A Gallery of Bill’s Silly Photo Ops

Last updated Nov. 29, 2011

Over many years of traveling, either while working as a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post or on holiday with my family, I often carried a little “happy snap” camera for use in taking “silly photo ops.” While this long ago became quite tiresome for those traveling with me, it has never failed to amuse me to no end. At age 75, I’m still snapping the silly photo ops whenever they present themselves.  Yes, you’d be surprised how long I’ve been able to prolong adolescence.

  Here are some of the results from 1978 to present:

Old gaols are irresistible to Photo Op enthusiasts	If I visit an ancient Greek Olympic track, what else do you think I’m going to do? Make a run for it!	Or if I visit an ancient ruin, do you think I can pass up a ready-made silly photo op? Yes, anyone traveling with me invariably rolls their eyes at these antics, but just look at the photo archive I’ve made.
Being “baptized” on the Jordan River in Palestine	The site of biblical Armageddon in present-day Israel presented a photo opportunity I couldn’t refuse. Sometimes, seriously religious travelers we encounter look a bit askance at my antics. Well, such is life.	Stockade at London Tower of  London was a natural for yet another silly Photo Op whilst visiting England.
St. Katherine’s monastery in the Sinai desert, near what is purported to be the biblical burning bush, presented another silly photo op.  Now and then I was chased away by security.  But more often than not other tourists at these sites found it quite amusing that a grown man would disgrace himself so thoroughly, sometimes in front of his children. Of well, if they can’t take a joke, then….well, you know.	A suit of armor, a camera, a stuffy museum. What else could a photo opportunity fanatic ask for? But silly photo ops carry risks, i.e. museum guards on the lookout for idiots tinkering with the priceless antiquities.	This famous slightly off-kilter building in England’s Cotswolds district triggered the predictable “Stop! Get the camera!” Sarah, Alma and Lisa joined in.
Sarah and Lisa happily act out a stunt in the U.K.	This bullring in Seville didn’t have any bulls, but it had a lot of…well, you get the drift.	We stayed at Madrid’s Ritz Hotel for a couple of nights and here’s what happened when the bill came. Notice the gold-plated bathroom fixtures.
While traveling in Spain, yet another Photo Op presented itself. This time is was me tickling the feet of a statue.	Bathroom humor is fair game for silly Photo Ops	I’ve long since forgotten where in rural India I found this roadside grave while on my way to a story, but it seemed a bit incomplete to me so I got out the camera.
Irreverence is always a staple of silly Photo Ops	In a Kenyan game reserve, acting quite silly	I couldn’t resist a headless statute in Thailand
Mimicry is a recurring theme in silly Photo Ops	Fake seasickness on the high seas (well, on a ferry)	Water, water! What?  Not in Death Valley? Actually, I’ve struck this same pose in deserts in India, Pakistan, Egypt, southern Africa, Saudi Arabia and Australia. I never tire of this gag shot .
Pretending to be almost falling off cliffs is fairly routine, as in this Grand Canyon pose. How else would you pose at the edge of the Grand Canyon?	Yes, worshippers sometimes give me menacing looks when they see me posing for a silly Photo Op	At the helm during a” perfect storm” (at a museum dry dock in New Zealand in this case).
At the Parthenon in Athens,  role playing as Sampson bringing down the temple (Okay, wrong location, but you have to seize photo ops whenever they present themselves, no matter if the location is a bit off.	Posing at the confluence of the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean, in Western Australia. The sign points in either direction toward the two oceans at a lighthouse near Freemantle, Australia.	We stumbled across this Spanish monastery in Western Australia, and out came the camera.
I have jail poses from all over the world, of course.	……and Tarzan swinging-vine poses, too.	Believe it or not, this was taken years before the previous photo. Repetition is not beneath me.
Yawns at boring museum exhibits are old hat to me.	…..as are yawning poses at botanical gardens.	Statues are fair game as props in silly photo ops. This photo is of a koala figurine and a strange man pretending to be a koala hugging a tree.
	The repetition factor sometimes weighs heavily on Alma (or fellow journalists when I was traveling on assignment), but, hey, the world needs these priceless photographs.  For example, how often do you get to see a 70-year-old falling off a cliff in New Zealand?	This particular kangaroo in an Australian wildlife park gave me a bored look and then turned and hopped away for some peace and quiet. Can you blame him?
Fellow Aussie traveler, Ray, helped me set up this silly photo op at a wrestling match in Mongolia. Ray, from rural New South Wales, was a great bloke and an accomplished jazz pianist too.	Even though I originally captioned this photo op as taking place in Los Angeles, Lisa informs me that it actually was taken in Hong Kong during a visit. Oh well, I have so many of them it’s hard to keep them straight in my mind.	Before crocodile hunter Steve Irwin was killed by a sting ray in 2006, we visited his famous crocodile zoo in Queensland, and I mimicked his famous pose. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, they say.
An Antarctic expedition museum in New Zealand provided the backdrop for a couple of silly photo ops that I couldn’t pass up.	Another Antarctic museum gag shot.	You might wonder whether Alma gets tired of having to take these silly photos. Of course she does, but remember, marriage is “for better and for worse.” This photo was actually taken in St. Petersburg, not Moscow.
Jacob, Lisa, Alma and I visited a museum during Jacob and Lisa’s visit to Chicago, and silly photo ops abounded, much to my delight. The dairy exhibit, of course, had to feature a mad cow biting a mad museum visitor.	Bill clowning around in Chicago Science Museum. How could we possibly walk through the cardiology exhibit without having a fake heart attack drama.	The Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C., features a sculpture scene from the Great Depression, so naturally I had to get at the end of the bread line. The portly gentleman in the foreground has just shot a disapproving glance in my direction and is walking away in disgust.  Oh well, if you can’t take a joke you know what you can do, fella!
Museums are fertile ground for silly Photo Ops, this one suggesting a scene from a Weightwatchers meeting.	Yet another yawning pose, this one at a needlepoint exhibit at Melbourne’s annual Royal Show. I have many more yawning photos, as you can imagine. Monkey see, monkey do in Broome, W. Australia.	This wax figure at a museum exhibit in Washington provided an opportunity for a snooping pose. Leonardo DiCaprio or just another silly Photo Op? This shot was taken off the coast of Western Australia.
Leonardo DiCaprio I’m not, but I can act like him. This pose was made while sailing off the coast of Bali to an island where we did some snorkeling.	A yawning photo op at a ceramics display in Japan.	This New Zealand museum featured an exhibit on transported convicts, so naturally I joined right in. Sometimes in these situations, museum employees say something about calling Security,  but I pay no mind to that. When you have a lifelong mission to capture every silly photo op that presents itself, you just have to plough right ahead and not concern yourself with little obstacles like rules and regulations.

Hamming it up a bit with mujhadeen fighters at Chaman in the lawless tribal area on the Afghan border as they assembled to do battle with the Soviet Army. The border was literally a few meters from here, but borders don’t mean anything in this region of the world.  Fighters and journalists crossed back and forth at will. The guy next to me is demonstrating Afghan gun safety practices. I’d like to think that the safety on his AK-47 was on.	In Zululand, South Africa,  there was only one white guy celebrating Shaka Zulu Day with knobkerries (clubs) and assegais (short stabbing spears), and as you can see some of the locals behind me looked like were thinking of re-enacting the 1879 battle of  Isandlwana, where the white guys didn’t fare too well  against 12,000 Zulu warriors.
Pouring tea into a snorkel mask? Don’t try this at home.	Is this an erratic snorkeler or beached whale on a poolside bar in Bali? Your guess is as good as anybody’s.  The barman turned away in embarrassment.
For the first time ever, the “Bill’s Silly Photo Ops” Page has guest contributors—our dear friends Dennis Floyd and his partner, Pat Knox, who sent us this photo and the one to the right from their trip to Jordan and Egypt. They capture the spirit of Silly Photo Ops and prove that anyone can play this game. Here’s Dennis, taking a match to the “burning bush” in Petra, Jordan. In the biblical narrative, Yahweh (God) is said to have spoken to Moses from the burning bush, instructing him to take the Israelites out of Egypt.  Actually, there are several burning bushes in the region to entice the tourists, including one at St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai desert, at which I clowned around 30 years ago much as Dennis is doing here.  Evidentially neither of us has grown up much since then.	Here’s Pat, who somehow stretched herself to the size of Cairo’s famous Sphinx during a trip to Egypt with partner Dennis. We haven’t worked out exactly how this was done, but some suspicion has focused on an enterprising tour guide who knows how to shake an Egyptian pound or two out of an easy mark.
A death-defying act in a tourist shop in Broome, Western Australia.   Amazingly, this three-meter-long crocodile responded to my command of “stay!”	Behind me is a crystal vortex that emits good karma for true believers. You can plainly see that the vortex’s vibes are working well for this true believer.  We encountered a six-foot crystal Buddha at a crystal meditation centre on this trip. As usual Alma had to be pressured into the embarrassing job of taking the picture without attracting the attention of other tourists who tend to take this stuff seriously. That’s one of the occupational hazards of setting up Silly Photo Ops. But I reckon it is well worth the risks. The crystal vortex people have obligingly provided photo ops at many of the remote places we’ve visited, including this site in Broome, Western Australia. I hope they are not offended if they happen to see this web site, although you know the old saying, “The only thing worse than bad publicity is no publicity.”
“Ready, aim, fire!” shouts Bill.  Well, not just yet, if you don’t mind.	“Damn the torpedoes!  Full speed ahead!,” declared Admiral David Farragut in 1864 at the Battle of Mobile Bay. Well, two can play that game.
“Let me out of here!” Bill screams in Dublin gaol	Lookalikes in a Chinese restaurant
Working with James Joyce in Dublin’s Joyce Museum	Bill hanging out with Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (left) and his father, Sir William Wilde, on a street in Dublin.  Ireland has had an amazing number of literary giants for a country its size, Oscar Wilde among them.
Apeman or  just  some nutter trying to demonstrate at the British Museum’s Charles Darwin exhibit that  man evolved from the ape?  Looks like monkey business to me. But this website isn’t called Silly Photo Ops for nothing.

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