Plastic bags and a towel hang on a rack at left, creating a series of rhythmic vertical lines. Vertical gray columns, one of them supporting a broom, offer additional vertical lines that carry us to the subject herself. The colors are warm, soft and muted. I made this image in the full shadow of a covered portico, allowing sunlight to be reflected into it from three sides. It made an excellent photographic “studio.” When we study this image, we come to know this woman, her surroundings, her personality and attitude. And that, in my view, is what an expressive travel portrait should accomplish.