Island living

The view from a residential condo on Samui island. Big Buddha temple can be seen in the distance . . and zoomed in looks like this:

Back to reality

After yesterday's HDR's, I thought I'd get back to simple photography.

Samui is an island in the south of Thailand that we try to take our 3 kids to a few times a year. We stay in the north of the island, rather than the more touristy west side, partially because its quieter, but more for the fact that we are right on the beach, and depending on the season, the wind is either blowing from north east or north west, keeping us cool and the pesky mosquitos down.

This image is from Bangpor beach, a few hundred metres away from where we stay.

Have a great weekend.

HDR chic (cheek), and all that jazz

Was surprised and pleased to find a comment from a good Flickr buddy on this blog, so early into its infancy. Vedd Edd is a not so rare animal these days, he's an HDR aficionado, but more than that, he's avid, an HDR connoiseur, teacher and expert, and d*mn good with his imagery. His work has consistently been of an amazingly high quality, it is highly popular and he's now in demand for his photographic workshops.

In light of his "finding" me here (and I know how that happened), I thought I'd post a couple of my own early HDR's. Above is nothing more than an early morning sojourn into the shrimp farms at the mouth of the Chao Phaya river, Bangkok's "River of Kings".

The below two images are from a sunrise taken at Wat Phai Wong Rua, a temple on the way to Suphanburi, and which houses a 26 metre high seated white Buddha image "Phra Putthakhodom". They were shot just as the sun come up, shining across a field with hundreds of small Buddhas.

Please do head on over to Vedd's blog.

Bangkok's Millenium Falcon

The Millennium Falcon was the spacecraft in the Star Wars universe commanded by smuggler Han Solo and his Wookie first mate, Chewbacca.

The highly modified YT-1300 light freighter first appeared in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and subsequently in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.

On the surface, the Falcon looked like any other Corellian freighter, with a saucer-shaped primary hull, a pair of forward cargo-gripping mandibles, and a cylindrical cockpit mounted to the ship's side.

According to Star Wars creator George Lucas, the Falcon's design was inspired by a hamburger, with the cockpit being an olive on the side.

The Falcon flew point for the Alliance Fleet during the decisive Battle of Endor, and as it soared into the heart of the incomplete Death Star to deliver a missile volley which would help seal the Empire's fate it was damaged beyond all repair . . . . . .

Or so they thought!

As this photographic evidence shows the Falcon has been completely renovated and refurbished, and in the 21st century has been transformed into the luxury 5* hotel, the Millennium Hilton, on the banks of Bangkok's Chao Phya river.

May the Force be with you.

Likay, Thailand's comic opera

With thanks to Scott Crouse, and a comment he made to me on another blog, I've decided to create this new one, and with this first post.

Scott had simply asked me whether it was possible to leave comments on that blog, and the answer was: no, one of the faults of that blogging system (Tumblr), among others that I had become frustrated with.

I had started that original blog at the beginning of August (2010) with the idea to post an image per day of Thailand, a way of showing the thousands of images I had accumulated over the years of Thailand and its many places, familiar and unfamiliar, and its people, all from different angles, viewpoints and perspectives.

I was successful in being able to maintain a daily rate of imagery, and soon found I had a number of followers; many images were being reblogged on Tumblr (one gets notified) and a number were seen on non-Tumblr blogs (un-notified, but soon found).

With this switch to Blogger, I'm not sure I can maintain a daily rate of posting (I will try) as there is more space for text "description", and I hadn't intended the blog to be wordy at all, wanting all focus on the images themselves. But the absence of viewer's ability to comment (thanks, Scott) forced my hand to the change.

Let's see how we go . . .

Drum roll . . . . kicking off with these images of a Likay performance taken at a village party in Surin province.

Likay is a theatrical derivative of Thai Dance (Ram Thai), which is Thailand's main form of dramatic art with two forms: classical and folk. Likay is considered more on the folk side, and it has been said to be Thailand's comic opera for the masses.

Costumes are based on elements of classical Thai dress, highly colorful and often comical. Akin to Shakespeare, men normally play the female roles, usually heavily made up, and wearing clothes clearly not fitted for them.

Likay has been described as "drama of the people, for the people and by the people", with storylines being traditional, serious, lewd and bawdy.

Drawn from a number of sources, whether traditional tales or to meet current social needs, it is all bound together by the performers's skills and improvisations, the songs and the fast-paced action.

Many Likay stars have been as famous as the western celebrity of today, drawing huge crowds and a fan base that would be the envy of actors and movie stars.

The popularity of Likay is understandable, it "speaks" the language of the people, it is usually improvised on the spot using local dialects and anecdotes which the audience can instantly relate to, and it frequently contains innuendo and hidden messages with every statement conveying two or more messages which all "sophisticated" likay audiences instantly grasp with bursts and hoots of laughter.

If anyone is interested, here is the link to the now "deceased" Tumblr blog.