It’s hard to put a spin on a visit to a soil lab and make it interesting. So I won’t try.

I visited the labs of IIAM, Mozambique’s agricultural research institute, to learn of their efforts to map levels of salinity in soil in the country. I saw lots of technicians in lab coats measuring all sorts of things in soil samples. It was actually pretty interesting.

But when I got back to the hotel and looked at the photos I didn’t see a bunch of laboratory equipment. I saw brilliant smiles. And as I sit waiting in the airport for my return to Australia and the completion of my six-country African assignment, it is the smiles that will remain etched on my mind forever.

My brief was to capture happy farmers and project partners. That was a pretty easy brief to complete to be honest. It was so easy to elicit a smile from those I photographed. And beautiful smiles at that. It was so much fun for me to single out a farmer or scientist and shoot away while others behind me helped coax out the perfect smile I sought. So much fun. Years from now when I look back at the photos I will re-live those fun times in Africa and hope that one day I can return to capture more smiles.

All images used on this page were photographed by Michael Major for the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture and used here under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0