Lady Sunset..

For months now I've had an image in my mind that I wanted to capture. I'd think about trying to set it up at least every week or so yet in amongst the busyness of life I discovered that months had gone by and I was still repeating the same ole mantra to myself'; "next week.. next week.. next week.." It was while drinking my morning coffee a couple of weeks back that I noticed the fields behind my house were beginning to make the shift from impossibly green to a warm golden hue and I knew if I kept up this mantra and didn't act soon then my window of opportunity to shoot in amongst the rice fields would be gone, and that was something I was not prepared to let happen.

I asked amongst some friends if they'd be willing to let me shoot them and sold them on the concept of the shoot and was pretty jived when they agreed. Part of my vision was to have a background in which the setting sun was just kissing the mountain tops and so on a couple of afternoons at around sunset I rode around the outskirts of town location scouting. I thought I had settled upon a place but randomly one afternoon when I was picking up Wildfoot and Little Feather from their school, I decided to take the long way home and as we rode the scenic route through fields upon fields of rice just ripening for the harvest I knew I had stumbled upon a far more beautiful space.

I came back later that afternoon and wandered around the fields looking for interesting nooks and crannies and points of interests that I might want to include. The whole time I was keeping my eye on my watch so I would know where I needed to be at what time to get the most of out the rapidly changing light, but at times it felt almost pointless. I challenge anyone to try and focus or to make plans while walking through those fields at sundown! The whole afternoon felt like I was walking around in a dream. The soft breeze blowing across the top of the rice fields that created ripples which stretched out all the way to the base of the Himalayan Foothills while the sun gently settled down behind the mountains and smothered everything with an impossibly gorgeous golden light. If I'd had a picnic blanket, a bottle of red and my wife I believe I'd be well in my right for thinking that I'd died and gone to heaven.

 I rang around and locked in a day and a time for the shoot. I even managed to convince my friend's eldest son to come out and be my lighting guy/voice controlled light stand and this move ended up being one of the the best 60 baht I've ever spent! But on the morning of the shoot things didn't look anywhere near so promising. The weather was overcast and cold, the wind was kicking up a stink and the sky was continually threatening to rain. Living in a valley means the weather is always unpredictable and so there was always a chance it might come good, but because the weather report said it was likely to rain I opted to postpone the shoot till the following week, a risky move considering the difficulties in getting all my friends there at the same time coupled with the unknown date of the impending rice harvest but ultimately it was the right one.

The days rolled by and thankfully the rice remained unharvested. Everyone turned up for the shoot and it was like God had been saving up the most beautiful weather he had ever conceived of just for that day. The golden sunlight was otherworldly and helped give a real milky quality to parts of the images that I was hoping to capture along with the occasional bit of lens flare. I fired off a bunch of shots in different locations and tried to capture a variety of moods (as well as a number of individual portraits which I'll upload once I've had a chance to edit them) and walked away with a digital copy of the image that I'd been seeing in my mind's eye for months in advance (the first image on this page) and that is a sweet feeling indeed!

The final noteworthy part to this story came the following day when Shoonklicky Spoon went for a ride back to where we shot these images only to find that the fields in their entirety had been cut down in the harvest. Not more than than 12 hours after I captured these images the harvesters arrived and put their sickles to work. If ever there was a time I was grateful to have gotten off my butt and made something happen, this is likely to have taken first place!

Sunday Sun..

 
Of all the genres of photography, portraiture is my favourite. Don't get me wrong, I love rambling off road to try and find a unique perspective for a landscape, I love capturing candid moments in street and travel photography, and if all my friends here continue to be under the spell of this strange new desire to watch birds, I might even try my hand at wildlife photography, but without a doubt my photographic heartbeat is for capturing people. Is it that I'm by nature a people person? That people seem by far the most complex, diverse and beautiful creatures on our planet? That attempting to capture the essence of a person on film (or more to the point, my interpretation of that person's essence) seems an almost transcendent pursuit? I truly don't know, but what I do know is that right now I'll take any opportunity I can to stick my lens in someones face and capture a frame full of the beauty of the world.

Pai Ink..

 

Around 10 years ago WildFlower began on her journey towards getting inked for the first time. And whilst at many times throughout my life I've seen works of art on people's skin that I've been deeply impressed by, I carry around with me a deep abiding fear of ink on skin; I'm not kidding, if you pull out a pen in front of me and start writing on the back of your hand I'm gonna scream at you. So needless to say the idea of having ink permanently lodged beneath my skin is not my idea of a good time. I fought WildFlower on this issue for many years hoping to stave off her getting one (I mean honestly, you wouldn't doodle on the Mona Lisa now would you?) but as with any good marriage, in the end, the wife always wins.

  
In 2010, after three and a half years of unsuccessfully attempting to make a baby and a doctor finally saying that it was unlikely to ever happen for us, WildFlower decided to get the tatt she'd been putting off for all those years. WildFlower sat with our good friend Lady Punks and they drew up a beautiful design and then after being on a waiting list for over a year she got in with an amazing Sydney artist who rejigged the design to make it work as a tatt. Then she took the step I'd been dreading for all those years, she booked in the appointment. 

The weeks passed until we were just days away from Tatt Day. I tried pretty much anything I could think of to convince her out of it but as this had been on her heart for close to a decade I knew deep down that all attempts were pretty futile. I was bracing myself for a lifetime of having my teeth set on edge at the sight of the horrors of ink on skin, but then, just three days out, we caught a glimpse of God's sense of humor.

Around 2pm on a sunny Sydney afternoon a very excited nurse called to tell me some news; WildFlower was pregnant with our first child. I remember that moment like it was yesterday. And unless you know the pains of infertility it's hard to imagine just how full of joy that day was for us! And in that state of bliss it hardly mattered to either of us that the human body is much more likely to reject tatoo ink when you're pregnant or breastfeeding and so tatt day needed to be postponed.. indefinitely.

  
Fast forward two very life changing years later and we're returning to Australia with our daughter from living in India so we could be a part of my sisters wedding. It's only a short trip of 3 or so weeks but WildFlower decides she wants to pick up where she left off and get the tattoo done so is running around making the necessary arrangements. The date is set, the plans are made and any attempts to dissuade the inevitable are met with white hot force. So there we are, the week of Tatt day, sitting in a doctor's office getting WildFlower's newly broken toe attended to when the doctor turned to us with another piece of life changing news; baby number 2 was already 7 weeks along the way. Tatt day was once again postponed.. Woo!

Jump forward to 2014 and we're again back in Australia visiting family and friends and no prizes for guessing that WildFlower is back on the trail of getting herself inked. But this time we are sharing a very real fear that history might repeat itself! Both times we'd gotten to within a week of the tatt day and had to call it off due to a new found pregnancy and as we'd not had more than 3 hours of unbroken sleep in the 12 months since our son was born we were definitely not in the head space to add baby number 3 into the mix.

We proceeded through the weeks "with much caution" and finally the day came when WildFlower left the house with clear shoulders and returned home with a sweeping design across her upper arms and back. And even more to my surprise, I kinda liked it.

I've heard too many times to count that getting tatts becomes like an addiction, and knowing my dear wifey I knew it wouldn't be long before the conversations around the dinner table turned to the next design. And sure enough, no more than a few weeks passed before I found her secretly sketching away in her books and comparing designs on Pinterest. Which now brings us to the present. 

Around a month back WildFlower sat down in Go Kui Tattoo Studios here in Pai and went under the needle. The design is gorgeous and wraps around her forearm and the text is lifted from a passage of our Scriptures that speaks of the abiding joy in God's inexhaustible worth; something which has become so very important to us in the past couple of years. WildFlower walked out excited and keen to show off her latest work of art to me and thaaaaankfully I found myself pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it, but it didn't take long for something strange to happen.. her body began to reject the ink.

To begin with we were simply concerned with getting the affected areas retouched. We spoke to the artist was more than happy to oblige and as you can see from the image below the completed tatt is incredible! But then the pieces began to fall into place. The dots began to connect. The neon signs began blinking along the side of the highway. Our history with Tattoo cancellations.. her body rejecting the ink.. God's sense of humor.. It all finally made sense.


 

But were we wrong. Sorry Nikki & Joni, no new nephew or niece this time round. And whilst adding another member to our tribe is not out of the question, right now we're trying to focus on refilling our sleep bank which has been officially declared bankrupt and so embarking upon another bout of sleepless nights, well, a cold chill runs along my spin just thinking about it.  

So for now I get to just sit here and write this post, share a few photos, and enjoy a few quite moments whilst my kids colour in pictures with their friends in the next room. All the while I'm knowing that at any given moment those sinister colouring-in pens are going to slide right off the edge of the page and hurtle towards their their skin at breakneck speeds, leaving behind them a inky wreckage trail of blues and reds and greens across Caucasian skin. Ergh! Now I need a bath.

 

Should We Be Concerned About This?

The Nighttime View Behind My House

 

That was the question the Russian tourists asked me as I stood on the dirt road beside my house; "Should we be concerned about this?" And to be honest it was hard to know how to answer. The Australian in me sees a mountain covered in flames and wants nothing more than to grab the family and the photo albums and get the hell out of there (bush fires in Australia are a big deal!) but the man slowly acclimatising to the Thai way of life understands that this is normal, that's right, a mountain less than a few minutes from the town center is covered in flames and it's normal. In fact, it's deliberate.

Every year between February and March the landscape around here disappears beneath a thick layer of smoke the permeates e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. Plenty of people will tell you that it's farmers burning their fields before the new planting season but to date I'm yet to see a single field that's been scorched. Instead what we saw each and every night on the hills and mountains that surround us was what is here referred to as "Fire Dragons;" those lines of fire that slither their way up and down the sides of the mountains, and all of which on uncultivated land.

Fire Dragons

  

If you asked around to find out what's going on with the burning you'll discover that it's that familiar scenario in which everyone in town has a differing story which they believe to be THE true one. I've heard that it's back burning to guard against bush fires, that it's part of an ancient agricultural ritual, that it's to encourage new growth in the forest, and plenty more which each have the possibility of being true. But the one told to me by a local guy that seems to ring true is that it's all a part of the Hill Tribes hunting technique.

Each year around this time they release the Fire Dragons to blaze along the mountains and force all the animals of the forest to run for 'safety,' and with the fire at their backs the animals run straight into the path of the hunters who are laying in wait. I am partially convinced of this because of what I saw on the night that I was photographing the fire dragons from a distance but decided I wanted, no, I needed to get closer to get "the shot." 

I hoisted my camera gear on top of my motorbike, kissed Wild Flower goodbye, took a few deep breathes to work up the courage to head up a mountain that was covered with fire, then charged off into the darkness. After a good 10minutes of riding back and forth on small trails trying to get as close to the flames as possible I ended up dismounting my bike and continuing on foot. After only a hundred or so meters I came to realise that whilst the flames were broad and hot they were actually quite slow moving, almost dawdling along to take in the sights. None seemed to be climbing up the trees or setting the canopy alight but instead were slowly eating their way along the extensive underbrush and leaf litter and so I felt reasonably safe walking to withing 30 or so meters of the flames before walking back a ways to get some wider panoramic shots. It was in the process of shooting the 4-shot panoramic below that I noticed a handful of Thai guys wandering around near the flames with torches and what was possibly (though I can't be 100% certain) rifles. Seeing this made me think that if these guys are out illegally hunting in the forest, and I, a hairy foreigner with his camera tripod that in the darkness looks suspiciously like a long legged creature of the forest, perhaps hanging around was not in the best interest of my health and safety. And so with that in mind I stealthily and swiftly made my withdrawal.

 

.. "The Shot" ..

Whilst the sunsets, scenery and ability to breath deeply had all but disappeared during the last months, Pai magically still managed to maintain it's beauty and charm despite being shrouded in an opaque veil of smoke. A good friend described the nights here as "Apocalyptically Beautiful" and whilst I'd happily trade it for a crisp, clear, star filled nights sky, at the end of the day I have no problem admitting that there are definitely worse places than my veranda to settle down with a cool drink in hand and watch the ever encroaching end of the world.

Live & Uncensored..

Let me just get this out there - my daughter is a delight! Her heart overflows with kindness, her mouth gushes with sweetness and affection, and she possesses an empathy for others that is way beyond her years. Lately this precociousness has served her well as she settles into our new life in Thailand and the poor little thing commences learning her 3rd language in her very short 4 years on this planet. But I'm not sure if it's a result of growing up in multilingual environments, that it's simply her personality or most likely that it's just spot on for her age and development, but lately her a speech has been flush with this raw literalism, comedic non sequiturs and genius linguist inventions (which around here we refer to as speaking "Elkish") that have had me in stitches! It's gotten to the point where I've decided it'd be a sin not to share them as they're simply too good to waste. So with eternal gratitude to my incredible daughter, I joyfully present to you some highlights from the last month of 'Little Feather; Live & Uncensored.'

  

"Mummy, Mummy! I just saw a car spraying water out of it's bottom."

"Don't worry Daddy, Jesus will put the sick away from you."

"Dad, whenever my poo comes out it makes me cold, or warm, or hot."

"Daddy, yester-night when we went over the bridge the moon dipped itself in sauce and that's how it got orange."

"Dad, at school the peepee from all the doodles gets all over the ground and I don't like it very much."

"Daddy, Daddy! I saw a water fountain and it spat out a rainbow!"

"Dad, do you remember the fish with jelly on it? Wobble wobble wobble?"

"Mum, why do you love wearing chicken?"

 

  "In night times Daddy spews in the potty.. Silly Daddy."

"Daddy, Daddy!! What's that noise upstairs? I think it's a Dinosaur! Or Mummy!"

"Daddy, I need a band-aid to put on my finger so the Germans don't get in and make it ouchie."

"Daddy, last time I was sick you forgot to bring me a bucket and all my vegetables came out onto the bed."

 

Chhath Puja..

We've been back in ole Banaras for a little over two weeks now and it feels like our last days living in this city are all too quickly racing away. We've been insanely busy packing up our home and selling off most of the possessions we've amassed over the years, trying to schedule in enough time do decent goodbyes with friends (which I feel we're failing at), trying to not wear out the kids with all the running around (which I feel we're failing dismally at) - and of course, trying to manage all of the above with a family who have all had the flu since arriving back in town.. It's been an exhausting couple of weeks!

But none-the-less, I'm trying to make the most of our last days here and thus trying to get the camera out as often as possible. And whilst those who know me know that mornings are not my most favourable time of the day I decided to get my sorry butt out of bed get and down to the Ghats before sunrise last week to witness Chhath Puja. 

Chhath Puja is a an ancient Hindu festival that centers around Surya (the sun god) in which participants offer puja and gifts to thank the Sun for sustaining life and to grant their wishes. Prosperity, healing, babies and other various wishes are all considered up for grabs over this four day festival in which devotional acts such as abstaining from drinking water, offering prayers at the rising and setting of the sun and prolonged standing in bodies of water are all part of package. Whilst men and women both participate in Chhat Puja, it does seem to be more of a Women's festival and with the noticeable increase of women outside of their homes it actually creates quite a different (and wonderful) atmosphere in and around this overwhelmingly man's world which is Banaras.

I hope you'll enjoy this little morsel from the feast of colour which is the Varanasi Ghats during Chaat Puja!

(And because I can't help myself I have to point out that the compression that occured when uploading these images has done some weird things with some of the colours and really brought out the vignettes. You'll have to be patient and forgive me this time round till I work out how to fix it.)

Fishing In The Post Apocalypse Mall..

The Mall On The Other Side Of The Apocalypse..

On one late Autumn night in March 2014, I was huddled up on a couch in Australia and killing time on my computer when I happen to stumble across a comment on a Facebook thread that would immediately crawl in under my skin and make itself at home. Someone had heard a rumor about an abandoned shopping mall somewhere in Asia that had flooded and subsequently become home to a large population of Koi and this person was looking to find clues to it's existence and possible whereabouts. I eagerly followed the thread hoping to learn more but found that as the comments slowly dried up I was left hanging with no concrete information, no photographic evidence, no first hand accounts.. nothing but an explosion in my mind at the thought of the possibilities and burning desire to find out if this place really existed. Cue the inevitable sleepless night that followed filled with the pounding of various word combinations into Google until finally I happened across a grainy, pixelated, low-res yet outstandingly exciting image and the name that accompanied it; New World Mall, Bangkok, Thailand.

As I poured through various websites and my eyes grew wider with excitement at the various images a thought suddenly hit me like a steam train and for a moment I held my breathe as the sound of my heart beating in my chest began resounding in my ears. As many of you know, after many years living in India we're relocating the beautiful mountains of Northern Thailand and so between mid-October and mid-November we doing some traveling, a lot of traveling, including journeying from Australia to Thailand, Thailand to India, India to Thailand (and then in December Thailand to Laos to Thailand.. don't ask!) and that during this time we will be passing through Bangkok on at least two different occasions. I furiously opened up my travel itinerary and there it was, a 17 hour stopover in Bangkok between connecting flights on our way to India! If I could track this place down and organise our timing just right, I might actually be able to step foot inside it for myself!! The thought immediately caused my heart rate to double.

New World Mall, Bangkok..

 
Seven months later and the thick, heavy, humid air was filling my lungs as I hurriedly pushed my way through the masses along the sidewalks of Bangkok. After much research I had managed to track down an old address online and so booked our accommodation close by, and with the help of Google Maps in my pocket I was feeling confident that I was where I was meant to be and that I was on my way to something special. Suffice to say that after 25 minutes of walking with a growing feeling of confusion a helpful police officer was able to enlighten me that I'd been walking in the complete wrong direction since my first step out of the guest house.. niiiiiiice.

Fast forward through the long walk back and I soon found myself on the street which I knew the Mall was just off. I walked the length of it three times but any indication of a giant abandoned mall filled with fish was nowhere to be seen. Most things I'd read online about the mall were now a couple of years old and one mentioned how it was highly likely to demolished and developed at any time as it was in a area of growth and gentrification; a growing sense of foreboding and impending letdown was upon me. 

... B&W Three Shot Panoramic ...

From what I could gather online, it seems that some years back a brand-spanking-new eleven story Mall was being built in downtown Bangkok which would go by the name of the New World Mall. The unforeseen Global Financial Crisis in 2007-8 meant that the funds to finish the project dried up and soon after the doors closed on a half finished Mall. But the story doesn't end there, oh no, the eleven story mall was being built in an area where the zoning regulations prohibit construction above the seventh floor and so when the council came in and knocked it back down to it's seventh floor they opted to not bother with putting a roof on. This one act of a leaving a completely exposed and roofless mall meant that when the monsoon rains arrived they fell into a perfect reservoir and over time came to completely fill the bottom floors. With Malaria and other Mosquito borne diseases being a problem throughout Thailand, the story goes that a local man released a handful of fish into the waters to eat the Mosquito larvae and as this was an artificial watercourse which therefore had no natural predators in it, the fish thrived and began to multiply.

But this is where I come back into the story. You see I was standing on the corner of a small and completely nondescript alleyway that was filled with plastic tables and chairs and one or two of street food vendours, the same alleyway I had already walked across the mouth of 3 times, when I I saw the Krungthai Bank logo, the landmark I was searching for, and realised I was precicely where I was suppose to be.

 
I began walking down the alley and could see that less than 20 meters a head of me the alley ran into a wall and became a dead end. Two-thirds of the way down on the right however I could see a large wire fence covered in green shade cloth running parallel to the wall, the type of fence you put up around the outside of construction sites when you want to keep people out, and smack bang in the middle of this was a gate with a handwritten Thai sign which even as a foreigner I could tell said 'Do Not Enter!' My heart began pounding harder and harder as I stepped closer but I wasn't able to even get within a couple of meters of the gate before an elderly Thai man grabbed my arm and regaled me with the universal hand gestures for 'You can't go in there.'

I asked as politely as I could (currently being a non-Thai speaker this wasn't quite so easy) if I could just pop my head in quickly but he kept waving me away. I know the Thai word for 'Fish' and so I pointed to the gate and said "Plā" and the old man and his friend nodded vigorously yet with even more vigor they waved me away. He picked up a rather large piece of concrete from the floor and gestured that it had fallen from the roof, he then repeatedly tapped the top of his head - now after three years in India I've gotten pretty flippin good at charades (you should see me trying to ask my neighbors if they've seen my wife's bra after it's blown off the clothes line on our roof) and so I knew he was telling me that it wasn't safe for me to go in because  the roof/walls/giant pieces of concrete were liable to fall on my head. I appreciated his concern but yet found myself standing at the crossroads in which one direction meant to walk away and miss out on potentially seeing something amazing whilst the other was to stay and try and change the minds of these immovable objects/gentlemen without having any grasp on the language at all. I opted for the latter.

I began by using the few Thai phrases I knew; "Hello, my name is...," "I am .... years old," "I come from ...." etc. etc. etc. But it had little effect. I dug deeper into my memory bank and came back with "I like Thai Food," then I smiled real big. Both gentleman smiled politely and waved me away. I had pretty much exhausted my repertoire of Thai sentences and so was force to reverted to single words. "Fish. Buffalo. Monk. Temple. Bottle Water. Airport. Left. Man. Traditional Hats." That slightly sideways quizzical look began taking over the old mans face so I continued; "Child. Right. Little. Novice Monk. Elephant. Symbols. Snake... Pad Thai!!" The corner of the old man's mouth began to tremor and slowly raised into a smile. Success!!
  

First Floor; Women's Hosiery..

He began chuckling and so I kept on repeating my random assortment of Thai words and he turned slowly and led me up and through the gate. From the street side of the gate the opaque green cloth obscured all vision of what was on the other side but within one step through the gate the attached photos were all I could see. It was astounding. There was no long walk, no scrambling through tunnels, just one step through a wire gate and I was standing in the place that had been dominating my mind for months on end. What's more, literally millions upon millions of people would pass within a handful of meters of this place each year and yet the vast majority would never know it existed. To be so fortunate was rather humbling.
 
I'm not sure of what breed of fish they were (fairly sure they weren't Koi - at least not a breed that I'm aware of) but goodness me they were huge and numerous! Hundreds and thousands of amazing dark Blackish-Blues and Albinos splashing around in this cavernous underground wonderland. And when the old man began hitting a metal pipe that protruded from the water with a stone the fish turned and almost uniformly began swimming towards us whereby he reached into a bag and threw a mass of pellets to them which they swarmed over and devoured in an instant. I whipped out my camera and began shooting in what was a massively tricky lighting situation, and though deep down I'd love to go back and improve on these images, I'm happy enough to have come away with a handful of keepers. The old man began pointing at the roof above me and I could see where large slabs of concrete had become dislodged and fallen all over the floor, within 2 or 3 minutes since first entering he again he grabbed my arm and this time I knew it was the right time for me to leave.

All in all it was one of the more exciting and surreal moments of my life. When I burst back into the guesthouse and couldn't stop my lips from pouring forth the longer (and exceptionally more boring) account to Wild Flower (but she's a great woman and an even better wife so has learned how to put up with my ramblings) and I was riding the high for days. So if you ever find yourself in Bangkok and want to hunt down one of the most amazing places on earth make sure to get yourself to Banglumphu Junction on Samsen Road (walking distance from the main backpacker district of Khao San & Ram Buttri Road), find the Krungthai Bank (big blue sign with a white eaglish-hawkish-birdish logo) then keep your eyes pealed for the small and easily missable Soi Kraisi, turn right into it and look for the green netting a stones throw away on your right. The only other advice; just make sure to have your list of completely random and completely unrelated Thai words at the ready.


* Dedicated to my ole boy Ragnar - It's not Kolmanskop, but it's getting close!