Worldwide Photo Walk - August 23rd: Bangkok

The Worldwide Photo Walk takes place on August 23rd. Visit the link to find locations in your area where a walk is taking place. Each walk is limited to 50 participants so I recommend you sign up soon if you want to take part.

I’m excited to announce the Bangkok Photo Walk, hosted by one of the friendliest, most charming, most professional and most handsome photographers in South East Asia. No, not Matt Brandon, he’s leading a walk in Penang, it’s me you fools.

Yes, I’m delighted to be leading the Bangkok walk and look forward to meeting up with other photo walkers on August 23rd. The walk is completely free to attend but you will need to sign-up as soon as possible as many walks are already full. It promises to be a great opportunity to meet up with other local photographers.

Participants will also be able to upload pictures taken on the walk to a special Flickr group and there are fabulous prizes available for the best photos of the day. The walk will last for approximately two hours and finish at a restaurant where we’ll be able to chill out, chimp* our photos, and chat.

If you have any questions then feel free to e-mail me. In the mean time, here’s the link again.

(*chimping=check out the introductory Photo Walk video for an explanation and demonstration!)

August's Free Desktop Wallpaper: The Red Wall

The free desktop wallpaper for August is one of a series that I’ve been taking near my home in Bangkok.

The red wall provides a great backdrop against which to isolate subjects who drive, cycle or walk past.

Stand on the corner opposite the red wall for more than a few minutes and it becomes clear why Thailand is known as the Land of Smiles.

AOP Open Public Choice Vote

The annual Association of Photographers Awards is now open for the public to vote for their favourite images. Whilst the judges have already selected the ‘Best in Show’ and their own personal favourites, the Public Vote is arguably the prize that the competing photographers will be most honoured to win.

There are 82 photographs to choose from and, as is the case every year, the subject matter varies as much as the photographic styles employed. Take a few minutes to look through the entries and register a vote for your favourite.

–UPDATE–

I’ve looked through the 82 images and found it difficult to choose my favourite. There are several that I enjoyed so I’ll go through them again. However, I note that there were 1700 entries from which these 82 have been selected. That means that there were 1618 pictures that were worse than the one I’ve pasted in below. I’m not passing any judgements, it’s simply an observation. I’d be interested to know what your views are on the 82 photos that the judges selected. What’s your favourite? What did you think of the standard overall?

Life is Beautiful

I awarded myself a day off today and took the Skytrain to Silom where the Kathmandu Photo Gallery is located. The gallery is owned and run by photographer Manit Sriwanichpoom. His own photos are exhibited on the ground floor whilst the first floor is reserved for different exhibitions.

I have to apologise for the poor reproduction of this great postcard. There were a pile of them on the table in the gallery and I thought you’d enjoy seeing it but I’m in-between scanners so this is photographed with my laptop’s iSight camera.

The card promotes an exhibition which, by coincidence, opens tomorrow. It’s entitled “Life is Beautiful - A photo exhibition for living together” and features Manit’s photographs of children with HIV/AIDS.

Yes, it’s a real double-take moment isn’t it. As the exhibition web site points out, these children have the misfortune not only of being born with HIV/AIDS but must also contend with a society that tends to stigmatise them. Indeed, the aim of the exhibition is to overcome some of those prejudices and we can only hope that it succeeds.

The exhibition launch is tomorrow evening and I hope to go along to see the photos first-hand. If you’re in Bangkok, please go and show your support too. The Kathmandu Gallery is five minutes from Surasak BTS, near the Indian temple. The Opening Party is from 6.30pm to 9pm.

Dodging the showers and tuk-tuk drivers I walked all the way back to Sukhumvit via the Neilson Hays Library, where there was another small photo exhibition by Ayako Tsuda entitled “Crossing Borders” with images from Morocco, Greece, Norway and a lovely shot of a girl on a bridge somewhere in France. I can’t find much more information online unfortunately so you’ll have to take my word that it was a pleasant exhibition to enjoy over a pot of Earl Grey.
By the time I’d walked home through Lumpini Park the sun was setting and doing a pretty good job of painting the Bangkok skyline with a palette of colours so delightful as to make you pause and say “nice”.

Today was such a success that I’m thinking of making my day off a regular event.

Lightroom 2 Full Release - Spot the Difference

Ready for a little game of Spot the Difference?

The full release of Lightroom 2 is released today. You can download it from the Internet. No box, no disk, no shipping costs. Excellent.

If you live in the United States the full package will cost you $299.00. If you live in the UK the very same download will cost you the equivalent of $410.02. Even my rudimentary mathematical skills can calculate that it’s more than 33% more expensive in the UK.

If you have already purchased Lightroom 1 then you can buy the upgrade. In the States it’ll cost just $99, in the UK it’s the equivalent of $161.68. Over 60% more expensive.

Adobe claim that marketing is more expensive in Europe. Or pencils or something. I can’t quite remember their explanation but clearly it’s bollocks nonsense.

I live in Thailand so you would be think I’d be free to choose from where I buy my download. As there’s no virtual store in Thailand I can buy from the UK, US, Australia, Hong Kong, wherever. Except it’s not possible to change the address on your Adobe account. Once you live somewhere Adobe won’t suffer the inconvenience of you moving elsewhere.

OK, that’s enough. Suffice to say that when you’re buying an online download any arguments about local markets are clearly ridiculous and pricing should be the same for all of us. Especially me.

The AOP have previously suggested a temporary boycott of Adobe products and perhaps that suggestion will come up again. I’m certainly prepared to wait it out. I wonder how it would pan out if it were more expensive in the States? Anyway, Adobe = bad!

How the human brain interprets what it sees

The way the human brain interprets the images we see is quite extraordinary when you think about it. Presented with a completely unfamiliar scene, with an subject shown from an unfamilar angle and from a peculiar perspective we instantly know what it is.

So accurate is our brain’s interpretations of visual information that we actually entertain ourselves with optical illusions, things designed to throw the brain off course, enjoying the unfamiliar sensation of having our minds fooled for once.

I’ve been photographing in Bangkok solidly for two days in order to produce work for two magazine articles. I’ve shot the obvious things from the usual angles but looking to keep things fresh have also tried to find some groovily different perspectives.

Despite being tiny in the frame and shot from a very unfamiliar angle you probably knew what the subject of this photograph was before you’d even really registered the whole image. Did you? I’d be interested to know.

I befriended three monks at Bangkok’s Temple of Dawn (Wat Arun) this afternoon. I knew that I wanted to get some different angles and didn’t want to stalk them without them knowing so we played a game where we all walked up and down and around the main Chedi and when we saw each other we’d wave and take a photo. As they all had cameras they got a 3:1 ratio but I figured it was a fair exchange.

The photo above was the best of the set and is probably one of my favourite images from this two-day stint. I love the square stones and the angle of the lines that the paving makes. I’m pleased with the position of the monk, especially so as I nearly launched myself down a steep staircase in my rush to get to the point necessary to make it. It’s all for art though so it’s worth the effort.

Bangkok Traffic Photos

Bangkok rush-hour is almost never-ending. No matter what time of day you venture out, the traffic is very nearly gridlocked. Whilst that’s bad news if you want to get anywhere in a hurry, it’s good news if you’re a photographer as drivers of slow moving buses often lean out of their window to pose for a photograph.

And is it just me or, like policemen, do Tuk-Tuk drivers seem to be getting younger to you too?

The Red Wall

I knew it would be around here somewhere and think I may have found it.

Studio photographers have a pile of different backdrops and infinitely variable studio lights. Travel photographers make the best use of what’s readily available. Yet we’re the lucky ones as our available backdrops are infinite in number and whilst lighting can only be adjusted minimally if we’re not taking a portable studio with us we do still have access to a whole range of lighting effects.

I’ve been looking for a blank wall near my apartment. Something bright and colourful and with lots of character. Red would be ideal. Something that I can use as a backdrop to isolate subjects against.

This bright red wall, full of character, is just along the road from me. I’ve passed it perhaps twenty times and never noticed it. So much for my powers of observation!

Although, in my defence, I’ve only ever passed it on the back of a motorcycle taxi. It’s at the corner of a particularly narrow but busy junction where the bike drivers either mount the pavement to use as a shortcut or try to squeeze between the opposite wall and oncoming traffic to get through. I’m usually more concerned about the imminent parting of the ways between me and my kneecaps to worry about aesthetics. I wonder if that’s why the wall’s painted red? Perhaps it’s not paint at all.

I digress. I walked along the road yesterday and finally saw the wall. I had the little Canon G9 with me so stayed for a while and shot a few frames. As it’s busy there you have to be patient and wait for the queueing cars and lorries to clear the frame before shooting. I could have shot about a hundred frames of grinning taxi drivers. As they waited for the junction to clear they’d see me (they have special antennae to detect farang) and gurn through the taxi window. Perhaps that’s a project for another day.

So I have a wall and it’s only a short walk away. I’d like to shoot a series of images, each with a single person or couple in the frame and then stitch them all together in a kind of panorama. Ideally, I’d set up a tripod and cable release, set up the exposure, focus and sit on a chair, sipping tea and firing frames at the decisive moment. If I weren’t concerned about the possibility of me and my gear being swept away by a passing motorcycle taxi I might do just that.

Weekend links

Some links to juice up your weekend:

Brenda Ann Kenneally is the winner of the 2008 Canon Female Photojournalist award. The prize of €8,000 will “allow Keneally to shoot a report that sweeps away the clichés coming from glossy TV series such as ‘Desperate Housewives’.” Two things I noticed about Keneally’s truly excellent web site, the first is that none of her pictures is wasted. There’s not a single one, to my eye, that doesn’t have impact and which is not thought provoking. The second is that it’s one of the best executions of multimedia story-telling that I’ve seen on the web. No fluffy and unnecessary music, just the words of her subjects to accompany the illustrations.

Photo District News brings us the story of Zoriah, a photojournalist embedded with US forces in Iraq. Zoriah posted pictures of US Marine fatalities on his blog. His blog shows gruesome photos of the dead and dying in the aftermath of a suicide bombing. Military officials claim that Zoriah broke the rules of his embedded status but Zoriah refutes this, saying “They embedded a war photographer, and when I took a photo of war, they disembedded me. It’s as if it’s okay to take pictures of them handing lollipops to kids on the street and providing medical care, but photographing the actual war is unacceptable.” The photos are horrifying. Shouldn’t that be the point of a War Photographer’s work?

On a much cheerier note, I subscribe to Anna Kuperberg’s blog and am always delighted to see the photos she takes at weddings. Her photos have a lovely look to them and I’m sure that the newly-weds are invaribaly delighted. I think she must be a very personable character. Interesting how her personality comes across on her work. Anyway, her latest shots really appealed to me and I think the picture of the two boys is one of the funniest wedding photos I’ve seen. You’ll immediately know the one I mean when you look at her site.

It’s not big and it’s not clever but if you’re looking for a daily dose of the quite, quite mad for momentary distraction then I recommend the Scaryduck blog. This is the man who regularly writes to local newspapers under the guise of Kim Jong Il suggesting that the local borough council should fund giant statues of the Minogue twins in order to cheer the hearts of the local populace - and gets them published! Become a regular reader and I guarantee that you’ll find the catchphrases “sick inna hedge” and “done a poo” leaving your lips at inappropriate moments.

Not a link but just an interesting snippet of local information: I went to the the local Apple authorised reseller yesterday to buy some extra RAM for my MacBook Pro. The nice lady in the shop opened up the package and grabbed the memory chip quite indelicately. I politely suggested that it might at least have been worth her discharging the static from her body before handling the sensitive electrical component. She regarded my with a sympathetic look that Thais reserve for bemused foreigners and said “it’s OK, we don’t have static electricity in Thailand”. We agreed that I’d take an unopened chip home and install it myself.

Lastly, I’ve noticed that as well as me being away from home, David’s in Hawaii, Matt’s in Malaysia, Mitchell’s in Indonesia and Tewfic’s in London. Don’t these people have homes to go to?

Lightning strikes

The storms in Bangkok provide much more entertainment than the 76 TV channels offered by the local satellite TV provider. Especially after the storm knocks out the satellite on the roof! Storms don’t appear here every day but they are frequent and when they do arrive they seem to follow the same route over the city, appearing from the west and moving over the financial district until they pass slowly above my neighbourhood.

There are only one or two very tall buildings in this part of the city but they tend to act as lightning conductors. The one pictured here is just a street away from my apartment building and, as you can see, is still being constructed. The cranes continue to operate in the storm and I know that a crane is probably the safest place to be in the middle of an electrical storm but I think I’d struggle to convince myself of that if I was sitting up there driving one of those things.

The lightning arced across the sky for an hour or more this evening, apparently hitting this building several times. I managed to catch a couple of shots of the lightning, this is probably the clearest. Click on the image for a larger version.

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