Charles O. Cecil spent 23 years working and living in the Arab World and Africa during his 36-year career in the United States Foreign Service. During that time he covered the Third World religious, environmental, and economic development topics, and more particularly the Islamic culture. He’s now expanding coverage into South Asia and Latin America. He retired in 2001 and decided to devote himself full-time to editorial stock photography and writing. His articles are designed in a manner that gives travelers the cultural and historical background they need so as to get the most out of their ventures into a foreign culture. Cecil speaks Arabic and French and is learning Spanish. He is especially interested in environmental issues, Islamic culture, economic development in the third world, including education, agriculture, and issues of public health.
Lately, he has been adding Buddhist and Hindu cultural areas to his circle of interest. In 2012, he was selected as an American Society of Media Photographers’ best photographer. Cecil says he has no doubt that the daily critiques of his work has contributed enormously to the development of his photographic eye. His art has been gradually improving over the years, he thinks, but the Momenta workshop that he attended was like he was beamed up into a higher dimension of perceptivity. Since that time he’s been much more cognizant of the need to exclude extraneous, unnecessary material from his images. Many who have viewed his art agree that he’s very keen to detail making his images look as realistic as possible.
