26 Saturday Jul 2014
Posted in Ubiquitous Plastic Stool Shot!
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Christian was kind enough to send in an Ubiquitous Plastic Stool Shot! from his recent visit to Phnom Penh, and it’s a doozy. All the comforts of home, right at your fingertips. And I love the riser in use. ‘Cuz if you are gonna sit you should be sitting tall.
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25 Friday Jul 2014
Posted in Monk Shot!
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It was about time for a Monk Shot! post anyway, but since I just found out we’re going away for a long weekend and do not have the time to post my regularly scheduled articles this one kills two birds with one stone. And efficiency is something I’ve always admired. Dead birds ain’t a bad thing either.
So I apologize to those of you who tuned in to see how the Boys In The Bar were doing; So and the gang will be back next week. Besides, I’m sure y’all are busy watching the Commonwealth Games anyway. That or waiting with baited breath for John Travolta’s ex-lover to leak the story of their romance now that a judge has given him the thumbs up to spill the beans about how John likes to spill his seed.
Nude Dude posts will appear as usual over the next few days, but don’t expect much else content-wise. And I won’t be updating my front page either, so you’ll have to click through to the blog pages to see what does get published. Unless Matthew Mitchum, Ian Thorpe, and Tom Daley pull a threesome in Glasgow and post selfies to Instagram . . . there are some things in life too important to not miss even when you are supposed to be having a romantic getaway.
At least I think it is a romantic getaway. Could be I’m headed to rehab too. Phil’s less than excited about the potential of my covering the Commonwealth Games and mentioned something about an intervention. But then it’s the journey and not the destination that matters, which works quite well with this photo. It’s the first in a series of shots I took In Phnom Penh of this young monk checking out a tiny golden wat riverside. The colors were what originally caught my eye. And then I kept clicking as he made his way along the building’s edge.
Eventually he reached a spot where he could peak inside at a group of elder monks performing some sort of ritual. And that was my ‘keeper’ shot. But this one ain’t bad either. It was that or a photo of all the dead birds the guy who was selling them to the faithful to release to earn merit was busy dumping. More ended up in the dumpster than flying free. And I figured y’all may not be as fond of dead birds as I am.
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09 Monday Jun 2014
Posted in Cambodia
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No longer being a kid (by age if not maturity level) I have to admit I’m a bit jealous. The little ones today have got it pretty good. I grew up with black and white television, now kids can stream their favorite television shows to their cellphone. I had cheap metal toy guns to play with, revolvers at best that if you were lucky would include a working hammer so you could insert a cap to make a noise when you fired it. Today they have realistic looking fully automatic assault weapons that actually fire projectiles. It must be a bitch to be an Indian these days.
When I was a young ‘un, we didn’t have video games. Or the internet. Or, for the more studious, even calculators. And when puberty was in sight, the momentous event was when someone stole their older brother’s copy of Playboy and you got to see a photo of naked tit. Not that that did much for me back then either. Today, as soon as a kid figures out how to unblock parental guidance filters (that’d be around the age of six) the internet will provide him with more naked bodies than he ever dreamed existed. And for the little gay boys to be, that means dick instead of female mammaries.
On the downside, even though a good bike cost less than twenty-five bucks back then, we were free to ride our little hearts out without looking like special needs children. Helmets and pads were only worn by football players back then. Now if you let your kid ride his bike without full protective gear Social Services will come down on you like a ton of bricks. And forget about disciplining you kid with a good whack to his butt . . . that’s jail time today. In my youth if you misbehaved your school teacher could, and would, slap some smarts into your silly little head.
Technological advances have made being a kid today pure joy. Advances in customs and laws, not so much. I guess helmet laws, for example, are a good thing but there’s an argument for fate and the natural culling of the herd too. Whether on a bicycle or motorcycle, requiring all riders to wear crash helmets undoubtedly saves a lot of lives, but many of those people are those whose only contribution to society would be as organ donors anyway. So when I see the littlest riders sans helmet zipping down the roadway, a fairly common sight in SE Asia, I don’t react in horror like some do but instead think how cute the kid looks and appreciate how much fun he’s having. I think kids need to be allowed to be kids. Even when that means they’ll never make it to being an adult. But then that may be why the gods made sure I’ll never have one of my own.
Nonetheless, a cute kid on a motorcycle always makes for a good photo op. I spotted this little tyke parked along the street in Siem Reap. No telling where his parents were, but he didn’t seem to care. And he’d mastered looking cool on a motocy to boot; he’s got the born to be wild look down pat. Which is pretty hard to pull off, even at that age, when you are on a Honda.
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30 Friday May 2014
Posted in Cambodia
In response to my post yesterday, 7 Shots: Beasts Of Burden, a reader sent in this shot from his recent trip through Cambodia of a truck that went with horizontal instead of the typical vertical load. Looks like since American fast food chains haven’t made much of an in-road into the Cambodian market yet, the locales haven’t quite nailed down the idea of drive-thrus.
Thanks Wen!
27 Thursday Mar 2014
Posted in 7 Shots
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I’m beginning to think that salty old cuss I met in Penang who represented himself as a professional photographer was less of a camera buff and more of a mind-fucker extraordinaire. His advice that all one needed to take were seven shots of . . . well, he never quite qualified that little detail. But he was adamant about the quantity. That seemed too restrictive of a rule to me then, and it still does today. But it still sticks in my mind. The bastard. There’s a good reason your mother told you to never talk to strangers.
My 7 Shots series of posts was supposed to pay homage to that ideal. And provide me with an excuse to post some of my travel shots. Not to mention make for a quick and easy article. Today’s started off being a selection of photos from my (far too many) visits to the Umbrella Village in Chiang Mai. A major part of any Handcraft Tour, it’s one of those things you are supposed to do as a touri there. Kinda liked visiting an elephant camp and taking a ride. Neither quite measures up to the hype. But both provide lots of good photo ops. I probably should have gone with the elephants.
One thing leads to another and the umbrella idea quickly turned into tons of photos from SE Asia, all featuring an umbrella. Mad dogs and Englishman aside, I never considered how ubiquitous umbrellas are in the region. Even when it is not the rainy season. Photography-wise, I have enough shots to do seven posts of umbrellas alone. Which you probably should take as a warning.
Today’s ended up with a photo from Chiang Mai, Bangkok, Bali, Phnom Penh, Angkor Wat, and Luang Prabang (in that order if ya needed to know). If that bastard had allowed for eight, there’d be one from Phuket too. But hey, I’ve got at least six more 7 Shots posts to go. So stay tuned.
Now if I can just find an Ubiquitous Plastic Stool Shot! with an umbrella in it my life will be complete. Throw in a monk and I’d never have to post under this heading again.
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27 Monday Jan 2014
Posted in 7 Shots
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Since I decided the main criterion to use in determining which shots would qualify as ‘best’ when it comes to travel photography are those that are the most evocative of time and place, this photo has to rank among the top of those I’ve taken in Cambodia. Perhaps ‘outrageously cool’ should be an additional qualification for a photo’s ranking in the upper echelon too; sure a snapshot of a pile of human skulls may not be the first thing you think about when cool comes to mind, but you gotta admit it’s not a subject many amateur photographer get the opportunity of capturing on film. And when it comes to Phnom Penh, the Killing Fields is/are what pops into my mind first.
I’d visited the awesome ancient temples of Siem Reap several times before deciding to visit the country’s capital city. You can never completely avoid the bloody period of Cambodian history when the Khmer Rouge held sway, but in Siem Reap it’s more about land mines. As in avoiding those that still lay buried waiting to claim some more human flesh, and feeling properly shamed at the sight of locals who didn’t manage to accomplish that feat. In Phnom Penh it’s a bit more in your face. Because for some odd reason the locals have decided genocide makes for a top touri attraction. Ask any native for suggestions on what to do and see when visiting Phnom Penh and – with a wide smile and obvious delight – their #1 pick are the Killing Fields. If a Cambodian was running things at Disneyland, Magic Mountain and Sleeping Beauty’s Castle would be razed and replaced with an attraction featuring Walt’s frozen, disembodied head in their place.
Visiting a few sites – there are three – that tout the mass murder of a country’s population was not on my list of must-dos. In fact, I tried to avoid those excursions. But then a too long trip out to a much more tranquil site by tuk tuk, and the insistence of my tuk tuk driver that I needed to see the killing fields, conspired to put Choeung Ek on my list of Cambodian experiences. The Cambodian Visitor Bureau really needs to rethink its strategy. You can’t help but gaze in wonderment at the architectural splendor of Angkor Wat. And you can’t help but wonder at what it is in the Cambodian collective psyche that resulted in the atrocities committed at Choeung Ek. And you have to wonder too why they continue to take so much pride in showing off that part of their history. Nor can you not wonder if their obvious enjoyment of bloodsport is something safely in the past.
I can’t think of any place I’ve visited that affected me as much as experiencing the Killing Fields did. It managed to cast a pall over the remainder of my stay. I couldn’t help but think of just what level of responsibility any Cambodian over the age of 40 I met afterwards held in those deaths. Fortunately, you don’t run across many Cambodians over the age of 40. For obvious reasons. And the warmth and friendliness of the younger locals almost made up for the history of atrocities committed by their elders. Almost. Because just when my opinion of the Cambodian collective consciousness would start rising, there would be some little occurrence that provided a too real glimpse into their darker side once again. They say the past is prologue to the future. Which isn’t a very reassuring thought when visiting Cambodia.
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Monk Shot #8
19 Tuesday Nov 2013
Posted in Monk Shot!
Monks In The Hood
Young men in SE Asia enter the monkhood for a variety of reasons, one of which is a form of community service; time spent as a Buddhist monk is preferable to jail time and a fine. I’m not sure if that’s the case if you still earn brownie points with the Buddha. And I don’t know if that was the reason these two guys donned saffron robes either. But those two mugs are faces only their mothers, or parol officers, could love. Don’t you think?
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14 Thursday Nov 2013
Posted in Cambodia
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I’m not sure why I end up taking so many photos of little kids in Cambodia. Usually I avoid the wee ones like the plague that they are. Maybe it’s ‘cuz they are all for sale. More likely it’s because they are all over the place. Thanks to the Khmer Rouge, the population of the country is more on the youthful side and breeding is always a good pastime when you’re young and don’t realize the burden that activity results in. But then ignorance is bliss and the Cambodian kids and their parents all seem to be a happy lot. Usually. Most of the kids I captured on film had a grand smile on their face. When you are forced to be inside on a beautiful sunny day and that inside is a stuffy old museum, there’s not a lot to smile about. Which is probably why I took this shot. ‘Cuz I felt the same way too.
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