Close now, our condo has been all but rented (after four months of trying!) contracts to be signed and then done. I’ll miss the morning sunshine.
Sorry for not being around. Just too busy getting everything ready.
Hello all, I hope this post finds you all well and inspired.
Here are some portraits of a young lady who contacted me via facebook. Life is tough.
Well life is actually rather strange now. I have just finished working for a school that I have been with for seven years and am now officially unemployed. It’s very exciting.
I’m off for a last Thailand beach holiday today and amongst doing relaxing things will be going back through the photographs posted here and catching up.
These scanned very badly but should print nicely.
I actually took one digital shot for a light reading and thought I’d do a bit of beauty photoshop. Got bored before I got to the neck bit! Very rough and ready and a reminder that sometime in the rest of my life I need to learn some more photoshop.
Blatant Marco Grob rip off!
I am also booked in for darkroom lessons at the end of next week with my friend Surat – a true character!
http://www.facebook.com/reqs.php?fcode=68da04115&f=691185728#!/video/video.php?v=107953909253640
My good friend Christ Menist and I visited China Town last week to make a start documenting the dwindling record industry in the area which will hopefully be published in WAX Poetics and possibly other music/record collector magazines. Over the past two years, Chris (pictured below) has been visiting Saphan Lek, markets, obscure record meets and numerous other outlets in search of Luk Tung and Molam Thai music. Whilst dirtying his digits sifting through thousands of records, some of which have been untouched in thirty years, he has come across a music that has been unheard by western ears. An unusual melding of cultures, instruments and vocal styles, the music as it stands on dusty 7s and albums boxed up behind counters or in backrooms, is in danger of slipping away and being lost forever. Chris and his partner in crime Nat (Maft Sai – of Zud Rang Ma records http://www.zudrangmarecords.com/) are keeping these fine tunes alive through the superb Paradise club nights and have been busy in collaboration putting compilations together which it is hoped will be released into the western market.
The sixth Paradise is happening tonight. Check this for more details….
Very busy with moving plans at the moment so have not had time for anything really, especially photography. Winding down at work (I will be unemployed in ten days time) and trying to rent our apartment out and sell the car. We move at the end of next month.
Anyway, I have had some prints done for people I know and have met. I came across these two whilst wandering the streets during the recent curfew (well just before!) following the trouble here in Bangkok. Normally a very busy street, Silom road was closed to traffic and these two chaps were practising Tak raw. They have invited me to watch them play in Lumphini park down the road which I will do soon if I can find the time. So very skillful.
Will get back to lif soon…
I am basically housebound at the moment with the dreadful situation unfolding in Bangkok this week. Both Meow and my places of work are shut this week so we find ourselves trapped at home, which is actually pretty unnerving. We’re both restless and unable to concentrate fully as we follow news reports and await some kind of resolution. Meow is able to work from home while I have been trying to tie up lose ends and catch up with emails.
View from our apartment Sunday evening
some pictures of what has been happening above: http://www.gettyimages.com/Search/Search.aspx?contractUrl=2&language=en-US&assetType=image&ebd=2010-05-16&eed=2010-05-16&p=Athit%20Perawongmetha
edit: Probably best I post those others another time.
I walked around Bangkok this evening just before the curfew began for the evening. Incredibly quiet. Eerie.
The big clear up has begun and already much has been done but the signs of mass destruction are plenty with the streets themselves blackened with the residue of burning tyre. A great storm later arrived as if on cue.
Meow picked up her visa from the British Embassy today. Happy news!
It’s getting more tense and disturbing by the day in Bangkok. My condo is literally five minutes taxi ride from the centre of the red shirt encampment and on a visit to pick up some film and have breakfast early last week I found myself in what can only be described as a war zone with razor wire and troops everywhere. The red shirts were working on a barricade made up of tyres and lengths of bamboo which has now, a week later, become a resounding image in the international press. These are troubling times waiting for decisive action to be taken whilst mass propaganda reigns and reckless acts appear to be on the rise.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2010/apr/28/thailand-protest
I shot my old friend Marcus last week. I’ve known hm since I was eleven years old, meeting him in the gymnasium on the first day of our battered old comprehensive school. Marcus is a photographer and has taken pictures of me from about the age of eighteen when he started learning the craft, all through my life including my London years and much of Thailand, where he also lives.
It is probably down to him that I have never minded being in photographs myself and certainly down to him that I started taking pictures myself. I’ve always felt a little anxious taking pictures of another photographers particularly with M, as we go back so far, but last week we had the first of what I hope will be a series of weekly studio sessions where we will experiment and learn together. These portraits represent a work in progress and obviously a tribute to my old dear friend.
Rolleiflex, Ilford HP5
So it was to the North of Thailand and the mountains for our last Songkhran holiday. Meow and I, with some friends made our way from Chiang Mai to Pai on scooters in blistering April heat along 100km of hairpin bends. Ambushed along the way in true Songkhran style with buckets, hose pipes, sauce pans, water pistols etc each projecting water ranging in temperature from pond/river to ice cold shock, the soakings were actually rather welcome in the 40degree heat. Ridiculously treacherous to be pelted with water in this way.
Diana f+ fuji 400H
Dubious hotel in Bangkok.
I’ve been away from photography for a while and this is my first proper visit to lostinfocus for some time. I’m on holiday at the moment and will have time to catch up on posts I’ve missed, a brief scroll down the page has already revealed some phenomenal photographs and also a new member (hello Steve!) whose work I know well. I find myself a little all over the place at the moment with just about everything. Bangkok is a mess at the moment and although I’ll be leaving here in just over two months time there is so much to sort out here. Anyone want to rent a flat amidst a seething pit of civil unrest?
It is Songkhran (Thai new Year) at the moment which is the season of insane water fights, I’ve already lost my mobile phone to water damage so wasn’t going to take my rollei out, I took a camera out two years ago and my 24-70 lens had to be repaired http://www.pbase.com/dravlinbood/image/77616644. I did take my diana though and will post some pics when I get them back from the lab.
Like Kal, I still have lots of India pictures to scan and my post today is of a woman who I sat and listened to whilst she was chanting. She was completely oblivious to my presence.
BTW this post doesn’t come via a shiny new ipad but now that I’m phoneless and my birthday is just around the corner…hmmm iphone?
I know Scott has one, anyone else?
There was still a chill in the air as I stood drinking chai with a group of silent men somewhere in the back alleys of Kolkata. The sun was just up but the alley was still largely dark as people sleepily emerged onto the street and stood together for the time it takes to drink a cup of chai before making their way out into the city.
My friend Khun Kong printed me some pictures which I picked up today. He speaks almost no English and so sometimes there are communication frustrations added to the fact I never quite know what to expect in terms of paper. But at 200Baht a 8X10 (4 English pounds) it’s always worth it. Looking forward to getting into a darkroom myself when I return to the UK. I only ended up shooting two rolls of black and white such was my obsession with the colours.
Ramesh
I have recently been giving a lot of thought to picture editing whilst sifting through the archives of my work and adding and removing pictures to and from my site. It was my initial intention when creating the website to sort the wheat from the chaff, but now after having the site up and running for a month or so, I realise developing my ability to define narrative sequences or themes has become more of a priority.
Coincidently I came across Keith Prue, a photographer whose work I found online recently and it’s from his blog post I draw the following quotes:
Mary Ellen Mark: “Editing is extremely difficult. It’s taken me a long time to learn how to edit. Teaching has helped me with editing. When I’m editing my own work, I do a first general edit. Someone in my studio then scans my edits and enlarges them to approximately 5×7. We place all the enlarged scans side by side which makes it easier to see which frames are the best. Then I choose the final edit.”
Martin Parr: “You usually have a hunch, but the great thing about photography is that it’s so unpredictable, so you never quite understand how and when a good photograph comes about. But when editing, I do contact sheets, then machine prints and then select from that.” And when asked what makes one image stand out more than another, is it emotional or an intellectual reaction he answers: “It must be intuitive. If it were intellectual, I’d be able to explain what happens. That’s why I’m a photographer. I express myself visually, not verbally.”
Eugene Richards: “I pretty much know that a photograph is ’successful’ or not when I take it. So when I’m home from an assignment, what I mostly do is go looking for those ’successful’ pictures, hoping that I wasn’t kidding myself or that I didn’t screw up.”
Rineke Dijkstra: “I scan the negatives and make them bigger so you can see them more. Then I might leave them for two weeks because you need distance to see them properly. It happens to me that I take a picture and I think it doesn’t work at all and then I look at it three years later and I think it’s a great picture. It’s probably linked to having something in mind and being disappointed that your expectations weren’t met.”
I left further comment following Keith’s own observations on his blog http://keithprue.com/OneLog/ but I’d really like to find out about how you assess and/or edit your own work.
Until recently I printed lots of my pictures and had them pinned up around me but being forced to tidy up in the hope that our apartment is rented soon they’ve all been packed away.
Incidentally if you’re not aware of the series ‘contacts’ where famous photographers reveal their contact sheets, I highly recommend it. http://www.amazon.com/Contacts-Vol-Great-Tradition-Photojournalism/dp/B000AYEL88/ref=pd_cp_d_0
