Richard Alma Photography

01/06/2026

Cambodia, Angkor Wat Temples.

30/05/2026

Cambodia, Angkor Wat.

Angkor Wat was the first place I ever photographed a real body of work. I’d just spent a lot of money on Nikon gear I didn’t fully understand — reading the manual on the flight over, figuring it out as I went. I was winging it, like I often do. Looking back, that trip changed everything.

I’ve returned three times over the last twenty years, and each visit has felt different. Not because the place has changed, but because I have. The heat, the scale, the way the temples rise out of the jungle — it still hits you the same way every time.

There’s a weight to the history here. Angkor was once the centre of the Khmer Empire, one of the largest pre-industrial cities in the world, before it was abandoned and slowly reclaimed by the jungle. More recently, Cambodia lived through the brutality of the Khmer Rouge and years of conflict. You still see traces of that — bullet marks left in some of the stone. You don’t always notice it straight away, but it’s there.

It was here I first started photographing monks. At the time I didn’t think too much about it — I was just drawn to them. The colour, the stillness, the contrast against the stone. Over time it became something more. Each visit brought me a little closer to Buddhism, not in a formal way, but in how I started to see things in my own life and worldview. I’ve made friendships here that have stayed with me. Monks I’m still in touch with today.

The first images I took here ended up becoming an exhibition. It did well. And without realising it at the time, it set everything in motion. A lot of what I’ve done since traces back to this place.

There’s something about Angkor Wat I can’t fully explain. It’s not just the temples, or the history, or even the scale. It’s the feeling of being there — the people, the openness, the way things seem to meet you where you are. Cambodia has a quiet strength to it, and a warmth that stays long after you leave. I keep going back. It never feels finished.

19/05/2026

Lotus Gate, City Palace — Jaipur, India

23/12/2025

Jaipur, India.

📷

01/12/2025

Jaipur hits you with colour, texture, emotion and life the moment you step into it.

22/09/2025

Kagbeni, Nepal — Upper Mustang Region

Wandering the dirt and worn-stone streets of Kagbeni felt like stepping into another world. The village sits where the Kali Gandaki River meets the Jhong Khola stream, cradled in a stark valley with the Upper Mustang ranges rising all around. For centuries it’s been a gateway between Nepal and Tibet, a stop along the old salt-trading routes.

One afternoon I found Café Applebee, perched above the wide dry riverbed, with a view that stopped me in my tracks. A balcony with that kind of view is rare — and not another person in the café.

I went back each day and sat there for hours. Sometimes I took photos, often I didn’t. Goat bells, a shepherd passing, the wind through the valley — mostly it was silence.

The apple pie at the café was unforgettable, made from Himalayan apples grown here for more than 50 years.

The strange thing is, Kagbeni was my version of photographer’s heaven — and yet I took fewer photos than ever. Partly because there was too much to capture, and partly because I just wanted to experience the beauty around me. In the end, who cares about another IG image for a handful of likes? That’s not been why I take photos for many years now. Sure, in the beginning it was about validation, being ‘seen’ as a photographer, but on this trip I dropped deeper into what it really is for me: a meditative practice — a way of connecting with the world, and with myself, my soul, beyond the camera.

.applebee

22/09/2025

Kagbeni, Nepal — Upper Mustang Region

Wandering the dirt and worn-stone streets of Kagbeni felt like stepping into another world. The village sits where the Kali Gandaki River meets the Jhong Khola stream, cradled in a stark valley with the Upper Mustang ranges rising all around. For centuries it’s been a gateway between Nepal and Tibet, a stop along the old salt-trading routes.

07/06/2025

In Jaipur there was never a dull walk down a side street. I love the random shops built into the old buildings, how all the space is used — somehow, even if to me it looks oddly so at times, it works.

06/06/2025