TITLE: Five Years Apart ; A Boy's Grow Up in Western Mongolia

In 2015 Summer, I visited a nomad family in Western Mongolia. Lived with them at their summer camp side for few days. Quickly I developed a good relationship with their son Semeer and his sisters and cousins. At that time, Semeer was about 7-8 years old. They'd like to follow me everywhere and were very curious my camera. I had such good time then and decided back there to visit again. Five years late, in Feb of 2020, I made another journey to visit Mongolia. This time I joined Semeer's family for a winter migration. Winter migration is to move herds from winter camp site to spring camp site. We walked 150 kms in 5 days and under sub 20 degrees. Semeer has grown up as a teenage now. He is not a playful kid anymore. He needs to help his father and uncles to herd the animals during migration. I really happy to see that Semeer's family is doing well. Everyone is heathy and the family is much better off than 5 years ago financially. We quick re-connected and had a wonderful time. I promised to his family that I will be back and to attend Semeer's wedding in the future.

AUTHOR: Kevin Shi (United States)

I am trained as an engineer but love photography. Three years ago I decided to quite my engineering job to focus on my photography passion. I love travel photography and would like to documenting the quickly vanished traditional lifestyles around the world. In additional, I do some portraits and still photography when I am not traveling.