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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.
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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 .During my time as the chief photographer for The Associated Press in Southeast Asia, I spent a lot of time working in Cambodia. Back then, Cambodia struggled with 20 years of civil war and genocide waged by Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge. My first assignment was to illustrate a story about police officers assigned to stop smugglers from stealing art treasures. Zooming around the temples on dirt bikes, the officers were known as "Angkor's Angels." There was not much I could do with the story. In the end, I did some individual portraits and left it at that. But I was in Cambodia, and it was something to see back in 1997. In Siem Reap, just a couple of kilometers from one of the world's largest religious complexes, the roads were mostly dirt, and mingled with the average citizens were former Khmer Rouge soldiers. There were some significant moments for me as a photojournalist in Cambodia. I photographed Pol Pot's death scene in 1998 and was at the Phnom Penh airport on my way back to Bangkok when a Vietnam Air flight crashed on landing, killing 68 passengers. Only a baby survived. I watched it as it happened from a departure lounge window. I dashed out of the terminal building, threw myself and cameras in the back of an emergency truck, and stood in a dry rice paddy within three minutes—all around me, the dead, the dying and debris. The scenes of death and destruction were something I have never forgotten. My life changed forever on that day,  Near the Thai-Cambodian border March of 1998 a young Khmer Rouge soldiers peers out from a barbed wire enclosure.  Contrasted against the deforested jungle near Pailin, A young disabled Cambodian girl is seen near her home.  Three Cambodians ride near a destroyed tank along the Thai-Cambodian border.  A landmine victim is brought to an emergency clinic near the Thai-Cambodian border in March of 1998.  Street children gather outside a market in Phnom Penh in February of 1997, AuthorDavid Lee Longstreath is a retired wire service photographer with more than 40 years experience on assignments around the world. He currently lives in upcountry Thailand. Sitwe, Myanmar, is a place where time stopped 50 years ago. In the western part of what was once known as Burma, it is a backwater where tourists are a rare sight. I had come to this location on assignment for a non-governmental organization to document recent abuses of the ethnic Rohingya, a Muslim minority. Switee, located on an island between two rivers, empties into the Bay of Bengal. I have a habit of walking the streets of a new job early in the morning. Primarily because early morning light is my favorite, also I get a feel for the people of an area this way. Sitwe was no different though I was shocked to see how backward it looked. No motorcycle taxis. Just rickshaws. No modern clothes, not even western t-shirts. No internet cafes, no cafes at all. It seemed the only place I was going to get a meal was my two-star hotel. It was the usual cold fried egg and cheap hotdogs. You made toast from stale bread; the coffee was jet back mud. I was the only westerner in the dining room for the next four days each morning. The NGO had arranged to have me picked up each morning at 8 am and taken to a refugee camp where I was supposed to document the Rohingya refugees. Later, I learned it was the cleanest camp in Sitwe, seems forces did not want me to report on the other refugee camps. The faces I found on the streets of Sitwe were remarkable. Men with features that seemed etched in stone, full of character, and equipped with warm smiles. The remainder of the assignment, I spent my off hours looking for just that measure of "Face Value."   I first honed my skill as a street photographer when I realized I could not pass up the opportunity to record environmental portraits. Others in my US Navy crew had trouble approaching people in foreign countries and asking to shoot. Doing it on the sly never appealed to me, and I developed this style of just walking up and asking, smiling and talking, and never allowing my subject to say no. "Here, look at the camera and then go from there. When digital came along, I added the ability to show my subjects what I was doing, opening up even more opportunities. I am sharing on Instagram images, have a look.
 On this night, well into the late hours, a call came for help with several injured motorcyclists. At the scene, there were at least four in the middle of a busy intersection. In front of me, a young Thai woman came out of the crowd to comfort one of the crash victims. I was working on a photo story of a group of volunteer rescue workers from Buddhist charities. They are a backup to the city's overburdened hospital-run ambulance fleet, often arriving first on the scene to provide triage or a free trip to the morgue. This and others have earned the nickname "Body Snatchers," as in the past, rival rescue squads would arrive at a scene simultaneously and then fight over the right to collect the dead. Most Thais get paid at the end of the month. Friday night paydays are the worst, with alcohol causing many road fatalities. Thailand is one of the worst places in the world for death in road accidents.
 There are many unusual religious and cultural festivals in Thailand and Southeast Asia. At Wat Bang Pra in Nakhon Chaisi, Thailand, on the outskirts of Bangkok, Buddhist monks ink traditional tattoos. Devotees in a trance-like state rush toward a sacred statue of their masters. It becomes pure chaos. Caution to photographers attending the festival, rushing devotees crash into spectators at a frightening speed.
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