2007-08-01 Nara, Japan, 1976 Photograph by George F. Mobley A harvester walks amid undulating waves of tea plants in the mountainous Nara Prefecture in central Japan. Located 23 miles (37 kilometers) south of Kyoto, Nara was Japan's first real capital city, where artists, scholars, and statesmen began to develop an artistically and religiously rich civilization.
(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, 揔yoto and Nara: Keepers of Japan抯 Past,?June 1976, National Geographic magazine)
2007-08-02 India, 1996 Photograph by Cary Wolinsky Clad in shades of pink and white, celebrants of the Indian festival of Holi gather to watch a play in Vrindavan in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The play, performed throughout India during Holi, recounts the love story of Hindu god Krishna and the common cowherd Radha. For Hindus, the fable represents human longing for the divine. (Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, 揟he Quest for Color,?July 1999, National Geographic magazine)
2007-08-03 Venice, Italy, 1994 Photograph by Sam Abell An ornate stage prop makes a dramatic exit through the window of Venice's La Fenice Opera House. Built on wooden pilings sunk in the ooze of a backwater lagoon, Venice rose over a millennium to become a city-state of dazzling power. By the 15th century, it was the envy of Europe.
(Text adapted from and photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, 揤enice: More Than a Dream,?February 1995, National Geographic magazine)
2007-08-04 Angola, Louisiana, 1999 Photograph by William Albert Allard Picking cotton at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola (one of the few places in the U.S. where cotton is still picked by hand), these convicts evoke blues music's ancestry. The roots of the blues are in the cotton fields of the South where slaves would sing to keep the blue devils at bay. The cadence of those field songs later came to shape the musical structure of today's blues. (Text adapted from and photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Traveling the Blues Highway," April 1999, National Geographic magazine)
2007-08-05 Mexico, 1999 Photograph by Jonathan Tourtellot Colorful shawls worn by Tarahumara Indian women dry on a line in Mexico's Copper Canyons. Until recently, the remoteness of the Tarahumara's homeland—the canyons' deep, rock-lined gorges—has allowed these intensely shy people to preserve much of their native culture. But a decade of government-promoted tourism in the region is bringing the outside world to their doorstep.
(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "The Two Faces of Tourism," July/August 1999, National Geographic Traveler magazine)
2007-08-06 Hiroshima, Japan, 1997 Photograph by Jodi Cobb Young fans cheer for their home team, the Hiroshima Toyo Carp, in a 32,000-seat stadium built within striking distance of the Aioi Bridge- the target of the world's first atomic bomb. The bomb was detonated by the United States of America on August 6, 1945. (Text adapted from and photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Hiroshima: Up From Ground Zero," August 1995, National Geographic magazine)
2007-08-07 United Kingdom, 1981 Photograph by Steve Raymer An adult cheetah rests in the grass at a Jersey zoo. Founded on this English Channel island in 1959 by zoologist Gerald Durrell, the Jersey Trust Zoo (now called Durrell Wildlife) protects and breeds more than 100 endangered species, including birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians. Despite its somewhat remote location, some 750,000 tourists visit the facility every year. (Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Wild Cargo: the Business of Smuggling Animals," March 1981, National Geographic magazine)
2007-08-08 Razgrad, Bulgaria, 1962 Photograph by James P. Blair On his journey through the lands traversed by 11th-century Crusaders in pursuit of control of the Holy Land, photographer James P. Blair encountered a patchwork of fire-cleared fields south of Razgrad, Bulgaria. (Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "In the Crusaders' Footsteps," June 1962, National Geographic magazine)
2007-08-09 Portugal, 1957 Photograph by Robert F. Sisson A column of black ash and steam rises over the village of Capelo on the Azores island of Faial. The source of this 1957 eruption, an undersea volcano just off Faial's southern shore called Ilha Nova, sent car-sized boulders into the air, covered Capelo in ash, and created a new island that eventually connected with Faial and lengthened the island by more than half a mile (0.8 kilometers). (Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "A New Volcano Bursts From the Atlantic," June 1958, National Geographic magazine)
2007-08-10 Alberobello, Italy, 1979 Photograph by O. Louis Mazzatenta An aerial view shows the famous cone-shaped, limestone-slab roofs of Alberobello, Italy. The peculiar rooflines of these cottages, called trulli, help move rainwater to aquifers, and their extremely thick, stuccoed walls help keep the homes cool. Earlier trulli were built without stucco, supposedly to allow residents to dismantle them easily when tax collectors approached and avoid property taxes.
(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Down the Ancient Appian Way," June 1981, National Geographic magazine)