Thank you for visiting.

The images on this site are a record of where my heart has been for the past fourteen years, since I first picked up a camera in earnest in 2012. I didn’t set out to become a photographer. I was already on the road, leading the work I started in 1993 with Peace Gospel and She Has Hope: programs for orphans and trafficking survivors across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The pictures grew out of that fieldwork. I wanted a way to remember the people and the places, and to let others see them without dressing any of it up.

I still lead the nonprofit. Photography became a second vocation alongside it. I still can’t quite believe some of it: work published by National Geographic and the United Nations, and pictures that have shown up in periodicals, books, advertising, and exhibitions around the world. None of that was the plan when I started shooting. Some of the prints have been donated to charity auctions supporting the same communities in the photographs.

Houston is home. The assignments still take me far from it. If something here stays with you, I’m glad. That’s the whole point.

All images on this website are protected by international copyright law © 2014-2026 Kirby Trapolino, member, Professional Photographers of America. I can be reached via the contact form or DM on my Instagram account where you can see my most recent photography.