Gregoire Glachant

Moved

2006-11-26T00:03:00.001+07:00

I'm now Managing Editor of BK Magazine and am a bit busy.

I still post pictures here from time to time:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gregoireglachant/

from blogger to flickr to the top of the world

2006-10-30T22:07:00.000+07:00

Blogger Beta has done nothing to improve on posting pictures. It's made it worse actually.

On the other hand, flickr is so easy to use and works every time. So I think I'm going to switch from being a blogger to being a flickr. Writing posts takes way too long anyway.

Visit my flickr account and see some of what I shot last week for steel giant Arcelor-Mittal. The pictures were taken at the top of what will be, upon completion, the tallest tower in the world--the World Finance Center in Shanghai, China. Currently, work is "only" at the 50th floor but pretty impressive already.

Try this direct link to my pictures on flickr.

Action Sample 3.0 and Horizon S3 Pro

2006-10-24T23:42:00.000+07:00

When BK Magazine added two parks to my story on Bangkok's parks shot with alternative analog cameras, I had to dig up two such cameras. Luckily, Fotoguffy (fotoguffy@hotmail.com, 0816477371), a shop on Soi Chula 50, in Bangkok, opened at that very moment and I met the owner to ask if he could lend me two "toy cameras". In case you missed out, I'd already tested a Fuji Instax 200, a Polaroid 600 SE, a Lomo Compact Automat, a Lomo Fisheye, and a Holga 120GN. The Polaroid is mine, the Fuji was lent by Fuji, the Fisheye belonged to BK Magazine's before last photo intern (to meet next week's new intern-I'm done at BK-visit Daniel Cuthbert's quality website), and the LCA and Holga belonged to Analog memory.

K. Soruch, owner of Fotoguffy, is the chief architect for the Bangkok Bank website. He is trained as an architect, a real one, which might explain his passion for devices engineered to be creative and for good looking spaces like the one of his shop. He began with the LCA but quickly developed a passion for all things photographic and analog, in particular Polaroids. His shop is packed with gems, like the Polaroid Creative Kit (to make Polaroid film transfers) and the Polaroid pinhole camera. He lent me a Horizon S3 Pro and an Action Sampler 3.0.

The Horizon is a great camera. You can see the spirit level/bubble thing that sits on its top through the viewfinder, allowing perfectly flat horizons without a tripod. The lens rotate thanks to some kind of mechanism and covers an impressively wide angle. These pictures are Kodak E100 processed normally. Ironically, the cross-processed crew hanging out at Fotoguffy looked at these pictures in shock, stunned at the gorgeous colors. "Maybe I should stop cross-processing all the time," admitted K. Soruch. These were shot at Suan Luang Rama IX park where you can see a showcase with a mannequin of HM the King of Thailand carrying his trademark radio and camera--a panoramic camera like this one (but much older)!

The Action Sampler is a bit too much of a toy for me. This was shot with 100 ISO negative pushed to 200 ISO. Obviously, it needed another stop or two. Its four lenses shoot one after the other within 0.2 seconds or 2 seconds (two settings) and if you swing the camera while they fire, you can produce a kind of chopped up panoramic. Another thing to do with these is to shoot action but there wasn't much of that at Santi Chai Park on Phra Athit Road on that day.

Next Stop: Shanghai

2006-10-14T20:59:00.000+07:00

I might not have bought a new super duper digital camera but I still needed one for my upcoming job in Shanghai. I went to Pro Center, and got:

Canon 5D + grip
Canon 17-35mm f/2.8 L
Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 L
Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 L
Canon 580EX flash
10 x 1GB CF cards

From my own gear, I'm taking:
Mamiya 645 Pro TL
Mamiya 80mm f/2.8 (50mm equiv.)
Mamiya 35mm f/3.5 (21mm equiv.)
Canon 350D
Benro carbon tripod
Manfrotto monopod (for that big white lens)
filters (polarizer, gradiated, skylight 1B)
Fuji 160, 400, and 800 negative film
Fuji Velvia 50 and 100 slide film.

and a silver Apple PowerBook G4 (rented from a friend)

Let's hope it all works out now.

Sigma 30mm f/1.4

2006-10-10T23:07:00.000+07:00

Well this is it, after weeks in Japan getting recalibrated, my hope-to-be miracle lens is back. The focus on my Canon 350D / XT is still a disaster but I think now it has to do more with the camera than with the lens because some pictures are now somewhat on the spot. I might go test the lens in a shop with a Canon 30D to be sure. The people here are my colleagues.

UPDATE: I tested the lens in a shop with a 30D and got possibly better results but focus was still off quite often. So I decided to test a Canon 50mm f/1.8 on a Canon 5D and I couldn't get the focus to be dead on the eyes either. Then I tried a 24-70 f/2.8 L and that was spot on. It's f/2.8 not 1.4 or 1.8, but at the long end of the zoom that's still a pretty narrow depth of field. It focussed absolutely flawlessly and at blinding speed.

Unfortunately the results still lacked the gorgeous bokeh of my Mamiya 80mm f/2.8 (50mm equiv.) so I just gave up on getting a new super duper digital camera.

Go Green

2006-10-10T22:50:00.000+07:00

When the art director told me I was to illustrate BK's Go Green issue on environment and ways to protect it, I tried something clean and conceptual. That's really my fridge. I had to ADD stuff to it to take this picture as the vacuum packed aluminum was sitting on, not in, the fridge.

Meat-Free Photography: Phuket Vegetarian Fest

2006-10-10T08:45:00.000+07:00

Words and pictures by moi. I took these shots a year ago (with a compact Sony DSC-P200), as my stay in Phuket was coming to an end. I think Phuket will always be my Thai hometown. I was real bored when I was there, but now I miss it a lot.

There are apparently a few Magnum Agency photographers who have ditched their SLR's in favor of compact cams, and, I must admit, for editorial work, it's hard to beat in terms of lightness and discretion. Still, a shallower DOF would have been nice on some of these pics, to get rid of cluttered backgrounds; and your compact digicam will never get you that. Then again, you have to try to picture yourself grunting under the weight of your gear, in a packed crowd, under the sticky tropical heat. But if she can do it, so can you, right?

Hats off to this whispy, white, eye-lined figure that managed to conserve a lot of grace despite a string of Hasselblads and Metz strobes around her neck.

And here's my article's text:

Meat-free Mysticism: Exploring the famous fair of flesh
by Grégoire Glachant

Poles strung with firecrackers are being lit up and held over a seemingly endless
procession of people. The sound is so deafening, people put their hands to their
ears. Young men, their bodies covered in camphor oil, deflect the firecrackers
by waving black and yellow flags covered in red Chinese characters. As they scramble
to counter approaching ranks, the object of their attention is suddenly revealed—a
man upholding a dozen three-foot long, one-inch wide saw blades coming out of two
incisions in his cheeks. He is skipping along, sideways, like some kind of animal, and is oblivious to everything: the rain of firecrackers, the dance of his flag-bearers, the massed crowd, the drool and blood oozing out of the yawning wounds in his cheeks and what must be intense pain. He wears the same traditional white pants as everybody else, but also a heavily embroidered apron covered in symbols and characters. He is a mah song, an entranced horse, possessed by an ancient Chinese spirit that confers him a temporary state of near godliness.

Every year, on the ninth month of the lunar calendar, the quiet face of Phuket,
usually marked by carefree tourist smiles, is changed into a mask of entrancement.
The Phuket Vegetarian Festival runs this year from October 22-30, and for the
hearty who have never experienced it, especially those with an interest in the occult—it’s a must-see event. This once-a-year celebration highlights the intense spiritual connection of the locals (as well as the many who migrate just for the festival) to the ancient gods from China—the motherland of many of Phuket Town’s original Hokien Chinese settlers. They came in the 1800s to rip tin from the island’s sandy soil and in their wake left some delicious Hokien cuisine, beautiful Sino-Portuguese architecture and quite a few holes in the ground. The Vegetarian Festival originated in 1825 when a visiting opera troop from China fell ill to malaria and followed a strict vegetarian lent to recover, with success.
The nine-day fest follows a precise calendar that you must study carefully to be
at the right place at the right time (available at www.phuketvegetarian.com). While
processions usually start at 7am, and converge at Sapan Hin (at the end of Phuket
Road), they originate from a different temple everyday. Get there by 6:30am to see the preparations. Also, don’t miss out on other amazing feats such as walking on red-hot embers (best seen at Sapan Hin), crossing nail-covered bridges and climbing ladders with bladed rungs (we recommend Bang Niao Shrine on Phuket Road). You’re always welcome to join the crowd as long as you follow a few rules, the most important being to dress in white, and stay away from booze and meat (near the processions and temples, that is—it’s life as usual elsewhere).

Those worried about going veggie, fear not, as there are still places that serve the island’s excellent seafood outside of town, closer to the beach-hugging tourist
resorts. But by and large, you’ll be missing out—the selection of vegetarian food
from hawker stalls is huge with something palatable for even the most hardcore carnivores. Scores of them can be found both on Phuket Road and at the northern end
of Yaowarat Road. If you’ve never walked the Sino-Portuguese streets of old Phuket Town, the festival is the perfect occasion to do so. The streets you’re looking for are Dibuk, Thalang and the east end of Krabi Road. Though pessimists may say that the beaches of the “Pearl of the Andaman” are already on a fast track to Pattaya-likeness, the town is finally making efforts to conserve its precious heritage—of which the Vegetarian Festival is definitely the most striking feature.
Though the food and architecture are great, the stars of the show are definitely
the mah song. The vegetarian festival is such an intense mystic experience that even
the most hard-boiled pragmatists are bound to feel moved by the spiritual fervor it
exhibits. It’s as if you are caught up in some intersection where reality and the spiritual world meet—an experience few quickly forget. ■

WHERE TO STAY
If you’re strictly going for the festival, it’s probably best to stay in Phuket Town rather than at a resort, as you will need to get up early and will be able to walk to the events. Here are a couple suggestions:

Royal City Inn
154 Phang-Nga Rd., Muang, 076-233-333, www.royalphuketcity.com. Rates: B3,500-10,000/night.
No particular charm, but this is a comfortable, high-standard address popular with businessmen.

The Taste
16-18 Rassada Rd, Muang, 02-712-8858, www.thetastephuket.com. Rates: B2,500-4,000/night.
Part of the Sri Group, this very elegant boutique hotel has only 12 rooms. Definitely the hippest address in town.

Sino House
1 Montree Rd., Muang, 076-232-494, www.sinohousephuket.com. Rates: B1,600 (standard) to B2,000
(Sino-suite). Pseudo-modern Sino-style rooms for Chinese flavor without the ghosts.

Portrait of a Boxer, by Timothy Syrota

2006-09-28T20:03:00.000+07:00

This picture is not by me, but it's now mine.

Timothy Syrota shot it, in Burma, during a bare-knuckle Thai (or, in this case, Burmese) boxing match organized by the rebel Burmese army, the DKBA (Democratic Kayin Buddhist Army). It was exposed six months ago in Bangkok, at the FCCT (Foreign Correspondant's Club of Thailand), where I first saw it and began thinking of purchasing it. I jotted down Tim's e-mail and wrote him to congratulate him on his amazing work.

"I went to your exhibit and I was blown away. Your work has created a lasting, harrowing impression on me.

I saw the exhibit as being on pain and going beyond pain, something close to sacrifice. The cover-picture's boxer, flat on his back, exuded this but also the "LV" belted boxer, with those outstretched heavily muscled arms and that hollowed, dark ribcage; his Christlike pose had something nearly satanic. The ring seemed like a dream of the unconscious boy being dragged away, and again, he made me think of a martyr.

These references are not the only thing I saw in your wonderful exhibit but I'm not writing to pose as some kind of critique so it's better I leave it at that. I'm only trying to say I was deeply impressed by your work. I really want to get a print but I have to wait a little bit.

I really look forward to your next exhibit."

Tim's a busy guy but he kindly replied and I emailed him a few more times over the past months because I could never quite get his pictures out of my head. I eventually told him which picture I wanted and that I finally had the dough. He stays only in Bangkok for a few days when he does, running around to see labs, printers, and other such people. Still, he made time this morning after popping out of IQ labs to see me at the coffee shop across from my office.

At his exhibit, he had provided written labels with some information on the amazing stories behind his pictures but he kindly shared more this morning and it's fascinating stuff. Just imagine the DKBA organizing these bloody boxing matches (most matches are done without gloves, just the traditional strips of cloth wrapped around the hands) in Burma but in zones where the junta has no power. Everyone crosses in and out of there with no visa, but with permission from the rebel army. Even the Burmese military come in to watch! Rebels and minions of one of the hardest military dictatorships in the world sit side by side to enjoy this expensive (for the DKBA) and exciting event. On the surface, the fights are not really about Burmese vs. Burmese though, as they pit Burmese against Thais in an expression of the hatred that has existed between the two nations for centuries. But this is definitely a show of power for the DKBA that resonates within Burma and amongst Burmese refugees.

That's the political backdrop, but the individual stories, sometimes tragedies, that explain why someone would get his face punched to a pulp for twenty dollars are a lot more poignant. He's currently collecting more data, conducting interviews, and hopefully shooting some more for the next three months. It should all culminate in a fantastic book. At the end of the year, he'll be through with Mae Sot (the Burmese refugee camp in Thailand) after spending 2 and a half years there. He is now considering a stint in Africa before coming back to settle in SE Asia more permanently. Too bad he's out of here soon but we'll keep in touch, I'm sure.

You can see images by Tim, from "Boxing on the Border" but also of the DKBA and of his art project with refugee children on his flickr account (link).

You won't see this particular image on his flickr account. I might also be the first to buy it since I have number 1/48 (this is the copy that was exposed at FCCT). It's not one of the most striking images, and Tim didn't show it at his last exhibit in Australia but then again he was showing not just the boxing so he had to trim down on that. But this picture grew on me particularly.

Part of the reason it is so beautiful, and this goes for all Tim's pictures, you can't see on your screen. Tim has all his pictures hand-printed in Thailand by two masters in Bangkok and in Chiang Mai. I think this print was made in Chiang Mai. There's just no way you can have any idea of what this picture is about by seeing it here on a screen. A hand-made print surpasses anything you could ever get by dropping off your pictures at a lab, even if you ask for a high-quality print. Trust me, I've tried. Hand-made prints means the printer will make test-strips or even entire prints before he makes the one you eventually get to see. It's total perfection. The quality of the blacks and the tonal range is simply amazing. It's also very luminous. I tried to raise the levels on the small scan he had sent me to confirm we were talking about the same image but it just looks murky now.

As for the picture itself, I guess my first e-mail to Tim describes what I feel pretty well. Intense, dark, harrowing, with a lot of pain. I showed it around at the office, quite proud of it, and people just shrank from it and made grimaces. One asked, "You like this kind of stuff?" At first, I thought, "Oh well, they don't get it." But now I realize that they do get it, and they can't take it.

This is the first piece of art I buy, ever. I never put anything on my walls. I hardly ever print my own pictures. But this image is getting framed right now. It's 16x20", and the frame will extend 4.5" on all sides but the bottom, which will be at 5.5". Tim said that if the top and bottom are the same length, it looks as if the top is longer. I just know it will look beautiful and I will never tire of it, unlike with my own stuff.

true (advertorial)

2006-09-27T21:41:00.000+07:00

True is a service provider and these pictures are meant to be accompanied by an interview where Champ (the young lad in the pics who is the host of some kind of sports TV show here) will tell us all about how, when he goes shopping, he always makes sure there's True wifi available cuz he never leaves home without a PDA, a mobile phone, and a laptop. Oh and he loves eating at Kuppa restaurant, hence the odd "Kuppa" sign. Good thing Playground!, the hip mall on Soi Thonglor home to the restaurant, has True wifi.

the illusion of democracy will return after these messages

2006-09-20T10:43:00.000+07:00

Soon 3 years in Thailand and already one tsunami and one military coup. Amazing Thailand, never boring.

With the new visa rules, I couldn't care less. Even knowing the Prime Minister may well soon taste the bitterness of exile himself fails to cheer me up.

Oh and for the record, democracy was interrupted here in 1947, not last night.

"On November 8, 1947, army troops seized various government installations in Bangkok. The coup, led by Lieutenant General Phin Choonhavan and Colonel Luang Katsongkhram, ousted Luang Thamrong's government. It marked the return to power of Phibun." (link)

It should resume shortly, when every farmer in Isaan learns to count and read.

on assignment in China

2006-09-18T23:42:00.001+07:00

I'm most likely going to be on assignment in China. I'm going to shoot the construction of a high-rise. I've been dreaming of doing that for a long time now and when I suggested it to a friend who works for big steel company that supplies the beams for such a project in Shanghai, he said, "Cool. Let's do it." I'm completely psyched at the idea. I can just see those night shots of welders operating 40 stories above ground.

The bad news, still today (what a day), is that visa laws are changing in Thailand and on October 1st, all foreigners that don't have retiree or work permits have to (to make a long story short) pack up. I'm in a bit of a panic and will try to meet up with some lawyers this week on this issue. A sizeable portion of the expat community here must be in a panic come to think of it.

Studio 47 Sunday Muay Thai

2006-09-17T18:30:00.000+07:00

Studio 47 is packed high up with people, nearly to the ceiling, just like on any Sunday. There's a single tiny door out of this hellish cube so that spectators must begin to file in over an hour before the first fight. Don't look at the maze of cables on the ceilings, feeding the burning spotlights--if this place caught fire, hundreds would never make it out. Along with the lights, the fevered crowd has cooked what little air hovers above our heads to a boil. Shorts are not allowed here. This is not some joint where kids come to break in their shins and noses while the latest crop of tourists swings Singha beers on their 1,500 baht ringside seats. This is the site of a mass followed weekly by an entire nation. TVs throughout the Kingdom are turned onto the feed coming from this very room and provided by just two cameramen and a Louma crane (47 stands for channels 4 and 7). On the ground, we're all squished against each other but no one seems to care. Eyes are on the bright white square in the center of the studio, where two 13-year-olds are currently pounding each other's faces in with their elbows and knees. For every blow, the entire crowd shivers and lets out a gigantic roar. Hypnotic music played by a few dry old men, the pervasive smell of camphor oil, two bodies dancing/fighting in synch with a rolling sea of Thais--Studio 47 packs quite a punch itself.

Khun Pong spots me clutching my Lowepro camera bag, covered in sweat, attempting to adjust to the noise, the lack of oxygen, and the heat. I'm not hard to miss. I'm the only white guy in the room, and that's not very rare in Bangkok for rooms that pack a thousand people. I just stand there, the wind knocked out of me, taking in the bloodlust, so thick it inebriates me. So this is what a crowd at boiling point feels like. Khun Pong starts to elbow his way to me, barely less viciously then the kids in the ring.

"Follow me. We wait for end of match here, then we go." He points to three photographers shooting from under the ropes with battered Canons. Once Khun Pong has pulled me to the steel barriers cutting the masses off from the ringside, every other guy is some kind of special cop, in blue uniform unlike the regular police. They're not exactly nervous--everyone got searched on their way in and isn't carrying so much as a mobile phone--but they're definitely keeping an eye on things. It wouldn't even take a fire in here to get a lot of bodies. A bit of panic and a stampede would easily do the trick, at which point their Python .357s would only make things worse.

Lost in the crowd are men clutching plywood boards to which are glued dozens of mobile phones, the only ones allowed. They are the bookies, screaming into the phones while taking bets from inside the room that are made through hand signals no less sophisticated than those seen on the stock market in the old pre-computer days. Nobody takes any notes though, and there's no blackboard. It looks like everybody keeps track of what's going on in their heads. People bet with each other directly at times, skipping the bookies, or just stand there waving there fingers around for someone to pick up their bet. One old man dressed for a Sunday at the racetrack has completely lost his voice. He lets out a hoarse squeal then just explains something with half a dozen signals that the bookies copy A-Ok. And not a baht note in sight. It's all based on trust, or the grim fact that not paying up your debts would be the last thing you did.

Betting on Thai Boxing is the only form of betting or gambling allowed in the Kingdom. It's not the only one that goes on (thousands of households went bankrupt over England's loss at the last worldcup) but it's the only one you can't even pretend to ban. Half the men here are not around for the simple joy of watching two guys pummel each other, they're here to make it big. Lives are at stake here, perhaps more so than for the boys putting their necks out under the spotlights.

Guys are not the only ones taking this seriously. Women bet too, if less, but their faces can bend into masks of rage (as there favorite boxer takes a beating) that make the men look stoic in comparison. And girls and boys roars just as well, in perfect unison, for every blow delivered. Wah! Wah! Wah! Wah! The crowd carries the fight, the fighters carry the crowd.

The boxers (the fight is now two star fighters in the 120-pound range, probably in their early twenties), covered in camphor oil, doused in ice between each round, have skins that remind me of horses and dogs after a long run. Their veins are bulging, struggling to feed oxygen to their exerted muscles. Their jaws are slack, as the mouth tries to feed oxygen too, to the lungs this time. Every part of the machine is stretched to the limit. By the time I've made it to the photographer's pen, I can assuage just how hard the blows are. The smacks are loud, very loud, projecting clouds of droplets of sweat and oil into the air. When the boxers come crashing towards the photographers, we all duck for cover. These guys are very light, but they're throwing their bodies at each other with the weight of elephants.

Despite the nearly free-for-all aspect of Thai boxing and the savage violence of the blows, there is extreme grace and intelligence in it. The fighters seek each other out, trick each other, taunt each other, and when they move in, it is with exacting precision; it is the movement of an idea, of a strategy, not just of a body part. Boxing and fencing are really the same thing, only Thai boxing involves every single part of your body. Only head-butting is forbidden. Bruce Lee wrote that Thai Boxing missed only locks and dirty tricks to be the ultimate martial art. But if the crotch is off-limits, and hair pulling and eye-poking is impossible because of the gloves, it just makes the fight longer. Even projections are allowed but the fact they are not followed byimmobilization techniques again just make the fight more spectacular. When these are allowed, you get Ultimate Fighting, where burly men grapple at each other on the ground for what seems like forever. Bruce Lee may have been able to kick Thai boxer's asses, but that's not what it's about. There isn't a more fast-paced, consistently violent, punch and kick-packed martial art in the world. Muay Thai is a show. It comes with music, it comes with a ceremonial dance at the opening of each fight (ram muay) to call on the favors of the spirits, and it has a crowd that sings along. This is entertainment at its best; the kind that takes you out of your body and lets you commune with an entire crowd through two lone avatars dancing in the spotlight--the ultimate cathartic experience.

manager's last instructions

Ram muay (ceremonial dance opening the fight)

the blue corner as their boy takes a beating

prize fighters

who will kick first?

the fight is not going well for him

defeated

Bitter rivals a second ago chill out in the shade after a quick shower.

photo tech notes:
I shot a roll of medium format outside so look out for that in the coming days. This here was all shot with a Canon 350D, 18-55mm (crap) kit lens at 1600 ISO, 1/160s to 1/200s, f/5.6 (wide open on this lens) to f/8 (because the autofocus sucks). Pictures at these settings were way too dark and levels were raised in post-production, hence the grain and aweful colors. Of course, no RAW as even in JPG my 1GB compact flash filled up in one fight. I need more of those and a faster lens (f/stop and AF), and maybe a 30D as well. Flash is not allowed at Studio 47 as this is a TV studio.

True Cafe on Soi Thonglor

2006-09-12T19:30:00.000+07:00

For me, what really matters here, is that I requested that they put the accent aigue on the first E of my name. The pictures are nice too.

Lomo Compact Automat, Niet Automat

2006-09-10T16:49:00.000+07:00

When two Austrians picked up a piece of Soviet-era junk and decided they would bring it to the information-age masses of the capitalist world, they started a revolution that has become a legend. It took Vladimir Putin (ex-chief of KGB and Russia's current top dog) himself to ok the Austrian duo's plan to export his hometown's secret weapon, the Lomo Compact Automat, and the rest is history. The little black camera has since sold around the world and reached cult-status with such VIP users as Yasser Arafat (ex-user actually) and His Holiness the Dalai Lamai.

Lomo is now almost a synonym for the analog movement in its entirety and the dirty little secret is that most of it has nothing to do with the camera. Lomo users cross-process their film, which is what gives the wild colors and killer contrast. To cross-process is to use slide film and ask your lab to develop it as regular negative color film--basically use the wrong chemicals (see the Holga post). The final touch comes from the Lomo being a pretty bad camera. The dark corners it produces are from poor lens design. As for the under and over-exposures, they're from sub-par metering (the camera's ability to judge how to best capture the scene you're photographing). Normally these are considered inexcusable flaws which lens and camera makers spend millions of dollars in R&D to reduce to a minimum. But the genius behind the Lomo is to make their deffects selling points by turning them into the shortest path to developing a style of photography that doesn't look like everybody else's. The LCA can be found at http://shop.lomography.com for USD 200 (B16,000). Another option is the Olympus XA series cameras, reputed similar to the Lomo. Those start at 20 USD (B800) on www.ebay.com and occasionaly pop up at the antique camera dealers at Pirom Plaza (Mahachai Rd., across Merry King and next to Grande Ville Hotel, map).

Tested at Benjakitti Park (Th. Radchadaphisek, MRT Queen Sirikit Convention Center, BTS Asok) with Fuji Provia 100F 35mm film.

TIP: For cross-processing, make sure you buy Fuji Provia film and go to a smart lab that understands, "Can you please cross-process this?" We went straight to the pros with our batch--IQ Lab

Now here's the unspeakable truth.

Half the pictures on the roll are completely dark. 4 shots are properly exposed (I mean within like a couple stops of latitude) and the rest really needed a lot of help during scanning (way too dark or bright). No shots were completely burnt out. I know that cross-processing + slide film (naturally contrasty) doesn't leave a lot of latitude when shooting but this is just ridiculous. If the cell on the Lomo Kompact Automat is that useless, it might as well not be there. The Holga, with its rudimentary sun/shade settings proves proves much more useable with a near 100% useability rate on the two rolls I shot with it. I'll have to ask Analog Memory what I'm doing wrong or if I should just take a beneath 50% success rate as part of the Lomo Experience.

Still, and like the Holga, I really like some of these shots. The thing with 35mm film is that it's easy to find places that sell it, process it, and put it on CD. 35mm is also cheaper than medium format per picture but if you consider the price in relation to surface of celluloid, medium format is not more expensive. I'm very interested in the Olympus XA which actually has rangefinder focus! Some people consider it a worthy alternative to the Lomo LCA. Ken Rockwell reviewed it here and thinks it's an excellent camera. Not too excellent, I hope.

Metering

Great! I always shot Fuji Velvia 50 slide film in them.

I preferred the XA2. It's meter was more consistent and had a clearer center weighted pattern. I preferred the full program automation. The XA's meter had a weird sensitivity pattern which extended beyond the image.

The meters are traditional and non-evaluative. You must use use the Zone System and compensate for light and dark subjects. I set the ISO lower to increase exposure and higher to reduce it.

The XA adds a +1.5 stop backlight position.

Lens

Both lenses are sharp. The XA has a very complex lens design allowing it to fit in the camera without needing to retract or extend, and as a result of this design has some barrel distortion and light falloff at all apertures.

So I went on PBase to see real-life shots (here) taken with XA but I don't see any vignetting, unfortunately. I really liked what people were doing with it though. It kind of upholds my theory that some cameras have a little magic in them.

Holga 120GN: From Benjasiri with Love

2006-09-09T16:47:00.000+07:00

Chromatic aberration: Check
Vignetting: Check
Spot focus: Check
Under/overexposure: Check
It's a HOLGA!

If only the Russkies had nuked the Yanks in the 80's, we wouldn't have all these idiotic forums debating which camera has the least noise at 1600 ISO. For one, we wouldn't have internet but, more importantly, we would all be shooting pretty sorry excuses for a camera. Unfortunately, we'd know how crappy our cameras are because the party photographers would be shooting 35mm from captured Japanese stock while us deep-coal miners would have to settle for the mass-produced all-plastic Holga. Pictures from our vacations to the Black Sea would come back after a month at the lab followed by three months sitting on the desk of the regional head of the Photographic Ethics Bureau looking something like this:

We wouldn't even be able to claim they are high-art and that the effects are intentional because millions of other factory-plant workers' vacation pictures would look just as bad. We'd tack the least worst one to the wall of our now sub-zero (August + 4 months = December) apartment in the suburbs of Putingrad and dream of next year's summer vacation, hoping it wouldn't be canceled due to compulsory "voluntary sacrifices and utmost dedication from all workers" in the arms race with China.

For real (fun ends here, comrades), our pictures wouldn't have to look quite as funky as these. These pictures were shot with Fuji Astia 100F and cross-processed. When the lab handed them over, I thought, "Yikes, it's all green. Where are the colors? And how come it's a negative. I gave them a slide film." (I'm very late on this whole project so the idea of having to get new film and re-shooting, with the friendly guys from Analog Memory waiting for me to give them back their cameras, was not pleasing at all.)

Once I loaded the reversal film turned negative into my awesome Epson 4990, I got a whole different story than from the old Epson at work. You can correct a lot during scanning because of the incredible bit depth of high-end scanners like the the 4990. I tried not to correct the pics too much because I like the original feel but see how almost all of the reddish cast is gone in the shot below:

Cross-processing is using the wrong chemicals to develop your film. Since these pictures were shot with slide film, they were developed with the chemicals designed to process negative film. Different slide films will produce different results. These pictures don't have the famous "Lomo" look (yellowish/greenish cast) because Fuji Astia, when cross-processed, comes out exceedingly red/magenta. According to Analog Memory Fuji Velvia comes out really red and black (worse than this). So for the "Lomo" look, make sure you use Fuji Provia. I don't know about Kodak because I don't have Kodak film. Fuji gave me this film for free. They are nice. They will grow old and prosperous. Their families will be blessed for a thousand generations. Shoot Fuji and you too will receive these blessings.

The fact that the slide film turned into a negative is normal. It's a product of the cross-processing. I find that fascinating because it means slide and negative film are fundamentally the same thing. They're just tuned differently to produce the right colors when processed with slide or negative chemicals. It's like activating a gene with a certain hormone or something. IQ Lab developed the film for free and the big boss even wrote to me to explain cross-processing in detail. Here's a summary of his letter:

"Color reversal (slide) film is normally processed in E6 chemicals. Color negative film is processed in C41 chemicals. Cross-processing is developing reversal film with C41 chemicals. The differences in film dyes (negative's bases, which have lower contrast, are usually dyed brown or orange to look good in print) create the shift in colors.

Most photographers choose to cross-process and pull-process together for more balanced contrast. Cross-processing increases contrast and pull-processing reduces it.

Pull-processing is over-exposing the film but then under-developing. This creates correct exposure with less contrast. For example, using Fuji Provia 100 film, set the ISO speed to 50 ISO on you camera. This will make it systematically over expose. Then come to lab and tell them that your 100 ISO film was shot at 50 ISO and we will perform one stop pull-processing.

Of course, you could cross-process and push-process.

Push-processing is under-exposing and over-developing. This increases contrast. Cross and push processing combined would create extremely high contrast that could be suitable for scenes in the shade with low contrast.

In the end, it's up to you and the best way to find what you like is to experiment. Different films will give different results.

Lomography is a stylish form of photography. Using a simple camera and an unusual developing process, images will appear eye catching. Sometimes these toy cameras suffer from extreme chromatic aberration and light dispersion but these are good effects for this kind of photography. Lomography is very popular with our clients here, along with giclee prints."

Well thank you Khun Sompetch! This is the boss of the biggest pro lab in town with three or four addresses all over Bangkok and he took the time to write all that in English. Get your film processed at IQ Lab. They rock.

It's not obvious with this Fuji Astia 100F film used here but he's right that cross-processing can be way too contrasty in direct sunlight and I'd definitely push-process Fuji Provia 100F to get lower contrast if I ever try this again. You'll see what I mean later this weekend when I post the Lomo LCA/Fuji Provia 100F pictures.

I'm in love with the Holga. The pictures it produces are packed with emotion. My initial take on cross-processing and hip sovietnik junk cameras were that they were just gimmicks to help people devoid of artistic talent give an arty feel to their work. Well, maybe that is exactly what they are but it's mission accomplished as far as the Holga is concerned. There's a magic to it that definitely wouldn't be there if you took the same shots in digital or with a standard 35m SLR. I don't like a single digital shot I've taken in roughly two months with my 350D. I don't like a single shot I've shot in two years with my Sony DSC-P200. I really like some of the shots here. I think the Holga's lens has so much personality that the cross-processing is a bit overkill. I'd love to try it simply with the beautiful Velvia 100 ISO and normal processing.

Taking perfect digital pictures requires a LOT of skill and know-how (contrarily to what the camera makers would like you to believe) and bores everybody to death. Taking the cool and trashy pictures shown here from the Holga just took 2 rolls shot in 1 hour at the park. I never touched a Holga before in my life and I didn't have the manual. This camera takes no batteries and you don't even need to know how to read to use it. The lens has drawings of a bust, two people standing with a kind, a big group of people (like a wedding), and a mountain. Use these to focus the lens. For light, there are only two settings: sun or cloudy/shade/flash(if you have one). Point, shoot, enjoy. The viewfinder is simply a piece of plastic that gives a rough idea of the frame. It's not connected to the lens in any way.

What further stuns me is how bad the camera is. I mean, as a toy for bored hipsters, the quality is just perfect, but if this was the vacation camera of the masses, no wonder the masses got pissed off. This thing is total junk. It takes all the defects you'd find in a cheap third-party zoom, multiplies them by ten, and packs them into a single fixed focal lens. The older Holga even suffered from serious light leaks from the body and required to be taped shut every time you changed film. While the model I used here has a glass lens, most Holga cameras are all plastic so image quality should be worse with those. With the Holga 120GN, the very center of the shot does have ok sharpness.

Verdict:

Holga = cool + fun + art + easy

Tested at Benjasiri Park (Th. Sukhumvit, between Soi 22 and 24, BTS Phrom Pong) on Fuji Astia 100F medium-format film.

In Bangkok, Holga 120 CFN (all plastic) cameras can be found for 3,400 baht at Room Interior (3/F Siam Discovery Center, Rama I Rd.) and the Shop@TCDC (6/F Emporium, 622 Sukhumvit Rd.)

Big Thanks to:

Analog Memory, who lent me the Holga
Fuji, who gave me the film
IQ Lab, who processed it for free and K. Sompetch for his advice.

Paris comes to Bangkok

2006-09-05T21:57:00.000+07:00

I was shooting the new True cafe on Soi Thonglor when this guy comes up and asks me, in French, if I'm French. I say I am and he introduces himself as quadruple world boxing champion, Jaid. He then says that back in Paris I once did him a favor that he'll never forget.

Jaid Seddak.
Born in 1962 in Mostaganem, Algeria. French.
73 fights, 10 losses
Thai Boxing: French Champion from 1985 to 1992, World Champion from 1990 to 1995
Full Contact: World Champion from 1992 to 1995
info ripped from this site

It took me a while to remember where we met, how, and what I'd done for him. That made me realize how constantly smashed I must have been back in those days where both he and I were going out way too much. We talked about Thailand, boxing, his debut as a boxing manager, his first protege Isham "Jai Di", and he made me listen to some music he's currently recording--staccato word plays reminiscent of Gainsbourg, which fits his current look pretty well. He's got so many projects I'm happy to be a photographer, not a journalist, because they'd take forever to describe in detail.

Later that evening I met up with another friend from Paris, a much closer one though. Antoine was in Bangkok because he does a lot of things for the Thai government to promote Thai fashion and is also redesigning a whole bunch of stuff for Thai Airways (about time). But he was much more excited about his new ventures as a video clip director for Datarock, a band that plays, as you might have guessed from the name,electro rock. His video clip for "Computer Camp Love" is here. It's funny and very well made.

Analog Picnic, Part 2: Peel-Apart Instant Film--UPDATE

2006-09-04T00:23:00.000+07:00

I forgot to show you what a Polaroid peel-apart looks like. This is the negative base, from which you peel off the picture. If you then scan the base, you get something like a negative. Below, I'm showing the one from the pictures of the leaves I posted yesterday. It is here shown inverted, as a postive, and with way more contrast than in real life. The thing actually just looks black with faint highlights to the naked eye (more like the above picture).

Also, yesterday, the weather was cloudy and I hadn't mastered the technique where you press the chemicals on the negative onto a piece of paper. I went back to shoot another pack of 10 shots and, this time, they're all useable. The negatives below appear as they do on paper, as negatives, but with increased saturation and contrast.

This last pic is to show you that pencil-thin mustaches are still all the rage with bodybuilders. Oh and also that the negatives you see here, when inverted, don't give the exact colors of the actual image. They're not exact negatives. Some colors are more "off" than others. This negative actually produced something quite close to the original image but most don't.

Analog Picnic, Part 2: Peel-Apart Instant Film

2006-09-02T22:44:00.000+07:00

I don't even know what to call this film. The box reads "10 instant color prints 8.5x10.8cm". Instant could also mean Instax , that I tested a few days ago in Santiphab Park. But peel-apart film is much more complex to use. You load it into a Polaroid back, then you pull out the pictures yourself, which is not easy to master. You need to pull at the right angle and at the right speed. Once your print is out of the back, you need to wait for it to develop and time it. You also need to know the ambient temperature, as it will affect development times. When the set time has run out, you peel the picture away from a gooey negative covered in toxic chemicals that you normaly throw away.

I tested this film at Chatuchak Park with Fuji FP-100C that Fuji gave me. You can't find Polaroid film in Thailand anymore and I'm not sure how bad the situation is abroad but instant film is definitely on the brink of extinction. This kind of film was extremely important to studio photographers before digital because it was the only way to get an idea of what your pictures would look like. It allowed you to test your light setup in particular. Photographers would just snap in a Polaroid back, shoot, and if they liked the result, pop in a film back and shoot the same thing over again. It also allowed the client to have a peek at what was going on and make dumb suggestions. Clients love digital because of that. They can see more, see it sooner, and see it more clearly. Unfortunately, the result for photographers is more dumb client suggestions.

Holding an instant print, I was struck by how close in size it is to Instax; but the colors somehow look richer and more velvety on the peel-apart. It also hit me why I shot Polaroids and slide for so long (yes I shot peel-apart not as proofs but as the final thing). I hated prints and couldn't understand why. I kept blaming the labs. The truth is slides, or reversal film, and instant film, have very high contrast. High-contrast is beautiful but very hard to handle. Expose for the sky and the landscape will be pitch black. Expose for the landscape, and the sky will be a big white slab. But when you do find a subject with low enough contrast, or somehow hit the right exposure, the results can be really beautiful. I always wondered if I was just being silly shooting peel-apart instant film but I can now see it made sense considering I didn't know how to make high-contrast prints from negatives.

Shooting these pictures was very nostalgic. This film is very expensive and might not be sold in the near-future. If I hadn't got these packs for free, I wouldn't be doing this. So I guess this is my farewell to instant film. I shot using this:

The Polaroid 600 SE is the best camera in the world to shoot peel-apart film. People somehow never mention it without using the word "tank" as if every other camera ever made was a piece of plastic junk compared to this beast. Polaroid made many other cameras that shot only peel-apart, and did this for years. They were all equipped with bellows and the nicer models--such as the 250 and 350 (automatic) or the highly desirable 180, 190, and 195 (manual)--were made of brushed steel. It was with 250's and 350's that I started taking Polaroids. I still have a whole bunch, all in perfect order despite the state I would often get them in.

The Polaroid 600 SE used to be worth a lot of money. I considered selling mine but I think prices have crashed recently with fears of instant film's future. It is still the best camera to instantly get prints without electricity. That may sound like a rare case scenario but I have a friend's father who is a very serious photographer and complained about not being able to give prints to people he met in remote locations (Kyrgyzistan was his last trip) because they had no e-mail or reliable address. He uses Hasselblads and unfortunately, a Polaroid back on a Hasselblad will only yield a 6x6 image that leaves much of the print's 8.5x10.8 surface unused.

The negative prints you see above along with the normal prints were made by pressing onto a piece of paper the normaly discarded chemical-oozing negative that you peel-off the picture. The paper needs to be absorbant, not too glossy, but don't leave the negative on its surface too long or it will just stick to it. Contrast and detail being quite low on the paper-print, this trick works best with big clear shapes of highly-contrasting colors or luminosities.

Shooting fish in a barrel at 6400 ISO

2006-09-02T18:58:00.000+07:00

Since the opening of Siam Paragon Mall earlier this year, Bangkok has its own aquarium, Siam Ocean World. I've been to the ones in Singapore, Lisbon (built for the World Expo), and Monaco, and I must say, Bangkok's is definitely world class. The main tank's glass surfaces are absolutely huge and the coral setup is very natural. Siam Ocean World has less annex tanks than other places and, in that sense, it is less of a museum, but it's a visually stunning experience nonetheless.

One of the journalists from my magazine was invited to dive in the main tank. To do this, you normaly need to dish out 6,500 baht for non-divers and 5,500 for those who already have their PADI. I was very, very jealous. I might never get over it.

the dive-master

the gear

the main tank seen from above.

the journalist

I tried a lot of stuff shooting this assignment, going through at least 3-4 strategies--some of them that included tripod, others placing the main flash, at the end of a cable, against the panes of glass. You don't get glare from that but the light from the flash can't go very far in water and besides, it spoils the mood. You expect light to come from above underwater. With the dive lasting only 30 minutes I was getting a cold sweat when all my pictures turned out like shit. In the end, I shoot at 6400 ISO.

Your DSLR probaly doesn't go beyond 1600 ISO which in this light gives you a shutter speed too slow to freeze the movement of the little fishies. The trick is to set your camera on -2 EV. -2 EV means you tell your camera to purposefully take pictures two stops too dark, hence two stops faster for the shutter speed, which will reduce the amount of motion blur on the fish. The downside is your pictures turn out 2 stops too dark and you need to raise their levels in post-production, with added grain as a side-effect. The uspide? You get the shot. This trick is not unlike pushing film two stops, in this case to 6400 ISO, which is pretty damn fast!

Employee of the Month

2006-08-31T20:38:00.000+07:00

Remember all those light tests? It was pretty boring stuff, right? Well the day has come when you can see what it was all about.

My boss was thrilled, my boss's boss was thrilled, everyone was thrilled and everyone told me that everyone was thrilled. These pictures were taken in one day and I had no assistant. There were 2 hairdressers and 2 makeup artists. There was an artistic director and a coordinator, there was an assistant stylist, there was a bunch of PRs from the Airport Authority of Thailand (this shoot is all about promoting Thailand's new airport opening next month), but no assistant photographer. I lugged around my four slave flashes, my tripods (2 nice ones and 2 of the kind you get free with some cameras), my white and transclucent future-board, my duct tape, my Vivitar 3200 flash and its silly mini-lightbox, etc. At one point I bumped into a photographer using a Mamiya RB67 and a digital back. Once I stopped drooling, I noticed he had two assistants. Then again, his tripod alone probably weighed as much as all my gear combined. Occasionaly, someone would pity me and help me carry some of my stuff. It was pretty insane come to think of it. We finished late but we finished. It was yesterday and I'm still tired.

If I saw this shoot in a magazine, I'd probably say it's utter crap and the photographer should be hanged and it's a bloody shame random assholes can pretend to be photographers and get away with it. In my defense, I wasn't anywhere near having full creative control on this thing and the models are not models but Suvarnabhumi airport's "ambassadors". But that's not even the point. I did it. It's mine. I worked hard to make sure it would at least be technically feasible and there were no bad surprises. Look at the light tests, it's more or less the same light as on these shoots. Oh and I even had one cool idea, putting flashes in the X-ray machine. I like that shot.

It's just my luck, really: 5 Golden Rules for Buying Photo Gear

2006-08-29T23:20:00.000+07:00

My photographic equipment breaks down, makes it to my home broken when I first order it (when it makes to my place at all), or falls and breaks.

Some people may think I'm doing something wrong but no. I just have really bad luck. In Status Anxiety, Alain de Botton wrote:

"...pointing to luck as an explanation for what happens in our lives has, regrettably, become unacceptable. In less technologically sophisticated eras, when mankind respected the power of the gods and the unpredicatable moods of nature, the idea of our having no control over events had wide currency."

Hence, I will hold on to this primitive belief that I am not favored by the gods and that I shouldn't be too hard on myself.

Still, I've devised a new set of rules to live by that might make things a little better.

1.) Don't buy on ebay

E-bay sucks. Sure you can get good deals, maybe even ten times in a row, but it usually takes one mess-up to cancel all your wins. You may think the feedback system is the best thing since slice bread but since sellers wait for buyers to leave feedback before leaving you feedback, in effect they're silently threatening you with "you badmouth me, I badmouth you". I'd be surprised if even 50% of below average buyer experiences ever make it into a neutral or negative feedback. Of course, it's completely unfair. As a buyer, your only duty is to pay up. The second the seller has your money in his hand he should give you a +++ rating. But who said life is fair? Think about it--it's in ebay's interest to rig the system so that sales happen. For example, where on e-bay is e-bay user-rated? Nowhere. The website oozes with "go ahead, it's safe, it's fun, it works" and it's all written by e-bay. Feedback is just one more marketing trick in the same vein. The dirty secret is e-bay is not safe, not fun, and doesn't work. Did you know that if you buy in the US but are not located in the US, e-bay doesn't offer you any protection and neither do the 3rd party "fair trade" services that some sellers flaunt? BH photo and Adorama both sell used equipment with a premium but with service, guarantees, and hassle-free returns. Use them instead. Adorama even sells on e-bay if you must absolutely use the darn thing.

e.g.

1. I ordered a bellows polaroid that never made it to my house. I waited so long for it to turn up it was too late to even leave feedback to the seller! The seller then ignored my e-mails.

2. I ordered countless cameras that looked ok on the pics but looked like shit in real-life, or looked fine but didn't work. The bright side: I'm very good at fixing Polaroid bellows cameras now.

3. I ordered one camera from England and the guy took 6 weeks to ship it and it was broken! I gave my first negative feedback ever. He slapped me back with my first negative feedback ever, something like "Gave me negative feedback. Why? I don't know." He was so evil that he quickly had to cancel his profile and go make a new one. In short, he's gone, my negative feedback to him is gone (and those of countless others), but his negative feedback to me will stick for life. So now I know. Don't give negative feedback. It doesn't solve your problem and it gets you negative feedback. This also means other ebayers live by this rule as well and that seller ratings are bullshit, as I mentioned above.

4. I just ordered a Sigma lens on e-bay from the US because it's not sold in Thailand. It doesn't work. The seller won't take it back until Sigma says it's broken. But Sigma won't say it's broken until they've tried to fix it. But they can't fix it. So now I have to wait for someone in Japan to tell us what to do next.

AF is where I told the auto-focus to focus, RF is where the image turns out to be really focused.

5. I ordered a camera from Adorama through e-bay and there was a loose screw in the viewfinder, jingling about. Adorama was very sweet and paid for the reparation right here in Bangkok because it would have cost so much and taken so long to get it shipped to New York and back BUT it tooks months and countless trips to the Mamiya service center here to get it fixed. These last two examples bring us to golden rule number two.

2.) Don't buy anything that can't be fixed where you live.

I don't live in Europe or North America. Sure we have dealers and service centers for just about every brand you can think of right here in Bangkok but the question is, how much can they service? Unfortunately, you usually get the answer when it's too late.

e.g.

1. The broken Mamiya I got from Adorama, the Mamiya people here just couldn't fix it. I had to demonstrate it was broken over and over again until they just ordered a whole new viewfinder from Japan which took weeks.

2. My new Sigma lens is toast and they can't recalibrate it in Bangkok. Again, the Sigma people didn't just acknowledge the lens was toast. I had to go there twice, make a whole bunch of test shots and diagrams. Again, we're going to have to wait on Japan. Count at least a month. As this is an e-bay order, all my buyer protections will have run out by then and I'll be screwed deep if the lens can't really be made to work as well as I want it to. Sigma Bangkok's comment on a lens which focuses at 3 meters when you try to focus at infinity, "Let's wait and see if Japan says the lens is out of specifications."

3.) Buy new and with an international warranty or with a warranty of the country you live in.

Only consider second-hand for things that are not in production anymore. Lenses usually come with international warranties so you can buy them wherever it's cheapest BUT ONLY as long as you can test the lens when you buy it and return it after a week or so of "test-driving". In other words, don't buy in Hong Kong and catch the next flight out. Yes, your guarantee will work abroad and yes, getting a lens serviced is better than nothing but it certainly doesn't beat just handing the lens back and saying "your lens may be new but it doesn't work". As for cameras, they almost always have national guarantees. Buy your camera where you live.

e.g.

1. For once I got this right, buying a Sony DSC-P200 in Thailand. It went to the service center three times. No it wasn't fun and yes again I had to spend hours demonstrating the problems to incompetant receptionists who have no idea what they're talking about and who are paid to send back as many people as possible without providing any service to them. But at least it was free.

2. To save 5,000 baht (100 euros, 120 dollars), I got my Canon 350d second-hand from a local shop with a three-month guarantee. I'll tell you all about it breaking down in the fourth month and how it will take weeks to get fixed and cost over 5,000 when it happens.

4.) In the civilized world, you can order online from places with "no questions asked" return policies. But if you live in a shithole like me, forget about international orders, and make sure you get to hold the damn thing in your hands before you buy it.

e.g.

1. That Mamiya from Adorama, I would have noticed there was a loose screw in it and not bought it.

2. Those crappy Polaroid bellows cameras, I would have noticed they were crappy.

3. That Sigma lens, I would have noticed it doesn't focus. It's not entirely exact that the lens could not be had in Thailand. I could have ordered it and waited 45 days for it to get here. That sounded too long but now I'm pretty sure it's going to take at least that long to get it fixed. If I'd ordered it, I would have handed it back saying, "doesn't work, sorry, not taking it."

5.) When people are actually performing polls on www.dpreview.com to find out who got a working copy of a particular product, don't buy it.

e.g.

1. Yes, I'm that dumb, uh, I mean unlucky. I ordered the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 despite hordes of people warning that these lenses are very very often not calibrated out of the box. Read the forums on dpreview and trust them--but not the reviews on amazon.com that are written by marketing interns.

For a second opinion, Ken Rockwell's buying tips are here. But some of his advice only works if you live Europe or in the US where there are online dealers with good return policies.

Santhiphap Park on Fuji Instax film

2006-08-27T17:40:00.000+07:00

I think you can count the parks in Bangkok on an old yakuza's hand, which prompted me to do a story on them for BK Magazine. To spice things up, the story will double up as an investigation into the joys (and pains) of alternative analog photography.

Alternative analog photography is quite simply the art of taking pictures with any camera but a digital--preferably a cheap piece of Russian junk--and producing images that are technical failures: screwed up colors, blown-out highlights, vignetting, etc.

Our first camera in this line-up is neither Eastern-European nor even vintage. It's a big, ugly, piece of plastic. People will actually burst out laughing when they see it; the Fuji Instax 200. It's also one of the very last instant film cameras in production which means I could get hold of it through Fuji. It's not that I don't like vintage Polaroid (I have a gorgeous black leather and brushed steal SX-70 back in France) but I couldn't find a single working Polaroid camera in Bangkok--and I did quite a few shops. Even if I had, SX-70 film is now only available in Hong Kong. You can use 600 film instead but that requires some hacking.

Anyway, the Fuji Instax 200 came free, with film, as a loan from Fuji. I would have never guessed I'd get to write that one day. Fuji is lending me stuff and giving me film! Once you get over how ugly the Instax 200 is, you might notice it takes HUGE Polaroids--uh, sorry, Instaxes--of 6.2x9.9cm. That's nearly the surface of pro peel-apart instant film (7.3x9.5cm) and way bigger than Polaroid SX-70. It also explaims the dimensions of the Instax camera. This thing is half-way between a medium format and a 4x5 inch camera!

Colors are typical of instant film and the pictures have a pretty special feel "straight out of the box". An Instax picture is also a unique object that can only be reproduced through scanning and that alone makes it a very arty thing. But for a really alternative look, your Instax deserves some extra tampering (note how just because Fuji was nice to me I'm saying Instax instead of Polaroid).

Writing with a capped pen on the back of your Instax just after it pops out will just produce dark lines--not exactly what we're after. Rub it down for 20 seconds and then start doing your magic. I used something a little more blunt than a capped pen, the aluminum canister of a cigare. I find Cuban Cohiba or Partagas to work best. Ok that was a joke. Only experimentation can teach how hard, how much, and how long you should tamper with your picture.

Santhiphap Park is located between Th. Ratchawithee and Soi Rangnam, in Bangkok. It's open every day from 5AM to 9PM.

Coming Next:
Peel-Apart instant film on a Polaroid 600 SE
Holga with cross-processed film
Lomo Kompact Automat with cross-processed film
All in different parks of Bangkok!

Breakdance at MBK

2006-08-25T21:45:00.000+07:00

These girls and boys are breakdancing every evening at BTS National Stadium, on the walkway connecting MBK to Siam Discovery.

Flash didn't fire here. This picture is retrieved from an almost completely dark shot.

I used a handheld Vivitar 3200A flash with fresh batteries but the recycle time was way too long. Now I understand why wedding photographers lug around huge shoulder-strapped battery packs for their strobes. Recycle time makes the difference between getting the shot and missing it. I just kept on missing it. Like I said, the flash was handheld, which implies using a cable. My Canon 350d has no PC outlet but there are hotshoe adapters that do the job just fine for $10 or 400 baht (Adorama.com or Fotofile at MBK). Of course this flash is not even remotely E- or i-TTL and everything was done in manual--another source of missed picks.

There's nothing like screwing up to get wiser. One idea that struck me is, "How about setting the camera on full-auto and using the pop-up flash, moron?" Hmm... perfect exposure, instant recycle time, why this thing might even work in burst mode to capture the perfect moment! Pure genius.

welcome to istockphoto.com

2006-08-23T15:55:00.000+07:00

Istockphoto.com not only gives away sells your pictures for a buck a piece but they take a whopping 80% cut for doing it. You need to sell 5 pictures before you make your first dollar. Nonetheless, people are so desperate to feed them pictures, Istockphoto can afford to be very picky about the pictures they will accept. It took me 4 applications to get throught their initial screening process which consists in asking that you submit 3 images and screening them with the same criteria they use to accept any image. Here are the rejected pictures, with Istockphoto's reasons, and 100% crop views when the issue is artefacts or noise.

Attempt 1

Tea + Airport: Composition of your lighting could be better. Please show us something else.

Hmmm... The airport has large burnt out zones and large very dark zones. Only the bridge is properly exposed. I kind of like it that way but I guess I see where they're coming from. As for the tea, it's fine by me.

Temple door: is ok

*** Please delete the samples that were not OK from the uploads page and re-upload (2) replacement samples so we may continue to review your application. Thank You. ***

Ok'ed pics at the end of the post.

Attempt 2

Fan:
• We could not find a clear center focal point and found this image to be out of focus. Try using a tripod at slower shutter speeds, even intentional blurs or shallow DOF (depth of field) should have a point of focus. For more information about focus, please see: http://www.istockphoto.com/tutorial_2.1_focus.php

Lots of hot tips there but how about the center of the fan as a center focal point? Looks pretty damn sharp to me.

Arc: Nice composition
• Unfortunately this image contained unacceptable amounts of jpeg compression artifacts. Artifacts are most commonly caused by over-compression but may be a result of other factors. Be sure your camera is at its highest quality setting and remember to also save your JPEGs at the highest possible quality (level 12). For more information about over-compression or artifacting, please see: http://www.istockphoto.com/tutorial_2.3_noise.php

That was pretty diplomatic. But it's not JPEG compression this pic is suffering from, it's from having been taken at 400 ASA with a compact Sony DSC-P200. I tried to reduce the noise in Photoshop but didn't do a very good job. There's so much of it! Now that I carry a tripod I shoot everything at 100 ASA.

Attempt 3

Temple door: is ok
Tennis ball: is ok

Almonds:
- Unfortunately this image contains undue artifacts when viewed at full size. Artifacts are most commonly caused by over-compression but may be a result of other factors. Be sure your camera is at its highest quality setting and remember to also save your JPEGs at the highest possible quality (level 12).

This image was shot at 100 ISO but underexposed. Raising the levels brought out the noise lurking in the shadows. This pic might be still be saved though with noise reduction or by resubmiting it at a smaller size. The best size to submit a pic on Istockphoto is 2560x1920 but the smallest acceptable size is 1600x1200 pixels. That means if your pic is rejected for questions of noise, or for a slight sharpness problem, you can make it smaller and see if that fixes the problem. You might miss out on some juicier deals but it's better than nothing. Large format downloads cost 5$ (which means $1 for you) but but also tend to be less frequent than the $1 800x600 websized download. 1600x1200 is $3. There's also XL size (4200x2800,$10) and XXL size (4900x3300,$20-40) but these would require stitching or VERY expensive cameras/digital backs.

Attempt 3

Welcome to iStockphoto.com, the designer's dirty little secret. Congratulations, the iStockphoto administrators have determined that your images are commercially and technically ready for iStockphoto.com. Please begin uploading at your convenience. There is currently a limit of 20 uploads per 168 hour period.

Have fun and welcome aboard.

Temple door: is ok
Tennis ball: is ok
Food: ok

Thank you for your time and effort.

Best Regards,
iStockphoto.com

But who would pay a dollar for a temple door, a tennis ball, or a basket of vegetables?

light tests, boring? no way

2006-08-20T23:46:00.000+07:00

My fashion shoot at Suvarnabhumi (a transliteration of a word pronounced soo-wa-na-poom but never mind) airport is in ten days and this is the light I'll be going for. Two slave flashes are on fully extended tripods on both sides of Khun Fiat. With a double layer of exposed and processed film on the main flash, the slave flashes weren't always getting enough light to be triggered. I had to increase the light on Fiat which isn't exactly the intended effect but softens things out a bit. Anyhow, it will have to do.

I have no idea why Fiat puts a finger in his mouth when he yawns.

Previous episodes:
back-light test #2
back-light test #1
slave flashes

a sudden passion for tennis courts

2006-08-18T21:31:00.000+07:00

Work

2006-08-17T23:34:00.000+07:00

I finally got .jpg and .pdf exports of my work as published in BK Magazine.

Flower power came out a couple weeks ago (you got to see a bad scan of it at the time). This next one just came out this week:

If you're in Bangkok, do go to this bar-slash-vintage collectibles shop for a couple drinks. It's on Sukvhumvit 55 (Soi Thonglor), in the soi that's to the left of the Playground mall (Soi Taraom 2), and not too far from the main street (and these directions are actually better than the ones in BK Magazine).

Thailand Open Coming Up

2006-08-17T22:55:00.000+07:00

the smell of money

2006-08-16T23:51:00.000+07:00

Durians are spiky tropical fruits with pale yellow flesh that are so pungent that they are banned in Bangkok's skytrains and many hotels around the country. They smell of rot, or vomit, depending on who you ask. Being of a country where andouillette and rognons smell like piss, cheese stink of feet, and garlic breath is a national symbol, I wasn't afraid of tasting durian, but just never had had the opportunity yet. Then I got my first paid photography job ever, a catalogue for fresh and processed durian products destined for export to China.

This is a durian, not to be confused with a jackfruit. It (like everything else in this post except the icecream) was shot with natural daylight bounced off white cardboard sheets that also doubled up as reflectors. The fruit is standing on a tube of glass that has been photoshopped out, so that light hits the bottom of fruit as well.

Durian can be made into a paste and crushed almonds worked into the paste--delicious.

As these shots are for a catalogue, they are composed to go in the corner of a page that contains text. Hence, the image will only occupy a fraction of the page (1/3 or a 1/4). This shout would be the top right of a page, while the image above would be the bottom left of that same page.

The ice-cream couldn't be shot with natural light. I used flashes to allow a high enough shutter speed to freeze the dried durian flakes in mid-air. Of course, I used my slave flashes (see my previous posts, I've got 4 now). First I got a shot of the ice-cream with just the right amount of durian powder on it and then poured durian powder a dozen times until I got a good shot--which wasn't easy to time. Finally, I composited the spoon and falling powder with the ice-cream in photoshop. This way, I used only one ice-cream, and melting was not an issue.

This is what the powder comes from, dried durian. It cooks in a pot underneath which is boiling oil. I believe that's as close to an oven as things get in Asia. The oil doesn't come in contact with the durian so it's a low-fat snack.

Fresh durian, like mango, is best appreciated with sticky rice on which one pours coconut milk. The milk we had just went right through the rice--way to watery. We settled for white latex glue over which we poured some genuine coconut milk for a wetter look. So this is one dish I didn't eat.

when diffraction rears its ugly head

2006-08-14T23:12:00.000+07:00

Reducing the aperture on your lens (setting it to a higher f/stop) increases your depth of field. Objects both far and near will be in focus. This is exactly what I needed for this dried baby durian fruit which was destined to by "dry-cut" (cut out and put on a white background). Fortunately, I also remembered there is a point where stopping down actually reduces the overall sharpness of your image and thus becomes self-defeating. Since I couldn't remember what that point was, I shot the durian at f/5.6, f/16, and f/36.

On this closeup, shot at f/5.6, the depth of field is quite shallow and parts of the durian are out of focus. This has nothing to do with diffraction, it's due to depth of field so we'll just ignore it. Let's focus on what is sharp; those parts are just as sharp as in the picture below.

This crop, shot at f/16, has a much greater depth of field. The parts that were sharp in the f/5.6 crop are still sharp, but others, that were out of focus, are now sharp as well.

Now at f/36, the picture is noticeably less sharp. It's not out of focus, the picture was shot on a tripod with a cable remote at the same focus as the other two shots. This image is suffering from diffraction. The point of today's post: remember to not go beyond f/22 unless you know what you're doing.

If you still absolutely need to know what diffraction is and how it happens, Sean T. McHugh has an amazing page on the topic.

Light Tests

2006-08-10T01:29:00.000+07:00

No, I didn’t take this picture, unfortunately. Tada Varich did, in a story titled “Lost City” for the New York issue of Wallpaper* Thai Edition (#5, Jan. 2006).
Concept: Wpp* Thailand
Assistant Photographer: Ashira Puttanapituk, Rangsee Vekavanich.
Stylist: Yano Tomoko @ Code Artists
Hair: Kenshin Asano
Make-up: Ryuji
I think that’s what’s called “with due credit”.

I like the light a lot in this story. It is backlit, but the foreground and background are still visible in a dark yet washed out kind of way which is pretty original and moody. The blacks aren’t very black, and generally you might write this off as “bad light” but I like the feeling. For my upcoming fashion shoot, I want to do something similar, if I can. I’ve been doing a lot of tests and it is not easy. My colleagues kindly posed as models, and behind them you can see the view from my 21st story office.

It's all shot with the same setup I tested in my room a couple days ago. Somehow it doesn’t look right just yet but I’m now out of ideas on how to do any better.

My First Pics in BK Magazine

2006-08-06T17:57:00.000+07:00

..and the second time ever I have pictures published. Last time was a year ago in Phuket's local newspaper--a story I did on a local hip-hop crew and shot with peel-apart Polaroids, no kidding. This one was hardly easier. It was shot in medium format with 160 ASA film pushed to 400. Talk about overkill for pics that are just about twice the size of the negative or smaller. This is the last thing I shoot in medium format for BK.

If you read the little blurb of text that wasn't cropped, you now know August 12th is Thai mother's day (it's HM Queen Sirikit's birthday, a mother to all Thais). Don't forget!

For this article and many more, BK Magazine is available on www.asia-city.com.

Slave flash with no visible master flash

2006-08-05T22:38:00.000+07:00

This thing is firing by itself? Just like that? No cables, but also no light coming from the camera? What’s the trick?

Yesterday, I was asked to do some kind of fashion shoot in Thailand’s new airport which has yet to open to the public. With backlights being so in fashion (no less than 3 shoots were backlit in the latest issue of Wad), I suggested we try that. Backlight also goes well with the cold, artificial and metallic quality of the airport. Since I’ve never done a fashion ahoot, you'd think I’d try something simpler, or get decent equipment—but no. We’re going to do this with 10 dollar slave flashes and burnt out negs taped to the main flash.

In case you hadn’t guessed, backlight is light coming from the back. It creates sharp burnt out highlights on the sides of the subject, leaving the background and center of the subject in darkness, sometimes in total darkness. Something like this:

I don’t think I have to draw a diagram of this one. You can see where the slave flashes are and the master flash is right on top of the camera, which I’m holding. What should surprise you, if you paid attention to “slave flashes: part I”, is that my face is so dark, meaning there’s no light coming from the master flash. I linked to that trick already but I’ll spell out in full right here because I found out a few things about putting the theory into practice.

The theory is that developed film that has been exposed to light will become dark, blocking off visible light, but will continue to let infrared light pass through it. Since your slave flashes’ sensors are sensitive to infrared light, you can tape an exposed neg to your main flash to stop visible light while still triggering the sensors. Actually a single layer of negative is not enough, letting way too much red light through. Your subject will be backlit in white and lit from the front in red—not exactly the effect I’m after. Doubling the layers of exposed negatives worked well at cutting off nearly all the visible light emitted by the main flash while allowing enough infrareds through to continue to trigger the slaves.

After I had all that figured out, I decided I also wanted to be able to have some light from the master flash so that I could continue to control the exposure of the central, non-backlit, zone of the subject (in this case, myself). In the end, this is how the camera was rigged:

90% of the master flash is covered by the dual-layer of exposed negative but notice the little white rectangle at the top. That’s the part I can choose to open or close—by moving the duct tape around—to control how much visible light is coming from the main flash. The problem is that the shape of the light becomes a small rectangle too! But remember we’re talking 61 dollar setup here. This is the same picture as the one above but with a little “window” opened in the main flash:

I don't exactly feel ready for the shoot though. I'd need to test this stuff in a setting bigger than my room and with a model.

cheap slave flashes for wireless multiple flash setups

2006-08-02T20:07:00.000+07:00

After bounce flash, I decided to graduate to bounce flash + slave flash. I hesitated between a 900 bucks setup with dedicated Canon flashes and the thing on the pic right here:

I took the Hanica F-2000. I just love the name; nothing to do with money. Ok, it costs 8 bucks.

The Hanica F-2000 is a slave flash. Before I tell you what slave flashes are and how to use them, here's what they do:

Effect

Ignore the fact the lighting looks like a Chinese wedding studio shot. You can't expect too much from a Vivitar 3200A (45 bucks) coupled to an 8 dollar Hanica F-2000 — especially when it's the first time ever the photographer is using them. Let's also ignore that only the bag is real in this pic, because that's the point. My magazine was doing a story on fakes (bags, watches, etc.) and I suggested the cover be a girl that used to be a boy—very easy to come by, here in Thailand. Her name is Tina; I don't have her cell number.

Now back to the lights. The Vivitar is doing most of the work, coming in from the left, bouncing off a white board covered with dumb ol' white paper (a white board is too reflective as such, not soft enough). The Hanica's effect is actually pretty discrete on this shot because I've got it under four layers of tracing paper but if you look at her hair on our right, and her arm, there's a glow there that would otherwise be dearly missed. Black hair can end up looking like a flat black cutout if you don't bounce something off it. There was also a big window on that same side that balanced the light on her face. I don't think the Hanica is touching her face because it's obviously giving off a very orange light and her face isn't that color.

The F-2000 is not a powerful device (guide number 11) and there's no way to control its output asides from the old fashion way: moving it away from the subject you’re lighting, bouncing the flash off a wall or rigging some kind of filter or paper directly onto the flash. But as you can see above, it was powerful enough to require 4 layers of tracing paper to dampen it. It's not far out of the frame though, very close to the model. The yellowish paper warmed it up though, which some people would actually do on purpose to create warm highlights in the hair. Personally, I think the whole blue and orange highlights for portraits thing is tacky and could have done with a more neutral color.

Operation

The F-2000 opens up like a clam, which turns it on, after which it can either be used like any old manual flash, by pushing it into your camera’s hotshoe, or as a slave. A slave flash has a light cell that tells it when another flash is firing, at which point it fires as well, in sync. That means you can make just about any light setup you want with them, on batteries (two regular AA’s for the F-2000), and without cables. Just place them somewhere around your subject and watch them all fire when your camera’s flash fires. For the specific placement of the flashes, take a look at the diagram below.

If you’re going to try this, you need to know a few things about your camera’s flash that could create problems for this kind of setup. Digital camera’s TTL (through the lens) measure of flash output are not done like they were with film cameras. Film cameras just shot the flash, measured how much light was bouncing off the film, in real-time, while the shutter was open, and cut the flash when it felt there had been enough light picked up. Digital cameras fire a first short burst of light through the flash, analyze the result, and, immediately after that, fire the flash again with the perfect amount of light to produce the final image. Canon calls it E-TTL, Nikon i-TTL. Let's just use ETTL. Actually it’s just like what photographers do with a flash light meter, except it’s done so fast, your eye doesn’t even see the flash fire twice. It’s a great feature but it doesn’t work with light-triggered slave flash photography.

Your eye doesn’t see the flash fire twice but slaves will; and they will fire on the first flash your camera’s flash fires. When the camera really takes the picture, at the second flash, your slave flashes will be spent. Some cameras might have a setting to tell the camera to not use pre-flash but I can’t find such a thing on my 350D. There is a fix though; just put any old manual flash on your camera. As non-ETTL flashes don’t do pre-flash, they will work perfectly as masters for your slaves. In short, don’t use your built-in flash or any modern ETTL flash for flash slave photography; slap any plain old single burst flash onto your DSLR and you'll be fine.

Models

You don’t even need to have any actual light coming from your camera. You can have an all slave setup with your camera only acting as a remote trigger. That particular trick is not mine so I’ll just link to it; go here. What that link won’t tell you (because it’s trying to sell you a book) is what flashes to use as slaves. You can do what I did, just call up your local shop and ask for one; or, if you’re in the civilized world (where I suspect Hanica F-2000’s don’t exist), you can get a Quantaray - MS-1 ($20) or Sunpak DS-20 ($35). You may also consider slave triggers such as the Wein PN Peanut Photo Slave. It’s $20, just for a trigger (sees the light from the master, triggers the flash it is connected to), but the aforementioned slaves are cheap with reason so it can be worth investing in triggers if you already own quality flashes. You can even attempt to hold on to your built-in ETTL flash as a master with the Phoenix Digital Slave Flash which claims to ignore pre-flash ($48).

Of course, if you own a DSLR, you could do much better with dedicated Canon or Nikon flashes. They’re fully automated and adjustable—meaning you can control the light ratios between groups of flashes from your master flash. They’re a lot more powerful too. Both Canon and Nikon have good tutorials on using their flashes that will leave you wanting not one, not two, but three of them (a master and two slaves). But before you jump the gun, I suggest you give my cheap alternative a shot, just to see if you’re really up to the task of placing the lights, which is the part that can’t be automated and involves time and either a lot of duct tape or three tripods (a good slave flash should have a tripod screw mount). And do ponder this:

For	Canon	Nikon	any camera
Master	Canon580EX ($390)	Nikon SB-800 ($330)	Vivatar 3200A ($45)
Slaves (2)	Canon 430EX ($250x2)	Nikon SB-600 ($180x2)	Hanica F-2000 ($8x2)
Total price	$890	$690	$61

If you really don't want to skip on ETTL but still want a cheaper alternative to Canon/Nikon flashes, you might consider Sigma. The Sigma EF 500 DG SUPER (200$) and Sigma EF-500 DG ST ($128) claim to be able to control other Sigma units and do ETTL (that's i-TTL for Nikon to be precise, but it's the same thing really). Just how much control and automation they can do is not really clear on the Sigma website. They come in Canon and Nikon versions. Get them here.

Also, if you don't plan on doing this outside of the comfort of your home, forget flash and get strobes. Although strobes are real studio lights, a studio kit might end up costing you less than dedicated brand flashes that won't work with the camera you'll be using 2 years from today. Strobes work with a ton of cool accessories, are easier to set up, and their output can be controlled. The coolest thing with strobes is they allow you to preview your light setup because they give off light all the time, unlike flashes.

That's it. Now grab a camera, some lights, and shoot away.

In praise of flash

2006-07-30T14:00:00.000+07:00

Funny how the first thing people who like taking pictures figure out is “I don’t like flash”. I can’t blame them, direct flash, at night, is often very, very ugly. But I do have to make a case for bounce flash and fill flash. First off, sometimes there just isn’t much light and if you still want to take a picture home, well you’re going to have to make light. More light also means a lower ISO and less noise. So instead of just skipping those pictures, or taking them with loads of motion blur and noise, get yourself the kind of flash that has a head that rotates in every direction and try to bounce it off a wall or ceiling. Have a look at this:

Thames and his buddy whose name I forgot, of defunct Thai boy's band 3+1

This was shoot with a Panasonic DMC-FZ30 in the Sony BMG building in Bangkok. That’s a crap camera, and Sony’s offices are, well, offices. This is actually the kitchen. The windows are stained very dark (this is Bangkok), and even if they provide some diffuse indirect light coming from the right of the frame, it was quite weak. Let me add that that Panasonic is a very noisy camera which really can’t deal with high-ISO. Not only the locale and camera were shit but so is my flash, a Vivitar 3200A (guide number 28 at ISO 100). I cost me about two or three thousand baht (40-60 euros) two years ago when I got it to shoot peel-apart Polaroids of Muay Thai boxers with a 600SE—but that’s another story. The flash is supposed to be automatic (there’s a light cell on the front that tells the flash how much light is bouncing back) but that never really worked in real life. I just put it in manual, so that it fires all it can, and then play with the camera settings.

The shoot looks quite pro and studio-like, I’d say. I had like 5 minutes to shoot it as these guys were doing lots of interviews that day. It’s far from perfect but it certainly doesn’t have that violent “in your face” look people equate with flashes.

former Miss Thailand representative at the Miss Universe competition

A week later, I had my Canon 350d and tried the same thing. By squeezing between a white column and a white wall, I had both a white background and a white surface to bounce the flash off of which was not above but behind me—a very nice setup indeed! The convex shape of the column was very hard on the flash which turned out to be underpowered for the job (convex shapes diffuse light too much) but again, you must realize this shot was taken in a shopping mall and in 5 minutes time! Does it look that way?

I had a hard time getting the right exposure on these, and screwed most of them up, but it doesn’t have to be that way. You can get a nice flash of your camera’s brand that will fully communicate with your camera to get perfect exposure, whatever the light is bouncing off of. You can even control other flashes with high-end flashes and make set-ups, in the field, of several lights. Again, everything is automated and adjustable. Nikon’s high-end flash is the SB800; Canon’s is the 580EX. These cost the price of a decent single focal lens but I think they’re worth it if you want to get creative with light. Remember that even outdoors and in sunlight, fill-flash can greatly improve your pictures.

I haven't really had time to experiment with fill-flash yet (direct flash, usually outside and in sunlight). You can see examples on Dave Black's site. He does amazing stuff with his Nikon SB800's.

In praise of DSLRs (as if they needed it)

2006-07-30T12:58:00.000+07:00

There are good reasons why the press switched to digital years ago and they all hit me in the face last week. Film is expensive, doesn’t allow you to check your pics until it’s too late, each roll of film requires two trips to the lab plus scanning (since I do that myself), and the result is much better than what is needed in but the best of glossy magazines. Everybody knows this but sometimes you just need to figure things out for yourself.

Actually, I didn’t really suffer from the “can’t check until it’s too late problem” apart from the stress it induces. I’ve been using my Mamiya 645e and then Mamiya Pro TL for 6 months now so I sort of know what I’m doing. That’s not a bad talent when you switch to digital because small crappy LCD screens are not to be trusted. Besides, looking at your LCD too much distracts you from what you should really be looking at, the real world.

Still, I really need to buy a digital camera to be fast enough in my work. I wasn’t too thrilled about this because I already own a Sony DSC-P200 (a compact) and have a Panasonic DMC-FZ30 at work, a superzoom that goes up to 420mm in 35mm equivalent. But I don't like either camera and figured only a DSLR could do the trick. This was a bit of a wild guess. Since nobody bothers to “cross-compare” cameras, I didn’t really know what to expect from the switch to a digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) except that as a “sorta pro” a DSLR was what I was supposed to get. Many stress how DSLRs rock at focusing and how they offer better control over all the functions that go into digital camera. But I think I never read anything like, “The image quality is ten times better than non-DSLRs—-the noise, the sharpness, the colors—everything will leave you amazed.”

I guess nobody bothers to compare cameras across categories because they expect people to know which category they’re shopping in and just need to know which camera is best in that given category. But I can think of a few people who hesitated or still hesitate between advanced compacts or megazooms and DSLRs--and even people waiting to make the switch from 35mm. So let’s just make this clear one more time, a DSLR, even with 6MP, will blow away any compact, even those with 8MP.

The fact people shop around for high megapixel counts is called the “megapixel myth”. The truth is that increase in megapixels is not as important as it seems because doubling the amount of pixels only increases resolution by half. What does matter is your sensor's size.

Bigger sensor’s have lower noise and do a generally better job at capturing sharp, colorful images. Sensors go from tiny (6mm on your mobile phone) to medium-format sized (6cm x 4,5cm, not in any normal human’s budget though). Most affordable DSLRs are 1.6 (Canon) or 1.5 (Nikon) times smaller than the traditional 35mm negative (24mm by 36mm), which gives us something like 15mm x 24mm. For comparison the aforementioned Sony and Panasonic cameras are a full 10mm less wide than that.

No, I’m not going to do test shots. I’m just telling you that if you like photography enough to have read this far, you should go out and buy a DSLR if you haven’t already. They really make better pictures, period.

Well except that if I were you, I’d wait a couple months. The Sony Alpha A (hitting shelves now) packs some nice goodies but I’m very suspicious of Sony as they are new to SLRs (even if they're building on the Minolta brand that they acquired earlier this year). Lets wait for its full review on dpreview.com. Nikon’s response will be a new, I guess, entry-level DSLR to be announced in 10 days. And Canon’s own 350d is getting very old now as well (over 18 months, the usual life cycle of a DSLR). Canon will have to reply to Nikon and Sony ASAP. Expect a new Canon entry-level DSLR before the end of the year.

Too bad, I needed one right NOW. If you’re in that case, and depending on your budget, you should get a Nikon D200 or the much lighter and cheaper Canon 350D. Choosing one means you might have to stick with either brand for life though, as the flashes and lenses you buy will not operate across brands—another reason to think very hard before buying into any DSLR brand, and Sony in particular.

I read pages and pages of reviews, went to Canon and Nikon dealers to play with all their cameras and finally I got the 350d, second-hand with a 1GB compactflash, for 26 000 baht (that’s about 520 euros). I liked how ridiculously light it is, even if yes, the grip is a bit small which is not very comfortable and doesn’t look very pro either. I haul my gear around, with a tripod, all day long, so I don’t think a nice heavy feel in my hands is cool at all. Heavy busts my back. So far, I’m very satisfied with controls, focus, and speed of operation. The d200 will get you big improvements in those areas (but not really in image quality) and also a fantastic LCD (bigger, brighter, crisper).

With all the money I saved by buying the cheapest DSLR around, I can get stuff which is much more important to getting good pictures than the camera’s body: flashes and lenses mostly. The other good thing about getting a cheap DSLR is that you get a crap kit lens. Well that’s a good thing and a bad thing because those lenses are really a waste of plastic and glass but it means I don’t even have to get a lens right away. The kit lens is definitely good enough for my magazine. In Europe and the US you can always get body only versions of even the entry-level DSLRs anyway, not here in Thailand.

Here are my very first pics: Shan, a Chinese Restaurant on Thanon Thonglor that was absolutely delicious and reconciled me, at long last, with Chinese cuisine; and what may well be the next cover of BK Magazine, but then again, might not.

good job guys

2006-07-23T16:48:00.000+07:00

I caught these construction workers as they wait for the buses that take them out to their sleeping quarters--tin-roofed huts in a junkyard. They're building a "King Power" shopping mall in my street. It's a huge contruction site. There will be a skyscraper, and the mall itself, and something that looks like a big glass ostrich egg. People don't read or go to museums in Bangkok. They watch TV, and shop. So all the big projects are malls. But even though you might know the names of architects that have done museums, libraries, music halls, why even stadiums or hotels, can you name any malls designed by famous architects? I can't. Malls are just too ugly and boring. Unfortunately, they are all Bangkok has to offer when it comes to contemporary architecture. If you visit the Big Mango, you better like old temples.

my teacher

2006-07-20T23:08:00.000+07:00

This is one of my teachers of Thai. In level 1, students aren't too good with colors and body parts so there's nothing like a makeup class to get them to put the words into action. Looking like that, and if it's late enough (or early enough) Kru Pong could actually make some good money in certain parts of Bangkok.

Online Stock: The foie gras I'll never get to eat.

2006-07-18T10:12:00.000+07:00

Stock photography used to be a way photographers could make money--and photographers don't have that many (good thing people still get married). Royalty-free online stock libraries have put an end to that. There's been much boohooing on the professional photographers' part but it won't change a thing. Today, everbody can get professional-grade pics for a buck or less. That's compared to several hundred in a traditional agency, and I'm sure today's prices have been dragged down so it might even have been a thousand dollars or so. It's not that often that something real (not stocks) gets one thousand times cheaper legally. Let's celebrate.

But I make pics, I don't use them. So it is still a hard pill to swallow that a professional looking image is worth a dollar nowadays. Stock photographers have made the switch to working on commission only but even that has suffered from the cheap online stocks. Are you going to look up a photographer and ask him to shoot a piece of foie-gras, with the chance his pictures will be of poor quality, the delay involved, and the huge price-tag, or are you going to fork out a whole dollar and get your pic within seconds? I have a friend running a TV channel and he once told me, "We're not going to go and shoot cool stuff for this channel. Why should I take risks when I can just buy existing programs that I can review based on the program itself, not its script?"

My magazine, having a subscription to photos.com for US$299.95 a year, fully agrees. Faced with illustrating a piece that mentioned foie gras, my boss did what any sensible person would do. With a single click she got a picture which is probably better than anything I can do for them (I don't have strobes, a macro lens, or a white backdrop). Since my mag has a subscription and may well download over 300 pics a year, this foie-gras pic might well have cost LESS than a dollar, or 40 baht. That's how much a round trip on the skytrain right here in Bangkok costs if you're not going more than 3 stations away. Throw in 10,000 dollars of camera equipment and you've got a serious headache. Oh and the foie-gras, which you probably can't eat in the end anyway because foie gras fairs poorly in the warm environment of a Bangkok studio.

To add insult to injury, my boss asked to actually shoot myself in the foot and look up some more stock libraries. Not only that, but she asked if I could find FREE stuff. That's right, from one grand, to one buck, to free. That seems to be the next step in online stock. The worst is, I found it! Not just a few free pics to entice you to subscribe, a whole library of free pics, some surprisingly decent. Now I can understand why people would dump their stuff in the lap of the 1 dollar agencies (with some claiming they make up to US$500 a month thanks to them) but why would anybody bother to hand them out for free?

Here's a quick look at what's out there:

www.istockphoto.com
You pay per picture and according to size.

price / size in pixels (approx.)
US$1 / 800x600
US$3 / 1600*1200
US$5 / 3500*2400

www.shutterstock.com
You subscribe for up to 250 downloads per month.

price / size in pixels (approx.)
$159/month / up to 5000*6000

www.dreamstime.com
As low as US$0.77 per picture with subscriptions. Otherwise:

price / size in pixels (approx.)
US$3 / 800*600
US$6 / 3000*2000

www.photos.com
Subscription service. Unlimited download.

price / max size
US$299.95/year / 2000*2400

www.sxc.hu
As the price goes down, so does the quality. The pictures on this site are free but if you look hard enough, you can find some good shots.

price / size
free / varies

Now why would I shoot myself in the foot AGAIN and actually put this in my blog? Because I've made my mind up about how I can be a paid photographer. I'll never freelance. I'll only go ahead with this photography craziness if I can get hired in a newspaper. And if I do, my job might well be looking up which pictures I can get for free, or a dollar, rather than busting my ass shooting them. Don't resent technology, use it.

Review: Picasa Web Album

2006-07-16T15:29:00.000+07:00

Have you made the switch to the following?

Gmail (e-mail by Google)
Picasa (picture browser by Google)
Firefox (web browser by Mozilla)

They’re all free and they’re so fantastic it would take pages and pages to explain why. Just try them, NOW.

I’m mentioning these for two reasons. One is that I use an eMac at my new job. The only program that crashed (without compromising overall system stability though, you have to hand it to Apple), was Safari. It just shut down at one point. It’s funny that Macs come bundled with two web browsers, Microsoft’s internet explorer and Apple’s Safari, and that both suck. I immediately installed Firefox which has been running fine since then (and runs Gmail with all its cool functions enabled, and displays my website correctly).

The bad news for Mac users is that there’s no Picasa in sight for Mac. I love this program so much I’d think twice about getting a Mac just because Macs don’t have it. Then again I’d think two-zillions times about getting a PC for a whole bunch of other reasons. Picasa’s website says they’re too busy making Picasa better to transport it to Mac. Apple does have Aperture, its own photography browser and organizer. It’s outrageously expensive and from what I read online, doesn’t do the job very well. Maybe it’s because it was designed for pros.

The other reason I mention Picasa is that Google is finally, and through Picasa, coming up with some kind of competition for Flickr. Flickr is the best thing around. It has a huge community, which means random people will find your pics, comment on them, and you can find other people’s pics (mostly using tags). Still, I tried Flickr twice and the system for uploading pictures was such a drag, I gave up.

I didn't expect much from Picasa Web Album (let’s call it PWA from here on) but once I had a full album of pics (that I'd already selected through Picasa's starring system) online within seconds and a single-click, I decided I liked it.

CNET has the downsides:

“…But there are small snags. While albums on Picasa Web Albums can be made either public or unlisted, there's no way that I saw to password-protect them. And although Web Albums will display slide shows, captions that you attach to photos don't show up in them.

But I have a bigger issue with this service: it's one way. Once you upload photos from Picasa to Picasa Web Albums, there's no link between them. If you write a caption or delete a photo on your PC, nothing changes on your online album (or vice versa). I'm spoiled by the technology of Sharpcast and Phanfare, both of which feature live synchronization between media files on your PCs and your online albums. I think synchronization is the only way to go if you're going to have the same images online and on your PC. I'm disappointed that Google did not more tightly integrate its Picasa software and Web service.

I'm also surprised that Google is being so stingy with online storage space for photos: Free accounts are limited to 250MB. That's adequate for a bunch of slide shows but it's not enough to be a serious online photo storage solution. Oddly, Gmail, which is also free, gives you 2.7GB to play around in. If you want more photo storage, you can get 6GB online for $25 a year. I don't think that's a very good value, and it's still not enough space to store a typical family's picture archive (Phanfare, one of the few photo sites that charges for storage, costs $55 a year but provides unlimited space).

I was hoping for more innovation and a richer feature set for Picasa's online product. On the other hand, for current Picasa users, I don't know of a simpler or faster way to share photos.”

I can tell you why they’re only giving out 250MB. The 2.7GB limit in Gmail is marketing. I’m only using 7% of that (even though I’ve been sending out pictures which take up space). That means they advertise 2.7GB but they only have to hand out 250MB or less in most cases. With pictures, advertise 2.7GB and people will be using 2.7GB! Which is too bad really. I don't want to see 2.7GB of anybody's pics except maybe some guys who are now dead and displayed in museums. I'm only taking up 10% of my 250MB so far and I'd already be pretty flattered if you went through all of that.

Actually, I don’t need an online album service at all (I already have a website AND a blog) but PWA made it so easy, I just went ahead and did it. Posting pics in my blog is a drag compared to this because if you try to post more than 4 pics in a single post, it just doesn’t work and you have to resort to all kind of tricks like posting on a second blog and retrieving code with the view source function of your browser. From now on, I may well not post pics here in my blog anymore, and just link to PWA.

Let’s hope the next version resolves the snags brought up in the CNET review. Synchronization would be particularly cool. I’m always changing my mind about my pictures. Which ones to include, the crop, saturation, levels… sometimes I even retouch something I missed. It would be nice if these showed up in the online albums automatically.

Go see the results for yourself: http://picasaweb.google.com/greg.gla
PWA is so easy to use, I even threw in some old digital shots of China. The cool thing with digital (for photography buffs) is that each pic comes with camera brand and model, aperture, shutter speed, and focal length information!

A-List

2006-07-02T17:37:00.000+07:00

In all the blabla below, I'm afraid some of you missed out on the fact the better New York pictures are not posted on the blog but on the online portfolio thing. That or everyone just likes the B-list better...

News + New York

2006-06-30T17:29:00.000+07:00

Starting July 13th, I will be an intern photographer at BK Magazine. BK Magazine is a free weekly, in English, that is read by Thais for 80%. It is not distributed in the sky train or subway but only at select outlets such as high-end gyms, shops, or restaurants. The people who read it are rich, young and trendy--the sexiest target audience in town.

Let's get the bad news out of the way. I'm not getting paid at all.

I'll be working at BK Magazine 3 days out of the regular 5-day working week because they currently have another intern working 2 days a week. That's not a bad deal because it means I can continue to study Thai 3 days a week (about 15 hours). It might also mean I can hold on to my educational visa that runs till the end of this year.

There are no "non-intern" photographers in the magazine so the job is about illustrating the magazine with your pictures, not carrying coffees. They've already asked me for a photo essay and those usually get the cover. Distribution is 30,000 copies.

Incidentally, I actually read and like this magazine. It's a good magazine with useful info on what's going on, what's cool, what to see, etc. It doesn't have much text because Thais hate to read but less writing means better writing anyway. As far as looks go, right now it relies mainly on creative and tasteful graphic design but the photography is rather so-so.

This company is also exciting because it's part of Asia City publishing which makes similar mags in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore. They also have a branch called Splash that provides content (editorial and graphic) to corporates. For example, they put together an issue of Thai Airways' in-flight magazine. In-flight magazines are great stuff. Lots of people read them and they're glossy; which is great for pictures. Lastly, the group owns the first gay magazine in HK which is kind of shocking but something I'll just have to deal with (free copies! yeah!).

I'll keep you posted on how all this goes. Meanwhile, Asia City Publishing is right here if you want to know more.

Trying to get the internship kicked my ass into gear to scan my New York pics (shot during the two first weeks of June) and update the portfolio website. For a selection of my favorite pics of Bangkok, New York and Laos, go here.

The pictures below are the ones from New York that almost made the cut but didn't. The B-list if you like.

A Quick Trip to Laos: Day 5 of 5 - Luang Prabang

2006-06-13T17:55:00.000+07:00

Day 5 was spent in Luang Prabang itself. We got up early to witness the alms giving which takes place around 6 AM. Every morning, Buddhist monks all over Asia walk the streets to receive food in their alms bowls. Luang Prabang is no exception but the amount of tourists and monks has, apparently, turned the ceremony into something like the steps of the Cannes festival (minus the security), where scores of photographers elbow each other on the sidelines to get the best pics. Hence, the whole city has been posted with little signs asking for people wishing to witness the morning alms giving to dress modestly and behave properly by maintaining a certain distance from the monks and those who donate food.

We ended up witnessing an alms giving ceremony where it wasn't the locals giving food but tourists. But as they were Thai, it was done with due etiquette even if it was a bit more symbolic than what I'd seen in Thailand. All the monks got was sticky rice; as opposed to sweets, curries, and fried meats in banana leaves. Notice on the picture below how the girl kneeling has shrouded her shoulders with a scarf because she is wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt. I only elbowed the tour's in-house photographer once and gently tripped the videographer. I'm a good tourist.

This was on Th. Sisavangvong (the main strip) where there are many nice colonial-style houses. This particular one could well be the cutest of them all.

This temple is in a little street that cuts to the west bank of Nam Khon (the river that joins up with the Mekong, giving Luang Prabang it distinctive peninsular shape).

There are some cheap guesthouses in town, and some much higher end ones. This would be the perfect place to have breakfast but it seems the well-to-do wake up later than the backpackers. Too bad for them, the light doesn't get any better than this.

Still on Th. Kingkitsarat, there survive some dwellings that are much more humble than the fancy guesthouses and restaurants.

A little statue overlooking a stairway to the Nam Khon.

We then walked back a block inland and followed Th Sakkarin, which is lined with temples.

As the morning drew on, the novice monks were now busy doing chores. You'll see them cutting wood and whitewashing a temple's premises in the pictures below. They like chores just as much as any kid and were doing them as sloppily as they could get away with. In this particular image, the commotion is caused by the discovery of a rat, or family of rats, that lived in the old tree. Now we all know what Buddhism says you SHOULD do to animals. These kids took their spades and feet and tried to kill the terror-stricken animal until one of them got wiser and said, "Hey, lets lock him up with the cat, and watch it get torn apart." At which point, my assistant was on the verge of throwing up and ready to renounce his religion. He didn't utter a word for the rest of that morning. Torturing animals while wearing the saffron robes, is, well, not cool. "They're going straight to hell," was how he eventually broke his silence. My opinion of Buddhists as peace-loving people, as opposed to say, the nasty Jihadist Muslims, was only confirmed. When kids are bored out of their minds, you better pray nobody is handing out AK47's.

More peaceful, just as messy, not as fun.

We eventually made it to the crown jewel of Luang Prabang--Wat Xieng Thong.

And that wraps up Wat Xieng Thong. It's a truly beautiful and awe-inspiring temple--which is quite something because we had seen a lot of stunning temples by the time we made it there.

On Th. Sakkarin.

After lunch (notice how the light is crap now), we decided to cross the Mekong to see some of the temples across from Luang Prabang. While the assistant negotiated prices, I took pictures.

You know the old saying, "If you go on the Mekong and don't bring back pictures of naked little boys swimming, you're not worth the camera strapped around your neck." Actually, a few hours later my camera was in pieces (it wasn't strapped around my neck) so this was in the nick of time.

That was one long negotiation. All aboard.

At the helm.

The village on the other side of the Mekong has nothing to do with the royal splendor of Luang Prabang. It's just a village. Houses are made of dried banana leaves, with a few cinder blocks for the wealthy, and little kids are dirty. This baby's head was one big scab. The flies were having a field day. She didn't look in pain though.

One of the better homes.

The beautiful stone steps lead to a derelict temple. With two little girls acting as our guides, we heard it had been looted, burnt, used as a hideout for drug-dealers, and was now pretty-much abandoned. Some trees in the forest were covered with what must be a parasite and looks like the thorns on roses. The kids explained these were ghost strees containing the souls of the drug-dealers who had eventually been mowed down by the police a few years ago.

Only one Buddha is left.

Our guide.

Our guides overlooking the Mekong. We met maybe half a dozen other tourists on this side of the river. The temple's state of disrepair, the impressive view on Luang Prabang, the under-development of the village at its foot, reminded me of Bali or even of classic 18th century paintings of Greco-Roman ruins.

This kid not only stopped to have her picture taken but smiled while I tried to get the focus and light right. Come to think of it, it was kind of cruel. If every tourist does that, high-season must really suck for them. But I was really blown away by how much these poor kids were carrying.

We reached a temple complex that was in an excellent state of repair. It must have been Wat Xieng Maen. Actually the whole hill is dotted with abandoned temples but most people just visit this temple which hasn't been looted or burnt.

Then the kids went through some complex negotiations with a ten-year-old to get the key to a Buddha cave. He would only let them have it when they swore they needed to show it to us. I wish he hadn't. We climbed down natural rock formations for a while then climbed up for what must have been the equivalent of three stories of stone steps. When I turned to look down on our progression, the camera snapped off the tripod's quick-release grip and began its fall. It fell for a loooong time, bouncing off all those stones steps until finally it stopped at the very bottom of the cave. It is beyond repair; this is its last picture.

These last pictures were taken with a compact digital Sony DSC-P200.

Actually, the rest of the day was a lot of fun. Since I couldn't take pictures, we went to where the Nam Khon meets the Mekong and swam in the rapids. First, a young girl had to show us how to cross the river without being carried away while the boys looked on, positively cracked up. Then the boys showed us just where to jump from the cliff to scare yourself silly without breaking both legs and we also tried to fight the water as it rushed past huge boulders to see who could go the furthest without losing their balance; at which point one is slammed back through the rocks extremely fast. We got a few cuts and bruises and couldn't do half the tricks the local kids could do but it was a blast. I asked the girls why they don't play in the water with the boys and they answered, "Can't you see? We're not boys. We're girls."

And that's it for our trip to Luang Prabang. We headed back to our guesthouse, picked up our stuff and took the bus back to Vientiane. It was a horrible 9-hour ride by night (we got no sleep) followed by a 13-hour train ride from the Thai border to Bangkok, by day. None of this was air-con, so warm dust was blowing in our faces the whole way. When I finally got to take a shower, I had to wash twice before the water stopped running the colour of mud! In other words, go to Luang Prabang, it's beautiful--I mean FLY to Luang Prabang.

A Quick Trip to Laos: Day 4 of 5 - Pak Ou, Kuang Si

2006-04-24T18:15:00.000+07:00

Day 4 takes us to the Buddha caves of Pak Ou. I don’t like traveling as part of a group but for the two most popular half-day trips out of Luang Prabang, it would be rather expensive to rent your own boat (for Pak Ou) and mini-van (for the afternoon at Kuang Si waterfalls). The 2 trips cost the assistant and I a grand total of 14 dollars; a slight discount off the price for individual travelers or people going only to either Pak Ou or Kuang Si.

Pak Ou is an hour’s boat ride along the Mekong from Luang Prabang. I’d done a trip of similar length at the Golden Triangle (for maybe five times the price) and my impression was confirmed—boat trips on the Mekong are not very exciting. The backpackers I met on the boat who had done 2-day cruises (coming from Chiang Mai, Thailand for example) said those were just as boring, only much longer. Still, you have to ride the Mekong at least once in a lifetime. Around Luang Prabang, the river reminded me of the Lijiang, when it runs through Guilin, in China, except without the dramatic mountainous backdrop that has made Guilin world-famous.

Being on a group trip, I’d spent an hour in the morning waiting for the organizers to pack their boat to its full capacity, racing back and forth to get people out of bed or from their guesthouse to the landing. When we did make it to Pak Ou, we were told we had only twenty minutes. This was more than enough for the American family, the backpackers, and the Israeli couple that were sharing our boat but you don’t have all my pictures here and you have to realize they’re all tripod shots that take a long time to set up; so it wasn’t enough time for me. My take on it was that they could all screw themselves and wait while I did my stuff since I’d waited for them so long in the morning. I still had to run like a madman the flight of steps that takes you from the lower cave (cramped with small Buddha images) to the upper cave (with the giant golden Buddha at its door). In the end, I got all I wanted and even two shots I wouldn’t have dared hope for as the boat pulled out because they were without tripod and the light was set on the fly (the man in his boat and the general view of cave).

Some people will outright discourage you to even make the trip to Pak Ou, because of the length of the boat ride and because you might have seen other Buddha Caves in South-East Asia that rival Pak Ou. Also, the boats will stop in two villages on the way back. You know the drill; these places are basically villages turned open-air shopping malls where the locals get a chance to sell you their handicraft. Still, the development of tourism in Laos means these villages are nowhere near what you might have seen elsewhere. No buses stop here for one. The first village sells rice alcohol “Lao Lao” and the second one paper and textiles.

If you don’t have the time or desire to go on several-day treks deep into the jungle, these are a chance to see a village, albeit richer and more developed than the ones further off the beaten track. I’ll always take “off the beaten track” over “group tour” but let’s not get fascistic about it. These are villages, with real homes containing real people that sell stuff they really made. It’s not “Disneyland” as people like to call anything that doesn’t take a three-day hike to get to. No, you’re not going to “truly meet and exchange” with the locals as the stops are about 10-minutes. But I’m very dubious of how much more you can exchange when sleeping in a hill-tribe village overnight when you don’t speak their language. Think of how many people you’ve truly met in your city or town where you’ve lived for years and share the same culture and language. Ok, this is starting to sound like a rant. NEXT.

Monk's quarters at the "Paper" village. See, they have electricity! We shouldn't have gone.

It’s a rough ride to Kuang Si waterfalls and the amount of people they horn-shoe into those minivans is simply ridiculous. The legroom is more than enough for any six-year-old. Everybody else will have to figure out whichever Yoga position is less painful to him or her. It’s only 20 or so kilometers but you already know the 380 kilometer stretch from Vientiane to Luang Prabang took 10 hours so don’t look at the kilometers, they mean nothing. Lunch there was a rip-off—about 300 baht for somtam, sticky rice, and grilled chicken, a price I’ve yet to see even in Bangkok—but it was soon all worth it. The restaurant’s cats, though, were so disgustingly cute, I decided to waste a picture on them.

The color of the water in Kuang Si’s multiple pools is milky turquoise. It’s very fresh which is exactly what you want on a sunny day in SE Asia. This stop was 2-hours so I had time to both play in the pools and take pictures. You have to walk around a bit at Kuang Si because I almost missed the big waterfall while some people at the big waterfall missed the smaller “swimming pools” beneath it. Kuang Si is really magical and a lot of fun. I even had one pool all to myself for most of the time.

I’m including these two shots because I personally love “with or without” or “before and after” shots to explain a photographic technique. Most people just tell you what to do and show you the result without showing you what their picture would be like if they hadn’t done whatever it is they’re suggesting. As I set up this shot, this Lao girl stepped into the pool. I decided to take the picture even though I hadn’t screwed on my polarizing filter yet. Look at the foreground on her picture; it is a slab of white light. Now if you look at the picture without her, you can see through the water to the rock and it’s much more interesting. The lower pool has also fewer reflections. Notice also that another effect of the polarizer is that you need to slow down your shutter speed a lot since it “eats up” a lot of light. This makes the water much creamier. It’s a matter of taste but for shots of water splashing over rocks (beachsides, waterfalls), this effect is usually highly desired. A neutral density filter could have allowed me to slow the shutter speed down even more but past a second or two, I don’t think it would have made much of a distance. On a wave-beaten shore, very long exposures (1 minute) can give the impression of mist on the water though. Look at the timecatcher.com in my links for examples of this.

Jungles are beautiful. Just point and shoot.

Of course, I was the last one on the minibus, again. It stopped in another village on the way back where I took this shot.

The sun was setting on the Mekong by the time we returned to Luang Prabang. We walked down to the shore where a man was fishing with a net strewn between two long bamboo polls as children watched on.

The assistant, after a long day’s work.

Back on Th Khem Khong, a last glimpse of the Mekong.

A Quick Trip to Laos: Day 3 of 5 - Luang Prabang

2006-04-15T13:57:00.000+07:00

Welcome to Luang Prabang's dusty bus station. It's a very short ride into town and even though April is the start of the low season, the first two guest houses we hit were full. Makes you realize it's probably a very good idea to make reservations during the high-season. Our third guesthouse (Chantanome Guesthouse, +856+030-5140633, US$10/night) had a charming wood-panelled room with private bathroom that we took immediately.

No we didn't get much sleep on the bus but we still hit the streets as soon as we'd had cheese, baguette, coffee, eggs, and bacon. By then, kids where going to school. It was the last of them I saw, in uniform, so it must have been the last day of school before the New Year break. Just like Thailand, Laos' summer heat reaches its peak mid-April and the lunar year begins aknew around April 14th with week-long celebrations that include gigantic nation-wide water wars in the streets. As a sidenote, I just celebrated this in Bang Saen, Thailand, and you must imagine kilometers of traffic-jammed pick-ups loaded with huge tubs of water, everybody throwing that around with guns or simple bowls, and smearing each other's faces with talcum powder. Apparently Luang Prabang is the place to be for the "Pee Mai' in Laos(which means New Year, just like in Thai, but Thais call it Songkran). I can believe that because on the last day we were there, still 11 days from the three official days between April 13 to 15, people began throwing water! In Thailand, you can judge the intensity of Songkran fever in a particular place by how early it starts and how long it lasts (a mere two days in Phuket, weeks in Chiang Mai) but I never heard of anyone starting April 2!

The Blue House, Th Sisavangvong.

The Car from Naga Guesthouse, Th Sisavangvong.

Stuppas at Wat Saen, Th Sisavangvong.

Buddha in lotus flower, Wat Saen, Th Sisavangvong.

Standing golden Buddha, Wat Saen, Th Sisavangvong.

One of the many upscale restaurants in Luang Prabang and its "falang" owner, Th Sisavangvong.

Whicker garbage cans and half-jerrycan dust trays, Th Sisavangvong.

This lion looks like a messy eater but for having seen how the novice monks do their painting chores, the red paint on this little fellow is still pretty neatly applied.

Fishing boat on Nam Khan, an affluent of the Mekong that runs on the South-Eastern side of Luang Prabang before meeting the Mekong at its northernmost tip. Nam Khan and the Mekong give Luang Prabang its peninsular shape and that very special feeling that comes from being in sight of water at all times.

The temple on the Royal Palace grounds that contains the Pha Bang, a standing Buddha of gold after which Luang Prabang is named.

This very blunt shot of the palace does nothing to render the beauty of the place. The museum (no pictures allowed) it contains is exceptional as well. It contains religious sculptures and objects belonging to the royal family of Laos or their retainers. Some of its rooms are still as they would have been when the palace was inhabited. Between it and the mountain that serves as its backdrop on this picture lies the Mekong while Phu Si mountain is behind us. The last of the royal family disapeared in 1975 in Northern Laos.

Wat Pha Huak, across from the Royal Palace, at the foot of Phu Si.

The gardeners are kind enough to trim the trees so that every tourist who comes to Luang Prabang can take the same shot of the Royal Palace from the top of Phu Si mountain, beneath the stupa of That Chomsi.

Two novice monks overlook the Mekong from the top of Phu Si mountain, at Wat Tham Phu Si, next to a small cave where one can see an imprint of the Buddha's foot. Once I looked at the picture I had to wince. Taking pictures really makes a rushed Japanese tourist of you. When this picture came up from the scanner onto my screen, it struck me what a stunningly beautiful and calm place to be this mountaintop must have been. Unfortunately, I remember only wondering how I could ever fit such a wide range of light and dark in one picture. The answer is low contrast Fuji 160S negative film by the way and a pretty lucky exposure setting. Come to think of it, the most fun I had on this trip was after I smashed my camera! But this kind of picture--even if it's an insult to the rule of thirds--makes it all worth it because it's a magic moment captured for eternity.

There is a lot of restoration work going on in Luang Prabang, particularly on the sidewalks while we were there. They are all made of diagonally interlocking bricks and visibly this is true to tradition as I could see the same brick motif under peeling tar on yet unrestored streets. This work is financed by the UNESCO and the Agence Francaise pour le Development. Every bit of construction has its sign reading who paid for it (the two I have just named) and how much it costs; usually around one to two thousand US dollars.

Senior monk and his novices at Wat Pha Phuttabaht. On top of the considerable investments made by the UNESCO to restore his temple, this monk also has his novices working hard to upkeep the place. He kindly showed us around the temple and told us about this past studies in Chiang Mai (Thailand). The UNESCO also has a school in Luang Prabang to train skilled laborers in the restoration and preservation of Luang Prabang's past.

View from inside Wat Pha Phuttabaht.

Old colonial home on Th Sisavang Vathana.

On the street along the Royal Palace that goes down to the pier on the Mekong.

That's all for today. Day 4 takes us an hour's boat ride down the Mekong to a cave overlooking its waters that is crammed with Buddhas and then 25km out of town to the milky turquoise waters at the foot of a giant waterfall.

A Quick Trip to Laos: Day 2 of 5 - Vientiane

2006-04-11T15:12:00.000+07:00

The very French town square and its fountain is on the main strip that runs parallel to the Mekong. From there, a little street heads into town. On the left are a half-dozen tailors with cute French names and on the right "antique" dealers that sell ugly junk. On that street you can grab real buckwheat crepes that taste just like Brittany or take the first right into Th Samsenthai for a drink at House of Fruit Shakes.

Talad Sao is a market flanked by the country's busiest bus station. There are no railways in Laos and most people can't afford planes so this is the transportation hub of this small country. Still, it's much closer in size to the bus terminal of Phuket (a Thai island of one million souls) than any of Bangkok's several bus terminals. This man was a bit bewildered when I asked to take his picture but one man added in fine English, "You want to show the security in our country's bus stations." That sounds like a line from your a soviet guide in 1976 Moscow but then it dawned on me that the bus route to Luang Prabang used to be quite dangerous as rebels attacked the buses until recently. On our way back from Luang Prabang, the last passenger to board had a very slick folding-stock automatic rifle protruding from under his bomber jacket. One the way up, our bus was way too crappy to deserve any kind of protection.

When people told me baguette was big in Vientiane, I thought they met in the tourist joints. I didn't think the Lao would be selling and buying them by the heap load on their markets. The sandwiches they make are pretty good if heavier on fresh vegetables than in France and with pork closer to lard than ham.

See how many endangered species you can count. Furs, claws, beaks, gal bladder oil in M-150 bottles (another Thai equivalent to Red bull), and dessecated reptiles will cure anything a placebo can cure, only with the added risk of the medicine killing you first.

Back on Th Setthathirat, if you've ever been to the posh suburbs west of Paris, this will look familiar. This building is currently being renovated.

Vientiane's public library.

Patuxai, Vientiane's very own Arc of Triumph, also referred to locally as Anusawali (which means monument, just like in Thai, and happens to be the name of where I live in Bangkok), was built with cement donated by the USA to build a runway.

To get there and to the following sights of the day (and to retrieve my passport with its brand new 60-day tourist visa from the Thai embassy), we rented a motorcycle. Patuxai and Pha That Luang are both in town and could actually be reached by foot but Xieng Khuan is 25km out of town on the way to the Friendship Bridge. Hence another way to do this trip, for those crossing the bridge, is to see Xieng Khuan on your way in our out of Vientiane.

Photo note: Again, the polarizer did a good job of removing reflections on the water and might have contrasted the clouds a bit as well. I should have used a graduated filter to darken the clouds a bit so I did that a little bit with Picasa. Never do with Photoshop what you can do with Picasa because Picasa doesn't touch your original image and makes adding and removing modifications to your pictures much easier. For most of the day's pics, I would have liked bright sunlight but cloudy days do give the absolute best portrait light. Here they also made the Patuxai quite dramatic.

This is the national symbol of Laos--Pha That Luang. No, the clouds weren't purple; I need to rescan this. But so much gold paint does take its toll on the eyes.

The same thing from the outside and with more accurate colors.

These two novice monks spoke both excellent Thai and English. Novice monks are basically in need of a free home, free food, and free education. They spend a lot of their time praying, studying Buddhism and doing chores for the temple but it doesn't mean they have had some kind of calling, as you would expect from a Christian monk for example. Men can also be in monkhood for a few months, usually at the age of 20, to make merit for their parents and give them better afterlives. Out of these hundreds, or thousands, of men in monkhood, only a few will remain monks all their lives. The other monks I spoke too during my short trip were all similar to these two young men--they spoke good Thai and English and had studied at some point in Thailand. The planned on getting jobs once they had completed their education, and thus becoming laymen. I short, the distinction between education and Buddhism, or between teacher and senior monk, is a modern one; widespread in Thailand but apparently still limited in Laos.

I also promised to send him a print of his picture. If I don't, my afterlife will really suck.

This was shot at Xieng Khuan, the Buddha park. This place is a big garden crammed with Hindu and Buddhist sculptures cast in cement. It's more weird, or baroque, than pretty. This place is quite recent (1958) and was built by unskilled laborers under the direction of a yogi-priest-shaman (or so says Lonely Planet). You can skip it and you won't be missing the crown jewel of Laos.

Time to go to Luang Prabang. Only 380km but over 11 hours! At some points, in the mountains, you could probably outwalk the bus. Our bus was not quite as bad as the one on this picture but it was still the worst bus I'd ever taken for this kind of long-haul. No air-con means you were eating dust all night; getting caked in it as well. The legroom was so inexistent I had to put my knees in the alley. Even by sitting perfectly upright, my legs wouldn't fit against the seat in front of me! Then you had the drunk kids that boarded just outside of Vientiane. First they held us up thirty minutes haggling over the fare then one threw up for half the ride. But this bus was so crappy, it didn't even have the essential asian luxury--karaoke--and that was major plus compared to the one of the way back and even the luxurious VIP 24 buses in Thailand. Besides, this nominally VIP bus was still fine compared to sitting on your backpack in the middle of the aisle as some backpackers do when in a pinch.

Come back in a few days for Day 3 in Luang Prabang!

A Quick Trip to Laos: Day 1 of 5 - Vientiane

2006-04-07T21:07:00.000+07:00

One last look out from my balcony and its time to go to Hua Lampong Station. Except that one last look at the train tickets reveals they were for a train that left last night. My trusted assistant, the one whose name is a car brand, and myself get new tickets and leave two days later than planned in a second class, non-air-con sleeper train to Nong Khai--only slightly annoyed at my incompetence.

It's an eleven-hour journey that takes you across half of Thailand in more comfort than even the "VIP 24" buses (24 seat buses with very wide seats that recline a lot) since you get a real bed. The cabin is loud in non-air trains because the windows are fitted with louvers and mosquito screens, not glass. But compared to the stinking cabins I'm used to in France, with beds piled three-high and six people farting cheese and cassoulet all night in a tiny closed room, this Thai train was like flying first class. You have a real sense of privacy and space thanks to the curtains and the decent headroom. Tickets are 418 baht for the top bunk and B.468 for the bottom one. So "tuk" (cheap)!

When you get to Nong Khai, at 8:55AM, you need to pretend you're ready to walk to the Thai-Lao Friendship bridge to get a tuk-tuk to give you a ride for just twenty baht. Then it's just a two-minute ride to Thai side of immigration where I got my Thai visa stamped out. A B.10 bus takes you across to the Lao side and a passport-sized picture of yourself and B.1500 (or USD30) gets you a 15-day tourist visa good in all of Laos. Get your pictures before coming to Laos and you will save yourself a lot of trouble and the B.300 that some hustlers ask for to do your Lao visa application. You don't need them! Once you've crossed into Laos, pay the B.10 entry fee (don't ask) and now pretend you're going to take a bus to Vientiane. This landed us a taxi that took us the 25km to Vientiane for only B.100. Everybody takes Thai baht or US dollars in Laos and you can do change with just about anybody at rates that are nearly as good as the banks. It's 1 dollar to 10 000 kip and 260 kip to a baht.

note for those going to Laos as a visa run

You proabably already know there are two types of "visa runs" for those that plan on staying in Thailand for a long time. You can simply cross any Thai border to get a free 30-day tourist visa or re-activate one of those weird multiple-entry visas that I've never heard of anybody actually ever getting.

OR you can do a consulate run to get an extendable 60-day tourist visa, a non-immigrant, etc. With low-cost airlines, consulate runs to Singapore, Phom Pen or Kuala Lumpur are definitely an option but for those of you who've been to all those places before or are flat broke, Vientiane is a cheap and pleasant alternative.

From the Friendship Bridge, I went direct to the Thai embassy. You need to drop off your visa application before noon and I made it only ten minutes before that (hence the use of taking a taxi from the bridge, as opposed to waiting for a bus that will drop you off at the Vientiane's "Talad Sao" market). You need a picture, a photocopy of your passport and 1000 baht. Pick-up of your passport is the following working day after 1PM.

In Vientiane, I stayed in a room that definitely needed a fresh lick of paint and whose mosquito screen I had to rig into place with tools I'd taken for my tripod. The bathrooms were outside and pretty clean and it only cost me B.200 (Sihom Guest House, sihomehotel@yahoo.com, 856-21 219081). By the time I'd eaten and washed up, the afternoon light was already getting pretty good and it was high time to explore.

On Th Settathirat, the first temple I saw walking towards Nam Phu (the small fountain at the heart of Vientiane), was Wat In Paeng.

In the streets behind it, there was a very cute school. All the trees were surrounded by cages in which lived very healthy looking guinea pigs. As opposed to Thailand, little boys wear long pants. Some of the girls skirts were longer as well and not pleated but had hems embroidered with Lao motifs. These kids were so chic! The fact nobody in Laos is overweight helps too. While the Thai kids have well caught up with their American buddies, Laos apparently doesn't have enough TV/coke/processed food yet. Give them a few more years.

Taking pictures of fast moving children with an all-manual camera is no easy feat and I'm surprised these shots came out alright. To move in closer to their faces or get more action shots, I would have needed an all auto 35mm or DSLR camera with a zoom, super-fast focus, and maybe high-iso too.

Walking down Th Settathirat took us past some cute homes, some in colonial style (there are lots), past Nam Phu, which has all the looks of a French townsquare, past the Presidential Palace which lacks finesse (like the White House, maybe worse) and to the extraordinary Wat Si Saket. It's the oldest temple in Vientiane (1818) and the good news it that it shows. Actually this is true of many temples in Vientiane and Luang Prabang. Compared to Thailand where many temples are so perfectly restored you can't tell if they were built last year of five centuries ago, the temples I saw in Laos almost always had a kind of patina, the feel of something ancient. I really miss that in Thai temples.

The wall running on the left of the above picture contains the actual temple. Temples charge 5,000 to 10,000 kip for entry, depending on their historical importance. This one is, of course, a 10,000 kip (wow!) temple and worth every one of them.

This is the central building in the enclosed courtyard.

Note to photographer: that $150 Nikon ultra-thin super-multicoated polarizer version II in your bag, next time, use it.

And now a word from the indispensable Lonely Planet, Southeast Asia on a Shoestring (the March 2006 edition):

Wat Si Saket has several unique features. The interior walls of the cloister are riddled with small niches that contain more than 2000 silver and ceraminc Buddha images. [...] Most of the images are from 16th to 19th century Vientiane, but a few hail from 15th to 16th century Luang Prabang.

Luang Prabang is our next stop after Vientiane but that's Day 3!

If the janitor's bike was any newer I'd bitch about him parking IN the cloister but I guess this one is vintage enough to fit in.

My camera has a center-weighted light meter. That means I point it a different zones of the image and try to figure out how to get the light and dark zones properly exposed myself. I should be using Ansel Adams ten-zone system but I do a very approximated version of it which consists in trying to keep the dark and light zones within a reasonable range of the shutter speed and aperture I shoot at. If this makes no sense, read the masters' book "The Negative" and it still won't make any sense.

The assistant with a car brand name and myself decided to walk back along the Mekong promenade. Lao people were chilling out, eating and strolling around. Laos could well be even more laid back than 'sabai sabai' (easy easy) Thailand. I didn't see as many spirit houses in Laos as in Thailand but this one was quite beautiful and again looked much older than anything I'd seen in Thailand.

We then had dinner by the Mekong. Lao food is very similar to Isaan food. Isaan is the name by which goes Thailand's Northeast. It makes up most of Laos' border with Thailand and both are extremely close culturally--food, language, songs and dance are nearly the same on both sides of the border. Even with central Thai, the difference between the Lao language and Thai is much smaller than I suspected. I was surprised to pick up a few things listening to Lao even though my Thai is still quite basic. The Assistant could even read most of the signs as the alphabets are very similar as well (both originate from Pali Sanskrit).

Lao people watch only Thai TV. I never saw a TV set on a Lao channel. They get it with a simple antenna in Vientiane (Thai mobiles work there too) as Thailand is just across the Mekong. In the rest of the country, a satellite dish does the job just fine. There are hill tribes that don't even speak Lao but in cities, everybody is bilingual Thai-Lao.

Simply pronouncing the word Lao will crack a Thai up. For Thais, they are the stupidest, most backward people. The "just say Lao" trick worked fine with my high-school students back in Phucket but adults fall for it too. When "Tom Yam Gung", the Thai-boxing action flick with Tony Ja, came out, there was a point in the trailer when Tony Ja's partner described China Town in Sydney as home to Chinese, Thais, Vietnamese, and then he would pause before adding, "Oh and Lao!" Which had the whole theater rolling to the floor with laughter, every time.

My opinion in just five days there is that the Lao, being landlocked, surrounded by five countries no less, and the victims of colonization, can be more worldly than the Thais who are a bit too convinced in the innate superiority of Thailand to take interest in their surroundings.

After dinner, we walked down onto the bed of the river which is nearing its lowest, April being the height of the dry season in the region. I was setting up this picture when this kid decided he wanted to be in it.

I took the same picture again, without the kid, and without the sun that had only appeared for a minute between two banks of clouds. This picture was shot using a 35mm wide-angle (equivalent to a 21mm on a 35mm camera) and a polarizing filter to remove reflections on water. It's halfway to being a decent landscape shot. Wide-angle landscape shots usually call for an interesting foreground, a nice open middleground of water or lush grass, a nice skyline (such as mountains) and a sky bursting with colors (a sunset or sunrise). This picture is lacking the last two but I'm still happy of how I visualized what I wanted (again an Ansel Adams method, see Book 1: The Camera), set it up, and got what I had set out to do.

There's a lot going on by the Mekong so it's a great place to hang out. Kids are swimming, some guy was riding a horse, another flying a model plane, people are eating, playing football, flying kites.

And that's it for Day 1. After sunset, we crashed at our guesthouse hoping the skies would clear up for Day 2. They didn't until Day 4!

Broken Cam Update

2006-04-06T11:25:00.000+07:00

Scanning the pictures of Laos is taking forever. Meanwhile, I took my camera to the Mamiya dealer and they said it would take way too long and cost way too much to fix it and that I should just buy a new one. Their best price for that was still nearly twice that of a second-hand in the US so I said "no thanks".

With nothing to lose, I decided to take the camera apart.

When you're as good as I am at breaking stuff, life sucks. But then you get good at fixing stuff. It doesn't nearly compensate but it's something.

This is the camera all patched up and ready to go... almost. The flat circuit-board-cable-thing that runs to the light cell was cut and there's no way of fixing that. I figured I would at least have a working camera to use with my light meter but then I realised there was a focusing problem.

When you look through the viewfinder, you can see the bottom and the top of the image are not on the same focal plane. The top won't focus at infinity for example. That means the lens took such a pounding that the body of the camera moved inward a little bit. It's not the lens because (1) we tested it on another camera at the shop and it looked fine and (2) the problem is the same with both my 80mm (that fell) and the 35mm (that stayed in my bag).

So now it's 1000% sure, the camera is 1000% toast. As near-new ones can be found on e-bay anywhere between $400 and $500, my trip to Laos wasn't so cheap after all!

ouch

2006-04-04T18:19:00.000+07:00

Haven't updated for a while because I was in Laos, in the cities of Vientiane and Luang Prabang, where I shot this:

before doing this:

Yes, it's broken. The viewfinder is snapped off and the focusing glass (on the black piece of cloth) came loose and was pretty badly scratched. I had to yank it out to shoot the rest of the film inside the camera and unload the roll without damaging what I had shot.

The camera fell in a cave from atop roughly three stories of natural rock steps. It took forever to come to a stop. In the near total darkness, all I could hear was a fading "tunk tunk tunk tunk". The camera was fastened to a tripod that was fastened to a shoulder strap and slung around my neck. Something caught the tripod head's quick-release and for some reason the safety pin was down (it should snap automatically into position when you engage the camera). The camera came right off the tripod before I could even think "oops". This is why people fasten their strap to the camera, not to the tripod. Unfortunately, I tried finding a strap for my camera from New York to Bangkok and no one could get me one. I can't even blame myself for not looking harder. I can assure you if you don't have the strap this camera comes with when sold, you might as well throw it down a bottomless pit of rock.

step-up rings allow you to use all your lenses with a single set of filters all in a single size, that of your lens with the biggest thread (77m for Canon, Nikon, and Mamiya). Apparently, they can protect your camera too!

I doubt my camera can be fixed for a reasonable price even though it held up remarkably well for such a long fall down scores of stone steps. The step-up rings and the very rigid rubber hood prooved to be excellent bumpers and this is in part why I had bought them. Rubber hoods are much more efficient at protecting your lens than the UV filter camera shops force on you everytime you buy a camera or lens. The camera didn't even have its lens cap on when it fell and the UV filter doesn't have a scratch which shows it didn't do a thing towards protecting the lens. All the credit goes to the rubber hood and the step-up rings.

Except for the smashed viewfinder, the body itself is not even cracked. There is a slight resistance when you screw in the lens which might mean the lens is no longer perfectly aligned with the film but what do I know. I'll have Niks, Bangkok's one and only Mamiya dealer, look at it tomorrow. In France, the repair guy would insult me. In Thailand, he'll just laugh at me.

16 Rolls of film x 15 (that's how many pictures you get when shooting 120 film in 6x4.5 format) = 240 pictures. It should take several days for me to scan them all but please check back to see the results because there's bound to be some good stuff in all that film. After that, it might be a while before I have any new pictures to share...

Phaya Thai Bridge

2006-03-20T23:35:00.000+07:00

On Phaya Thai Rd., after the BTS station Ratchatewi, when coming from Victory Monument, the road rises to pass the khlong that runs behind the late Jim Thompson's famed home.

Beneath the bridge, one can do a u-turn. Driving in Bangkok is all about u-turns since turning right at intersections (one drives on the left) is often forbidden. Hence, one goes beyond where one wishes to turn right, u-turns, returns to the intersection, and turns left.

2006-03-20T23:31:00.000+07:00

decorative column on the bridge. White Elephants are the symbol of the Thai royalty.

2006-03-20T23:29:00.000+07:00

mechanic beneath the bridge

this is my first shot at taking a portrait with my new wideangle lens.

2006-03-20T23:28:00.000+07:00

Khlong Banglumphu with bus-boat. Jim Thompson's house is on the left bank, further down.

2006-03-20T23:26:00.000+07:00

last light

Mona Lisa Massage

2006-03-20T23:21:00.000+07:00

Mona Lisa Massage, on New Phetburi Rd. I'd spotted this amazing building weeks ago and vowed to return with a wide angle. There was a lot of Photoshop perspective control required to get this "flat" view of the front.

2006-03-20T23:20:00.000+07:00

every, I mean EVERY, building in Thailand has its security guard(s). This is Mona Lisa's. He was kind enough to explain what goes in behind the polka dotted wall: bathing and masage. That, in Thailand, is a bit of a euphemism. Yes, the girls here will bathe and massage you but they're available for anything else that crosses your mind. One tourist who thought I'd taken his picture hovered silently, paranoid but shameful, around me for a few minutes. I think he had taken the euphemism to its limit.

2006-03-20T23:12:00.000+07:00

Just by Mona Lisa was your typical Isaan (that's a region in Thailand) restaurant on wheels. The wheels are to run away from cops who get greedy and slap them with fines for occupying the sidewalk. Of course the fines go straight into the cops' pockets. The woman has just finished the signature Isaan dish--Somtam--which is shreds of green mango (on display) squashed up with chilis in the earthen pot just in front of her. The rest of the food is grilled and doesn't represent what your average Isaan farmer gets for lunch because it is a very poor region with a very low protein intake diet. In Isaan, people will eat insects, dogs, frogs and lizards. The most important part of the meal is the sticky rice, served in cylinder-shaped boxes made of weaved bamboo (see next picture).

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2006-03-20T23:01:00.000+07:00

Pedestrian bridge across from Mona Lisa Massage.

This man was selling Buddha amulets. I asked if I could take his pictures (I always do, except when the subject is sleeping) and he asked for 20 or 50 baht. Nobody ever asks me for money to have their picture taken but he asked for it in such a convulated way that I figured he both needed it and was trying hard not to be a plain begger. I mean, I can speak some Thai now, but he lost me there. Anyway, it didn't look like the amulet business was going too strong so I paid for his picture (50 and luckily, I didn't screw it up.

2006-03-20T22:54:00.000+07:00

across from Mona Lisa Massage

There are still quite a few skeleton buildings like this in Bangkok but they are an endangered species. They date from 1997 when the Southeast Asian financial crisis destroyed Thailand's economy. Those buildings that haven't been finished or razed are still locked in legal battles over the bankruptcy of owners or contractors.

2006-03-20T22:49:00.000+07:00

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There's an alley, still across from Mona Lisa, that goes down to a university's pier (to catch the bus-boats). And when you have students, you get art. Plus they ARE across from a massage parlour called Mona Lisa. Color backgrounds and two-tone prints: Warhol has made it to Bangkok.

Hua Lamphong station, in color this time

2006-03-20T22:37:00.000+07:00

Everybody is crazy about Fuji Velvia slides (transparencies) but they're so contrasted I can never get the light right on them. So screw the pros, I switched to low contrast Fuji 160S color neg and I've got much better dynamic range with colors that come out just as good in the scans. I think the dark brown skin tones you get from Thais who spend a lot of time outdoors come out better as well. Plus, color neg is cheaper, both rolls and processing.

2006-03-20T22:35:00.000+07:00

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tuk-tuk drivers

2006-03-20T22:34:00.000+07:00

motorcycle taxi driver

2006-03-20T22:32:00.000+07:00

Visa Run

2006-03-18T22:10:00.000+07:00

Hua Lamphong Station: I need to go to a Thai consulate somewhere out of the country before my visa runs out. I also needed to try out my new wide angle. The result was a trip to the train station, a few pictures, and tickets to Nong Khai, on the border with Laos and a short drive from the capital of Vientiane.

2006-03-18T22:09:00.000+07:00

I tried a red filter on this which was supposed to give me a dark sky but it failed miserably. I could add a polarizer but they don't work too well on wide angles (I hear). That or move to a city with a less hazy skyline.

2006-03-18T22:07:00.000+07:00

in front

2006-03-18T22:06:00.000+07:00

ticket masters

2006-03-18T22:05:00.000+07:00

the platform

what the siamese revolution looks like in my neighborhood

2006-03-18T21:58:00.000+07:00

How it all started, Thanon Rachawithee: deregulated telecom markets make for lots of different phone booths, juicy deals for the prime minister, and mass demonstrations calling for his resignation.

2006-03-18T21:53:00.000+07:00

Soi Rachawitee 4

2006-03-18T21:52:00.000+07:00

Lonely Candidate: with opposition parties boycotting the coming parliamentary elections, number 2 will be the only box available for ticking on April 2nd or 9th.

Santi Park

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Boys with Toys

2006-03-12T14:15:00.000+07:00

There isn't a quiet place in Thailand. Construction work, mosques, roosters, dogs, loudspeakers regularly drive Farangs to self-mutilation, murders most foul, or plain sobbing. My place was actually quiet for a whole month before construction work started on the neighbouring house. They tore it down and are now digging foundations so deep I might not even have a view from my balcony in a few months time.

I decided the only way to fight back was to hang out on the construction site, be a part of it, you know. I can't really describe what they're doing because it's so complicated, uses so many cables, consists of so many steps, and yet is performed so quickly and seamlessly. It's a ballet of relative grace considering they're playing around with machines the size of trucks that swing about bullet-shaped things that probably weigh close to a ton, drop them, pick them up again, all this as the workers rig and unrig the "bullets" to pencil thick cables. All the "bullets" have different shapes, and they look like they're going to crush some guy any moment as they drop and roll about.

2006-03-12T14:14:00.000+07:00

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living on-site

2006-03-12T13:55:00.000+07:00

a shower and a clean t-shirt makes a construction worker human after all

Rooftop Boxing

2006-03-11T11:07:00.000+07:00

Kru Peter Home was a Thai boxer for nearly ten years. His last three fights, at Lumpini no less, ended with KOs--only he was the one to go down. One elbow to the front teeth, one elbow to the head, and I think the last one was a plain old punch. At which point, he decided it was time for a career change.

He's now teaching Thai at American University Alumni but this month, he dons the gloves once more, from four to five, on AUA’s rooftop, to instruct a handful of students in the art of Muay Thai.

“Last week, so bad,” he commented last night, shaking his head. “But this week, ok.”

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Old Custom's House Lane

2006-03-09T10:36:00.000+07:00

Soi 36, or the "Old Custom's House Lane" takes you to that very place, after passing the French embassy. At the gigantic building's foot flows the Chao Praya, a fleet of navy grey speedboats moored on its shore. Behind them, fire trucks that unfortunately, ressemble the ones in France, not their superb American counterparts. The Custom's House is now crumbling apart and looks all but abandoned. But I wandered inside and food neatly lined up rows of firemen boots. Bangkok's firefighters live here.

The thick stucko and brick walls, the wood floors and staircases, the wide rooms, all called for a tripod and wide angle and I had neither. Moreover, I soon got kicked out by a man in uniform.

Behind the Custom's House is a maze of streets that surrounds Haroon Mosque. A maze so tight, I never found the mosque and neither did the other tourist that asked me for directions (I must have the look of someone who knows where he's going). To the right of the custom's house, when facing the river, is Wat Muangkhae. To me, all Thai temples look alike--too new--but this one has an interesting backdrop of towering skyscrapers. The homes in this area are mostly clapboard, with corrugated tin roofs. But some are more elaborately crafted villas surrounded by yards and picket fences. You'll have to get on your toes if you want to get a glimpse in color of the Bangkok in black and white photographs.

2006-03-09T10:35:00.002+07:00

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