One of the first things you see when walking into Small World Gallery is the colorful rack of greeting cards featuring my photographs from around the world. It’s been a fixture in Small World since the beginning in 2002. And it is something else in the world of National Geographic photographers:  rare!

Time and again I watch as people browse the collection, some drawn to the Flint Hills and Kansas cards, some to exotic locations like the Arctic or the Pyramids, some burrowing into my Scotland collection, and some just finding a personal connection — cats, windmills, sunsets, long roads.

Newcomers to Small World Gallery sometimes get confused when I tell them I’ve been photographing Cuba for 40 years. I can’t blame them; you’d naturally think of someplace like Havana when Cuba is mentioned. And any place worth 40 years of attention must be exotic, you’d think, celebrated and renowned.