Journeys From A Small Room

Many wonderful things have been done with food photography and my thoughts on this challenge were more on the “Artistic” when it came to foods. I have taken many “artistic” angles on food both formal and informal.

I wanted to try and change the food so that it remained recognisable but different. It all started with a simple bowl of prawn pasta and then I played with other foods which will be in the comments below as usual.

I used Topaz Studio for my post production editing on the images. Working with effects such as “Expressionism” and “Painterly” and “Surrealism” helped me achieve my “artistic” look to the food. I had great fun playing not only with the pasta image but others such as courgette flowers and chilli peppers.

Thai oranges, courgette flowers, and shallots were some of the other foods I tried with the PP program.

As part of my expanding experimentation with different ways to record images this week’s challenge reflects the use of my Samsung J5 mobile phone camera. This sports a 13 megapixel camera on the rear and a 5 megapixel selfie side. It also has full manual image photo taking menu and I can take pretty much anything with it even in low light.

Then I downloaded an app from Google store called “night vision Camera” which turns your humble mobile phone into a night vision camera! Something that would be prohibitively expensive for night photographers. Trust me it really works! You can adjust the amount of grain or clarity and light within the night vision. I am so excited to be able to work with this kind of technology. Finally in the hands of the ordinary photographer

I found that using the light in the camera (torch) I got better images as night vision does rely on there being a small amount of light to pick up on anyway. Infra-red light is even better AKA television remote light, but that would not get me the images I wanted.

This is my first foray out with this and so my subject was not very inspiring, I can’t wait to get out in the countryside with it and see what I can capture, I am so looking forward to seeing how the texture of plants and possibly animals shows up and how good it really is?

One thing to note, I did find that the original file name was too long for Lr5 to cope with when saving as jpgs. So I had to go back to the original folder and rename all the files( I usually take the last five numbers as these tend to be different) this sorted the problem out and I was able to save them without problems.

other images that I played with different settings during the taking, also some indoor images to show how well it works!

o, Hands it is. Great fun playing with different hand positions and different effects, in fact this week was all about effects! So trying out the effects already in my PSE12 and some plugins I had added really gave me good idea of what amazing software I have at my disposal.
The one I finally chose is the last one of all the experiments, as is usually the way…Kaleidoscope, but there were some close ones like plastic wrap.

Some of the other images that came from this exercise; Plastic wrap, Negative, Green fingers and zoom burst.

The Image I chose came from a visit to Myanmar, from the boatman who took us round Inle Lake. His family lived in a traditional wooden stilted house on Inle Lake. During the Holidays when not at school these children helped their family with wrapping sweets for the mother to sell at the local Lake markets to support the family income. It became very apparent at how poor they were yet they made me most welcome into their home and showed me what and how they lived. None spoke English and I do not speak Burmese! But we still managed to communicate in a few broken English words via the fisherman and my couple of Burmese words. I also realised how much the (reasonably small amount) of money would contribute to this family’s household income. We had not gone through an agent or tourism package, we had instead trusted out instincts and paid the same we would have had to pay a tour operator for the “whole day” trip! The hospitality was the warmest I had received anywhere and I am pleased that I did not hesitate to pay him the going “tourist” rate.

Well this week’s challenge was a bit of an epic fail! Every time I tried to get this challenge done in the vicinity of children it looked like I was being creepy. It would seem that here in Thailand people have got just as suspicious and distrusting about people (even female) taking images of children. Yes I did try and talk to people but they wanted the parents to be in all the shots, which kind of defeated the object. Not wishing to be picked up by the Thai Police for taking pictures of peoples children without consent or from a distance I looked at a previous shoot I did in Myanmar.
Here the Children and parents are still essentially a part of a still trusting society. Taking their images neither bothered them or they posed anyway but not in a false way if you get my meaning?
I had many great images from many great moments from my 3 week trip to Myanmar and my photo observations of its people (inc. children) so finding the key image I have chosen was not a difficult one. Children are everywhere and the time I was there was the School holidays. Many of the children either work paid to do a living as the children I photographed at Kalaw Railway station selling fruit and veg to people taking the train back to Inle Lake. Or they were on their way back home from short holidays at Kalaw. Or as in the Young Novices at Inle Lake South interested in meeting new people and without fear or distrust allowed me to take their photographs.

I visited Dan Kwian Pottery village just in Nakhon Ratchasima province.
Out of the three potters I photographed I chose this woman, this image was taken after a lovely chat and discussion on the usual; “where are you from?” and so on. I asked her if I could take some photos of her at work and took several. I also do a lot of street and people photography so this was well within my comfort zone.
I walked round and took images from differing angles; I love the depth of field I got in this picture. The pot in the foreground sets the scene and leads your eye to the subject of this image. Her workplace is framed by the beautiful Bokeh in the background.
This for me is personally one of my favourite images I have shot all year

“Samlor Rider”

Samlors are disappearing fast in Korat in favour of the king of transport the moped or motorbike and the ever fast growing car population!
Samlors are now primarily used by locals and are offered by the older generation within the Old City of Korat in Thailand.
Samlors are a slow and leisurely way of getting around and I wanted to capture this mode of transport as part of this challenge before it disappears, which it probably will in the next ten to fifteen years.
An interesting fact emerged when I was researching these fast dating forms of transport: Samlor means three wheels “Sam” is the Thai word for 3 and “Lor” is the Thai word for wheel =Samlor!!

small collage of some things I tried out but decided to go with the posted image!

With this week’s challenge I decided that my “Colourful Landscape” didn’t need to be wide open vistas, or mountain ranges (both of which were not available to me anyway.
I decided on my visit to Wat Ban Rai here at the gateway to the North of Thailand and at the end of my four day road trip that I would be looking to shoot images for the challenges coming up, so I was mindful of this one. I think I can say that I am very happy with this simple but colourful landscape of the Bonkers Temple also known locally as the Elephant Temple. There were many other faces of the colour of this Landscape but I like this one the best!