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All art is but imitation of nature.-- Seneca (Letters from a Stoic - Letter LXV: On the First Cause)
The universe itself is God and the universal outpouring of its soul. --Chrysippus (Quoted by Cicero in De Natura Deorum)
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. --To Autumn. by John Keats
So, another boring family photo album of my fun. Dramatic tone applied with adjustments for this photo as follows:
It's a triple linear gradients with a radial for good measure on the subject. Technique found in tons of websites. One anchor bottom, always linear across bottom 1//8 or less frame, another bottom linear across the lower 1/2 frame and tapered along some complement feature or the tone in the lower half of the photo. A linear gradient from the sky down to your subject. I use this one, tilted one way or the other sometimes to put emphasis light direction. And lastly a radial gradient around the subject.
Handheld
Nikon Z7ii w/ 14-30mm f/4 S @ f/8 30mm 1/40 sec 125 iso
Camera profile: Camera Monochrome (Orange Filter)
Dramatic user profile
A beautiful centerpiece made of black-painted twigs and hanging garlands of red rose petals. Dramatic!
USA West Coast Fly Drive holiday in the autumn of 1988.
We left the Grand Canyon, heading east towards Cameron on Hwy 64 then north on Hwy 89 to Lake Powell.
We passed more beautiful and dramatic scenery along the way, including the Glen Canyon Dam.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Having a bit of fun with reflections while sitting at a table with my photo friends at the 'Horse ploughing event' near Guildford.
Possibly Malolo Island, Fiji.
"Voyager of the Seas" cruise.
Day 6. Sailing S.W. after departing from the dock at Lautoka, Fiji.
Garage I passed on the street in Friedrichshain. Didn't catch the owner or the car - but probably not a Volvo ;-)
From the May 2016 trip to Thailand and Cambodia:
Pre Rup is the last of the “distant” sites we visited on the southeastern corner of the Grand Circuit Loop. It’s about 500 meters south of the original east baray and, like East Mebon, is markedly older than a majority of Angkor sites (by roughly 200-300 years). Pre Rup was dedicated by King Rajendravarman in either 961 or 962 A.D. The building style is similar to East Mebon, but unlike that temple, this one is a temple-mountain. Other than that, the architectural styles are somewhat similar. This temple has a very nice setting (also like East Mebon, fairly open), and the views from the upper terrace are quite nice. It’s also known for its lintels on the towers. According to Lonely Planet, this is one of the nicer places to see a sunrise (if you aren’t parked at Angkor Wat like the majority of tourists). You can easily visit this temple in an hour, and probably less.
Well, this is it. Save for a return flight to Bangkok on Tuesday, May 17 (a formality, really, just to pick up the return flight to China on the 18th…and no shoots on the 17th in Bangkok), Siem Reap/Angkor Wat is the last stop – and the one I was most looking forward to.
The flight over was pretty uneventful, though amusing. At Phnom Penh International Airport, we checked in at the gate, then went outside and hopped on a bus to take us to the plane…which was literally less than 100 meters away. That amused me to no end. A quick, comfortable 45 minute flight on the prop jet later – over completely black terrain; it seems the countryside is either sparsely populated, or electricity is a premium, but we may as well have been flying over a moonless ocean – brought us to Siem Reap (which, I’m glad to say, had lights). Siem Reap is the small town (and it’s basically a tourist/party kind of town where it’s great to go out at night after spending a full day in the sweltering hot sun. It’s about 10 kilometers south of Angkor Wat.
In overview, Angkor Wat is the ancient capital of the Khmer kingdom. What remains today are temples…temples…and temples. Hindu temples. Buddhist temples. They were also a people who were animists, so some temples are reminiscent of that system, too.
The detail of the temples is also fascinating. There are more asparas here than you can shake a stick at. Of the roughly 20,000 asparas, only one is shown smiling (baring teeth, that is). It fascinates – and impresses – me that people have done such extensive research and restoration that they know this. Those are the details, though.
A macro view of the Siem Reap area is just as impressive in that these temples are a study of a civilization close to one thousand years old (yet another jaw-dropping aspect of Angkor: the longevity) and their durability. The earliest temples are over a thousand years old, and the most recent are from the 14th century. (If the guide book I bought is correct, they were all built between 790-1307.) What survives today is all original (though there have been reinforcements with stone – many foreign countries support renovations of specific temples; I recall China and India among them). It’s quite obvious to tell what’s old and what’s new in most cases. However, the restorations are all good and necessary. One last note regarding the longevity of these temples is this: If these stone temples are what remained…how impressive must the society have been who created them? (That’s to say…think of the temples, houses, and all that didn’t survive as they were built of wood; these are simply the temples built by the royals or the aristocracy.)
A tour of modern-day Angkor Wat can be done in one or two fairly vigorous days. However, if you’re looking for any classic shots, you’ll want to spend longer here. (Common sense: the more time here, the more chances for good shots.) For this trip – it may be the only time I come here, though you never know – we arrived on a Saturday night and checked into our hotel (My Home Tropical Garden Villa; $20/night)
Siem Reap feels, at first, like a small dusty outpost of a town. The center of town is about four square blocks of small dive restaurants (and a bar street) and slightly pricier restaurants. There is also a night market street, an art street…all in all, it’s quite nice and has a bit of a party feel to it in addition to the endless souvenir stands you would expect. Though we didn’t go out on Saturday night (since we didn’t get checked in until around 9:30 p.m.), we did get a chance to go on Sunday.
Sunday morning was an awfully early start. Before having left Phnom Penh, I jumped on Facebook and, by chance, found and hired a local tuktuk driver, Mao Khvan, for $25/day. He agreed to pick us up at 4:50 a.m. to catch the sunrise at Angkor Wat.
Now, a quick note on tuktuks: almost every single hotel/hostel/guesthouse probably has tuktuks available for hire. Also, when we were picked up at the airport, the taxi driver offered to drive us for the time we were there. In short…it’s a competitive market, and finding a driver for the day will be no problem. $25 may even be slightly pricy (you could probably find a driver for $15-20), however, I was so impressed with Mao’s service that, if I were to return, I’d gladly hire him again. He wasn’t rude or pushy, provides all the ice water you could possibly want to drink, and though he’s not an “official” guide, he’s very, very knowledgeable and made both days pleasant. I even had him take us to the airport the morning we left, and he brought his wife and daughter to meet us. He’s just a genuinely good and decent guy. (For anyone who goes to Angkor Wat, here’s Mao’s contact info if you want to arrange his services ahead of time: www.facebook.com/maotuktuksiemreap/?fref=ts )
Back to the actual touring itself, Angkor is geared towards tourism and they do it well. You can buy an admission ticket for either one, three, or seven days. ($20, $40, or…$60?). It’s also nice because they don’t have to be used in consecutive days (for the three and seven day passes, obviously). The three days can be used in a given week. The seven day pass, within a month.
Conventionally, two days is enough to see the “main” sites (albeit quickly) in about 8 hours each day. There’s a small loop (which we did the first morning) in which we caught the sunrise (not a great one, but…there was one, and it wasn’t terrible, by any stretch) at Angkor Wat, followed by a quick tour of the grounds – but not the temple itself. Afterwards (we were at Angkor Wat from 5:30 until 7:00 or 8:00, I’d say), we hopped back in the tuktuk and headed over to Ta Prohm, about 15-20 minutes away. Ta Prohm is famous for those who are fans of the Lara Croft Tomb Raider movies. (The first, I think. I’m not, so I don’t recall it vividly.) After those two spots – probably two of the three most famous – we went to the Khmer Country Kitchen for a rather nice, relaxing, and cheap breakfast where we spent an hour with the other two members of our group. Around 10:00, we went to our third stop: Ta Keo Temple. In 40 degree heat (roughly 104F), I was feeling a bit too exhausted to climb the somewhat steep stairs to the top of this temple, but I did enjoy the lower area just as well. From Ta Keo, we made a quick stop at two temples (they form a pair): Thommanon and Chau Say Tevoda for about 20 minutes. Between these three, I’d say we spent about an hour. Our last stop of the morning, around high noon, was the Bayon complex of Angkor Thom. Passing through Bayon’s east gate, we stopped for a few quick pictures before going to the main compound of Bayon, which I would say is the the last of the three most-recognizable places here. We spent a good hour, or a little longer, shooting here after which point we were completely spent. Mao would have gladly taken us back to Angkor for sunset, but we actually decided to call it a day around 1:00. 9 hours in high heat was more than enough.
Back at the hotel, we rested, and I enjoyed myself immensely in the swimming pool. In the early evening, we walked about 600 meters to the “happening” part of town where we wandered the various streets and had a rather nice Khmer dinner. After eating and walking off a rather good dinner, we called it a night and headed back to our room. (For what it’s worth, the afternoon sky clouded over quite a bit and I heard we didn’t miss much as far as sunsets go. Mao also told us the following morning that the sunrise was a wash, as was Tuesday morning’s. Perhaps he was just trying to make us feel good.)
Monday morning we gladly skipped the sunrise and had a late start around…10:00. After a good old-fashioned breakfast of a ham & cheese omelet, Mao came by and we spent the second full day on the large loop. The first stop of the day was at Ba Phuon, a lesser temple just north of Bayon in Angkhor Thom. This was accompanied by quick stops at the adjacent Elephant Terrace and Leper King Terrace. After about an hour in the Ba Phuon area, we rode off to the northeast and stopped at Preah Khan, which was a rather interesting ruins. Another hour or so gone, we continued along the northeastern loop, bypassing Neak Pean (which, following English pronunciation rules, could theoretically be pronounced “neck pain,” which amused me for some reason…). The next stop was a rather small temple named Ta Som on the eastern end of the outer loop. Just down the road from Ta Som, we stopped at the East Mebon temple. When it was constructed, this was an island, only accessible by boat. That, however, was centuries ago. Now, it’s just a very dry, dusty area – with the temple still standing – and it’s hard to imagine it was once surrounded by water. At any rate, it was a quick stop at East Mebon, followed by another nice meal at the Khmer Country Kitchen before we continued with the tour. The next stop on the list was due east of the restaurant (southeast corner of the outer loop, which is really slightly northeast of Angkor Wat). Pre Rup (or Bre Rup) was a fairly photogenic temple. By this point, the heat – also around 40 degrees, just like Sunday – was starting to take a toll, though we still managed to stay out and see all we could. The last “new” temple for us was Banteay Kdei, a citadel that is at the corner of where the inner and outer loop meet on the eastern side of Angkor Wat. Directly across the street from Bnateay Kdei is what should be a nice lake called Sra Srang. A long, rectangular lake, which is also across the street from the Khmer Country Kitchen, it’s now nothing but a dustbowl. Though it’s rainy season now, there’s been so little rain that the lake has completely dried up. (But, please don’t tell any “right”-thinking politicians in my country that global warming is a problem. It certainly isn’t, despite what your eyes see.) After some rather sad contemplation at Sra Srang, we went back to Angkor Wat around 4:00 and were there until 6:30 or so for sundown. However, a boomer of a thunderstorm (light rain, but heavy on thunder & lightning) came through and there wasn’t much to see. However, we did finally get to tour the interior of Angkor Wat, and found that a pretty fitting way to end the initial Siem Reap shoot. From there, we went back to the hotel where we passed out from exhaustion.
The only thing left to do was wake up on Tuesday for a quick 45 minute flight at noon to Bangkok. We concluded the trip as we started it: eating well at a Thai restaurant. Other than that, we just had a quiet night in Bangkok (no shooting at all) and a very early (3:30 a.m.) wake up call for our return flights out of Thailand. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing Thailand again soon.