 Those of you familiar with my blog and past work know that I love Thailand's Vegetarian Festival. However there have been times when the rainy season was in full swing during the street procession. In others words outside mid morning was dark and dark is usually the death of digital. There is a new program out there that run a battery of test, sharpening, reduces noise and many others. My images are sharper now and the pesky low light high asa noise is gone. More soon. Devotees to Thailand's Vegetarian Festival parade in rain during a street procession
Back in the day I was always on the hunt for images in Southeast Asia. I could have just set back and take general and spot news assignments as they came. However, I had waited 15 years for the posting in Thailand to open and I was not about to waste it sitting in an office in Bangkok. I lived and still do with the notion that each day is a gift with no guarantee of a tomorrow. I loved to shoot, since I was 16 years old. Try as I might I just can not get on the video band wagon. I will pass on soon and all I have left are my images.  Normally I post black and white photos on my blog but there are exceptions. This novice Buddhist monk in a field of sunflowers is a cool image for sure.
One of my favorite Thai celebrations is the Tattoo Festival annually held on the first Saturday of March at the famed Wat Bang Phra temple in Nakhon Chai Si, about 50 kilometers west of Bangkok. I found myself initially running around in circles trying to photograph the festival known locally as Wai Kru because it's difficult to fathom without doing some research ahead of time. It took about three years before I understood that there was an order to the seeming madness and that patience would reward me with stronger images. Wat Bang Phra is famous for its intricate tattoos that monks delicately etch on the bodies of the temple's followers with thin bamboo needles. The devotees who come for tattoos believe that the inkings are magical and can protect them from a variety of hazards, including bullets, knives and even jealous husbands. Numerous devotees sport detailed designs over their entire upper bodies and after adding new images, oftentimes take on the spirit of an animal, usually a tiger. Many of the tattooed disciples sit in the temple courtyard on the day of the festival and become spiritually entranced. Some even try to madly rush a stage that displays a statue of Buddhist monk Luang Por Boon, their deceased head master. But waiting to stop the frenzied dash is an army of volunteers and soldiers. Also waiting is a battalion of photographers looking for shots of the insanity. The strange spectacle at times resembles an all-out street fight. Transitioning from shooting film to digital images completely spoiled me. Had I never known anything other thanTransitioning from shooting film to digital images completely spoiled me. Had I never known anything other than a Nikon LS4000 film scanner my mind would have always been wrapped around the 15 minutes that one quality scan would require. Add in the time spent working on the image in Adobe LightRoom and then saving the file to a hard drive would mean about an hour for the completion of one frame. Along came digital, fortunately, and instead of chugging along at 20 mph I zoomed to 300 mph. These days, scanning images would require a functioning darkroom and dust free office. It would also require that I have some film to soup, scan and print on matte paper with a full archival wash. With digital images, however, I can zip from start to finish in about 10 minutes, never get my hands wet and thanks to digital programs such as Silver Efex Pro, simulate just about any Tri X film one could imagine. I lost my love for the art of making big prints the day Vin Alabiso, then the AP's executive photo editor, introduced me to digital photography at a company workshop. a Nikon LS4000 film scanner my mind would have always been wrapped around the 15 minutes that one quality scan would require. Add in the time spent working on the image in Adobe LightRoom and then saving the file to a hard drive would mean about an hour for the completion of one frame. Along came digital, fortunately, and instead of chugging along at 20 mph I zoomed to 300 mph. These days, scanning images would require a functioning darkroom and dust free office. It would also require that I have some film to soup, scan and print on matte paper with a full archival wash. With digital images, however, I can zip from start to finish in about 10 minutes, never get my hands wet and thanks to digital programs such as Silver Efex Pro, simulate just about any Tri X film one could imagine. I lost my love for the art of making big prints the day Vin Alabiso, then the AP's executive photo editor, introduced me to digital photography at a company workshop.  Novice Buddhist monks in Yangon This is a sample of myself in different places in south and southeast asia  Near the Thai Malaysia border  on the Lao-China border  northern Laos  Kathmandu, Nepal  Shomali Valley, Afghanistan |