“Little Girl” Photograph

Looking shy and even a little lost, I think this young girl was actually just bored as all the people filed past her family’s market stall.

Photograph taken at Chatuchak Weekend Market, Bangkok, Thailand

“Café Chat” Photograph

With so many foreign visitors sampling the heat and humidity at the enormous Chatuchak weekend market the streetside cafés do excellent business as refuelling stops. Most of the Thai shoppers snack as they wander around but for the westerners a seat is often necessary and it can be a pretty good time to socialise amongst all the bustle.

Photograph taken at Chatuchak Weekend Market, Bangkok, Thailand

“On The Go” Photograph

Something about the way she’s holding her drink suggests to me that she means business, whether the cellphone call is a high-level deal or ordering more food I wouldn’t want to get in her way.

Photograph taken at Chatuchak Weekend Market, Bangkok, Thailand

“Stool Yoga” Photograph

I hung around a while to see if he would get his other leg up into a full lotus position but this is as far as it went.

Photograph taken at Chatuchak Weekend Market, Bangkok, Thailand

“Why not?” Photograph

Go on, you might as well. What difference is a few more calories going to make?

Photograph taken at Chatuchak Weekend Market, Bangkok, Thailand

“No Staring” Photograph

I like the colours in this photograph. It is a long way from a standard composition and the position and darkness of her face means your eye doesn’t linger there for long. Neither does it stay with the more central hair which isn’t quite well defined enough to hold your attention. I find my eye always wanders back to the blurred background colours after brief glances at the young woman herself, which is actually much closer to the reality of looking at a stranger in passing than the staring that photographs usually allow.

I thought this image might work well in black and white but it loses everything without that blurry colour.

Photograph taken at Chatuchak Weekend Market, Bangkok, Thailand

“Bikers at Heart” Photograph

Beer at midday for these two stall-holders. I’m sure they’d rather be out on their Harley Davidsons but instead have another 10 hours of shirt selling to get through. The beer might seem to help at first by I predict snoring by 4pm.

Photograph taken at Chatuchak Weekend Market, Bangkok, Thailand

“Rearhug” Photograph

An impulsive hug from his partner/sister/friend as this man stopped to take a photograph. I just hope he had image stabilization to counter the joggle.

Photograph taken at Chatuchak Weekend Market, Bangkok, Thailand

“Whose Intellegence?” Photograph

This is embedded in the pavement (sidewalk) in front of a new building in Bangkok. I believe it to be a comment by the architect/designers/engineers about how the building came into being rather than a religious comment about how we came into being.

Photograph taken along Sukhumvit Road, Bangkok, Thailand

“Modern Architecture” Photograph

Architect: “I can’t find my compasses anywhere! Oh well, I’ll just keep things straight today.”

This and the original below were taken over ten years ago in Bangkok. At the time I was trying to learn more about Photoshop through a process called “playing around” and I cannot for the life of me remember exactly how I ended up with the black version.

Photograph taken somewhere in central Bangkok, Thailand

“Plastic Sheeting Man” Photograph

What I find interesting here is that even though the figure on the other side of this plastic sheeting is very blurred I am very confident in saying that it is a man. I actually know it is a man because I saw him clearly before I walked passed the sheeting but even so, however I look at it I cannot see the figure as a woman.

Photograph taken at Chatuchak Weekend Market, Bangkok, Thailand

“Tattoed Cook” Photograph

I suppose in the mayhem of a large market such as Chatuchak it pays for the stall-holders to stand out from the crowd in some way. This distinctive woman displaying her tattoos as she gets ready to fry was certainly hard not to notice, although it didn’t actually persuade me to buy anything from her.

Photograph taken at Chatuchak Weekend Market, Bangkok, Thailand

“Swabbing” Photograph

In the stuffiness of a semi-enclosed market in the midday humidity of the rainy season with rain showers preparing to unload outside, I am surprised not to see more people swabbing themselves down like this. Although, I know it would be pointless for me as the sweat would have replaced itself even before my shirt was back in place.

Photograph taken at Chatuchak Weekend Market, Bangkok, Thailand

“Don’t Stare” Photograph

“What are you looking at?”

“Your T…T…T…T-shirt.”

In case the shirt slogan isn’t legible enough on your viewing device it says, “WITH TITS LIKE THIS…WHO NEEDS A NICE ASS”

I suspect it’s another case of her not having actually read the shirt she is wearing but I might be wrong. Whether that’s the case or not it certainly is another example of making your own photographic luck by being ready to take the picture without being sure what it will look like. I had not even noticed what was written on her shirt, I had just seen two people interacting so took a chance and things fell into place.

Photograph taken at Chatuchak Weekend Market, Bangkok, Thailand

“Girl Friends” Photograph

This could almost be an advert for men’s aftershave with her catching a whiff as he walks passed but there were actually too many other smells around for that to be likely.

There is a lot classic Thai beauty walking around Bangkok (and everywhere else in Thailand for that matter) with this young woman’s high cheekbones perhaps suggesting she’s from the north-east.

Photograph taken at Chatuchak Weekend Market, Bangkok, Thailand

“Chatuchak Stables” Photograph

I can’t look at this photograph without thinking of a blacksmith about to shoe a horse.

Photograph taken at Chatuchak Weekend Market, Bangkok, Thailand

“Not My Left Feet" Photograph

The fact that they are all left feet isn’t too strange given that it was just a small puddle in an unavoidable position towards the left of the pavement but I can’t help trying to work what the person who left three footprints was doing. Seems a bit erratic, maybe indecisive.

If I was a better tracker I might be able to say if it was a man or woman , how heavy he/she was and possibly what was on his/her mind when he/she did this little dance.

Photograph taken on Sukhumvit Road, Bangkok, Thailand

“Concrete Forest” Photograph

Although the title I have given this photograph and the lack of color can give this place a negative tint, I actually think that this covered walkway which runs underneath the skytrain line above Rama I Road is actually one of the best things to happen to central Bangkok in recent years. I’m sure the fact that it is shaded, lacks motorbikes and is high enough to get away from the worst of the traffic pollution has encouraged more people to walk at least a short distance. It’s not very long but there is another section further along and hopefully there will be more at some stage. I suppose the fact that there is an air-conditioned shopping mall every hundred metres or so helps.

Photograph taken in central Bangkok, Thailand

“Pink Ghost” Photograph

With the slight breeze that day blowing this waterproof coat gently around, out of the corner of my eye, from a distance, with the road traffic in between, it is just about conceivable that I could have mistaken it for a ghost. Except, of course, that it’s pink and ghosts should be white.

On the other hand, it may be more conceivable that people who grew believing in ghosts and spirits as part of their culture as many in Thailand do and who saw this coat at night (…out of the corner of their eye, from a distance, with the traffic inbetween…) might say they saw a ghost. Except, I suspect, that it probably doesn’t fit the description of any Thai ghosts they grew up learning about.

Okay, so it’s just a pink waterproof coat on a fence doing a bad impression of a ghost that’s going to fool nobody.

Photograph taken on Sukhumvit Road, Bangkok, Thailand

“Sukhumvit Man” Photograph

Sukhumvit Road is one of the main thoroughfares in Bangkok with a lot of hotels, bars, shops and streetside stalls making it a very active and interesting place. Amongst all the bustle this man was sitting there on a ledge watching everything going on around him and I imagined him having been doing so for many decades ever since he was young and having seen tremendous changes along the street during that time.

It is also possible that he was just visiting like me but something about his demeanor suggested he belonged and was in fact a part of Sukhumvit.

Photograph taken on Sukhumvit Road, Bangkok, Thailand

“Seat Woman” Photograph

This woman has got a chair for legs. However useful they might be I imagine she has trouble climbing stairs.

Photograph taken on Sukhumvit Road, Bangkok, Thailand

“Bangkok Abstract” Photograph

I have always loved abstract photography particularly urban elements like this section of a wall under Bangkok’s skytrain that people either never see or dismiss as an ugly eyesore but is in fact both very visible and quite beautiful in its own way.

To give you a sense of scale, this was probably about two square metres of wall.

In this case using Topaz Adjust software as a Photoshop plug-in really helped to bring out the detail.

Photograph taken on Sukhumvit Road, Bangkok, Thailand

“Over-Ruled” Photograph

Right turns can be so assertive.

It is actually quite common in Thailand to find new road markings just painted over the top of old ones even if the layout or meaning has changed significantly. The old ones are often still visible as a kind of historical record of road usage. I find this is most confusing when traffic lanes have been changed but the slightly less clear old dotted lines are left to run down the middle of the new lanes casting doubt and occasionally panic in the minds of any slightly distracted drivers (such as me).

Photograph taken on Sukhumvit Road, Bangkok, Thailand

“Booth” Photograph

I was quite surprised to see somebody in a public telephone box given how ubiquitous cellphones have become, until I realised he was just using it as a private booth to eat his lunch.

Photograph taken on Sukhumvit Road, Bangkok, Thailand

“Well-Trained Kitty” Photograph

I am not sure what the yellow fluid in the bottle is but it looks suspiciously like this cat has been very well trained.

Photograph taken on Sukhumvit Road, Bangkok, Thailand

“Motorcycle Mania” Photograph

I make that 65 motorcycles in a row. Having crowded up together behind a red traffic light, which can take five minutes or so to change, it became a bit of a race when the lights did eventually go green. This is quite understandable particularly given the rarity of the relatively clear road they would have seen ahead.

Photograph taken on Sukhumvit Road, Bangkok, Thailand

“The Cyclist” Photograph

At traffic lights in Thailand motorcyclists always work their way to the front, each one going a little further ahead of the one before. Quite rightly, this lonely cyclist, who was brave or foolhardy enough to claim his place on the motor-clogged roads of Bangkok, had likewise got himself up front. It gave his lungs the chance of a “breather” without having motorbike exhaust pumped into his face. But then the lights turned green and he was behind it all again.

Green strikes me as an ironic colour in this case given the clouds of noxious fumes released when the lights “go green”.

Photograph taken on Sukhumvit Road, Bangkok, Thailand

“No Miracle Diet” Photograph

These steps turned out to be more educational than I expected. When I first saw them and took this photograph I intended to write something sarcastic about the “miracle diet” of climbing up just one of these small steps and burning off the equivalent of a Mars bar, and how I hoped that the architects, engineers and designers of this new building in Bangkok had gotten the rest of their calculations right. But then I decided to check my assumption that one kcal equals 1,000 calories and found that, although it is strictly true, in common usage kcal and cal can mean the same thing so unfortunately I would need to climb 1,000 of these steps to burn off that Mars bar. I also then got side-tracked into learning about kJ and the effect of climate on metabolic rate.

Photograph taken on Sukhumvit Road, Bangkok, Thailand

“Sleepy Monks” Photograph

What I find striking about this photograph is that having taken away the colour the monks’ bright saffron robes suddenly look like rags.

I’m not sure how far these two had travelled but I hope they managed to wake up before their destination as I know from experience how confusing it is to fall asleep on one of these buses and only wake up once it parks for the night in some backstreet yard miles from anywhere.

Photograph taken on Aircon Bus 510, Bangkok, Thailand

“Ambush” Photograph

Another from the same place as yesterday’s photograph.

If the T-rex doesn’t get him the ten-wheeler lorries probably will.

Photograph taken in Don Muang, Bangkok, Thailand