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Encounters: Mr Bird, Fortune Teller
In many cities, hanging around under flyovers or train tracks after dark with expensive camera gear would be inadvisable at best. In Bangkok, it’s where a lot of the magic happens, as during the rainy season in particular such places are a popular hangout for food stalls, hawkers, chess players, drinking parties, and various other […]
How to Avoid Taking Boring Street Portraits
I recently joined a street portraits group on Facebook, and without wanting to be overly critical of other photographers’ work, I’ve found a good 90% of the images posted extremely boring and unimaginative (when they actually hit the brief, which is rare). Pictures taken on long lenses with no engagement with the subject; the camera […]
“Nothing to Do But Take Photos & Drink Beer”: A Street Photography Workshop in Tokyo
As with everything else, Covid-19 did its best to mess up my Tokyo travel plans. I was going there to see the mighty New Order, but they’d cancelled a week previously after Japan banned all public gatherings for two weeks to try to halt the spread of the virus. ‘Regret’ indeed. But I’d booked a […]
8 Tips for Better Asian Market Photography
Asian markets have long been a popular draw for photographers, particularly street & travel photographers. It’s easy to see why – they’re a riot of colour, shape, and activity, full of people who are too busy working to worry about that weirdo pointing a camera at them. And yet a lot of the market photography […]
Railway Cuttings – The Hairdressers of Hualamphong
Bangkok’s Hualamphong Station is a veritable mecca for photographers, with its combination of historic architecture, beautiful light that changes by the hour, and colourful crowds of people coming & going. On my last visit I saw a row of men sitting in chairs getting haircuts behind platform 12, took a few photos, and assumed it […]
It’s Monk Time! Bangkok’s Vietnamese Novices
Quang Ngo was 14 when, after seeing the respect accorded to a monk who visited his village in rural Vietnam, he decided the monastic life was for him, and went to live in his local temple shortly after. Quang Thang was 16 when he saw a monk caring for people at his local hospital in […]