Newsletter: Escapes: Reader photos take us around the world

Welcome to our favorite edition of the year. When you work in Travel, choosing your favorite is a little bit like anointing one of your children: We love all of them, but there’s something a little special about this one.

That’s the way we think about the issue devoted to your photographers, which we call the Summer Vacation Photo issue. For us, it’s an aesthetic festival that reminds us of how good photos make the world seem a little more accessible, a little more hospitable and a lot more beautiful.

Thank you to the hundreds of readers who sent in their photos. Your work takes us to places we might not otherwise see. Opening our eyes to other places and faces is the cornerstone of our work, and we thank you for it.

My name is Catharine Hamm, the Travel editor for The Los Angeles Times, and I am happy to share work that compels us to climb out of our easy chair, literally and figuratively.

Christopher Reynolds, Times Travel staffer, shared an email with me that drives that point home. Reynolds takes on the task of writing the captions for these photos, crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s, so to speak, and Matthew Ebiner of Covina, who submitted the Namibia photo below, responded to him with this anecdote:

“I communicated with you back around 1995 when you had written an article about Bolivia in the L.A. Times Travel section,” Ebiner wrote. “The article had your photo of the witches’ market in La Paz, Bolivia. I clipped the article since I was planning a trip to Bolivia for the summer of 1996.

“I brought it with me to the witches’ market and showed the photo to the lady vendors. They were so interested since they hadn’t seen the photo and I let them keep it. I believe I wrote you a letter afterwards (pre-email) telling you about taking your article down there and how it was well-received, and you wrote back to thank me for letting you know.”

Besides the beautiful images, three of the photographers also shared some Readers Recommend, which you’ll find toward the end of the newsletter. Enjoy these beautiful images, and please offer a round of applause for efforts that bring the world closer to all of us. We offer a smattering here, but you can find all of them online at latimes.com/travel.

Stelvio Pass, Italy, Dan Wyman, Oceanside

Wyman and his brother, Dave, took a driving-and-bicycling trip in Italy in July. Stelvio Pass was a highlight, the highest paved road in the Italian Alps and beloved by bicyclists, motorcyclists and sports car enthusiasts. “You have to make these wide turns and hope nobody is coming the other way,” Wyman said. He took this picture from the patio of Rifugio Garibaldi, a mountaintop lodge at 9,045 feet. His camera: a Sony NEX-5R.

Pantanal, Brazil, Adam Burnstine, La Cañada Flintridge

Burnstine, a 16-year-old high school junior, in August caught this image of a capuchin monkey in Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands. “He was sitting in a tree and he let us get really close,” said Burnstine, who took the picture with a Canon 7D.

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