Travel & Humanitarian Photos
The more observant amongst you will have noticed that I’m alternating between the Lonely Planet spelling of “Ayuthaya” and the more common spelling of “Ayutthaya”.
I usually stick with the Lonely Planet spelling of place names just for consistency but in the case of Ayutthaya the double-t option is more commonly seen. There’s something more pleasing, visually, about the extra “t” I think.
But you didn’t come here to hear about my adventures in the land of Spelling, you came here to see pictures so without further ado…
These kids were playing some kind of complicated hop-scotch game in the mud outside of one of Ayuthaya’s main temples. I sat for a while and tried to work out the rules but it basically boiled down to the kid in the green top losing each time.
So, to set the scene, here are a couple of shots of the Khmer style temple at Wat Chaiwatthanaram. The weather in Ayutthaya did its best to make me feel right at home by pouring with rain for much of my stay. Consequently, getting a shot with any sort of interesting clouds was a challenge as the skies were most often flat and grey.
This Wat has a similar style to the Angkor temples in Cambodia and was built at around the same time. Depending on what you read, this temple was either built by King Prassatthing in order to make merit for his mother or to commemorate his victory over Cambodia.
Ayuthaya boasts dozens of temples scattered around the town. Some are popular tourist destinations whilst others are far from the beaten track and can only be discovered by accident. The picture above comes from Wat Yai Chai-Mongkhol, one of the better ones for photographers as it contains rows of Buddha statues, or Buddharupa, on all four sides of a central quad. Did you know that each Buddharupa is different, the face supposedly based on the sculptor’s own?
I’m afraid I can’t tell you the name of this temple as it’s not shown on any map, doesn’t appear on Google Earth and I haven’t been able to track it down on the web. I hired a motorbike for a few days in order to get out to some of the more far-flung temples. I find that pootling around without any definite plan is often the best way to discover places. And so it was with this place. I almost drove past but a small shrine caught my eye so I turned back and parked the bike under a tree.
I snapped a few shots of the shrine and the Buddharupas and very nearly ignored a decrepit old shed with a rusty tin roof nearby. Sometimes it pays to be a nosy though and my curiosity led me to poke my head around the door where I was greeted by the sight of an enormous reclining Buddha.
It must be over 25 feet tall and perhaps 150 feet long. It’s difficult to say. Judging by the amount of gold leaf on the Bhuddha’s arms and chest it is obviously visited by local people quite regularly but probably not by many tourists. It was a nice find on an otherwise grey day.
This monk was inside the reclining Buddha shed and was struggling to give his dog some medication. Every time he tried to empty a syringe into the dog’s mouth the dog would either skitter off or just let the contents dribble out of the corner of it’s mouth. What was obviously needed was a gullible tourist to run around the shed, catch the dog and hold it steady whilst the medication was administered. Still, I got a few photos out of it.
This face, full of character, belongs to a devotee I met at Phra Mongkonbophit, a more modern temple that contains one of the largest Buddha statues in Thailand.
The devotee carried a walking stick. The head is in the shape of a seven-headed Naga snake.
Climbing into the back of a tuk-tuk one evening after shooting a temple at dusk I still had my camera on a tripod. Placing it on the floor and wedging it against a seat enabled me to get some long-exposure pictures on the way back to my Guest House. This is a 15 second exposure and yet the back of the tuk-tuk is remarkably sharp.
Ayutthaya boasts an Elephant Krall where elephants were once herded. These days, rather than moving trees or fighting in wars, elephants carry tourists along the street through the Historical Park where they pause for pictures in front of Phra Ram temple. I spent a couple of hours in the elephant enclosure and really wanted to get a close-up of an elephant’s eye. If you’ve ever been up close with an elephant you’ll understand what I mean what I mean when I say that they seem to be incredibly placid creatures. However, when something is as big as a house I can’t help being suspicious of it, no matter how gentle it might seem.
Finally, to the Buddha head stuck in the roots of a Bodhi tree. I remembered correctly, it was difficult to photograph in anything other than a straightforward way. There’s no point trying any fancy techniques when you’re photographing it, zooming in, twisting the camera to create blur, it’s all gilding the lily. It’s a unique image and I concluded that that’s sufficient.
You can emphasise the mystical qualities in the post-production and I’ve tried to do that although I’ve yet to export a version that I am one hundred percent happy with.
The rain really helped pull out the texture in the tree roots in the shot above and it was one of the few times when I’ve been thankful for a downpour.
The final frame from Ayuthaya has been desaturated to create a greyscale file although I’ve put back the green channel as I think the leaves add a little bit of subtle colour that works in this context. I still feel like there’s another image of this Bhuddarupa head in the Bodhi tree that I want to get before I’ve got my “definitive” picture but these are close.
What do you think?
Additional pictures from Ayutthaya can be found on my Portfolio page.
Very nice images Gavin. My favorites are the Buddha head reseding with yellow gown and the last picture with your B&W and green leaves treatment.