7 Shots: Monks

14 Friday Feb 2014

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Picking out my best seven shots was difficult for a lot of reasons. One of which was trying to not end up with seven shots of Buddhist monks. Knowing that at some time in the future I’d be doing a 7 shots monks post made it a little bit easier. And now, even though it is sooner than I expected, doing that is proving to be almost as hard. But this time I didn’t use any restrictive criteria, I just went with those I liked the best personally.

I didn’t, however, just want to post photos I’ve used in the past. That too wasn’t a problem. With the exception of the first one, each of these is from a time when I stumbled upon the perfect scene. The kind that gives me a chub. The timing is right, the lighting perfect, the available angle to shoot from ideal. All that’s left is to hit upon the right camera settings (yes, some of us still do that) and the best framing. With which, even with a digital camera, you still don’t know if you batted a thousand until after the shot is taken. So I tend to snap off a few dozen photos, each just a bit different than the last. Later I can sort through them and pick out the best one.

That can take some time. Much longer than what I spent taking the shot. And while I usually do pick out the best, there’s always another two or three that really are just as good. Just a little bit different. And that’s what six of the seven here represent. The runner-ups. Preparing this post, I expected that. What I didn’t expect was that none of those six shots were taken in Thailand. Most are from Cambodia. The rest from Laos (presented here in that order if you were wondering).

The first is one of my favorites and it is from Thailand. Unlike the others, where I knew I’d hit gold (and saffron), that one was more of a eh, why not shot. I liked it ‘cuz it was monk-less, yet a Monk Shot! still in its own right. I snapped the photo fairly quickly. The lightning, which is what I think really makes this picture, I didn’t really notice until later when I looked at what I’d shot that day back at the hotel on my computer. Even Noom, who is far more critical of the photos I’ve taken, thought it a keeper. He wasn’t as thrilled with me naming it Naked Monk.