Okay, its been a long while since we managed to escape the Bangkok madness. Dont get me wrong, I love living in Bangkok, however you do need escape this mega city from time to time to recharge and see some nature and wildlife. So this is a quick post to show you a few snaps that I took on one morning whilst in Prachuap Khiri Khan. Let's dive in.
One of our favourite provinces in Thailand. Its a 3 hour drive from the heart of Bangkok, so relatively easy to get to, we decided it would be the perfect city escape to take out daughter on her first holiday.
It was very much a family trip and I didn't have any plans for photography, but of course I took my camera so I decided to head out for an hour one sunrise. I didn't know what to expect, plus we didn't have great weather due to pollution season here in Thailand and a horrific amount of haze.
Despite the lack of planning and pretty rubbish weather, I woke up and headed out at 6am, after feeding my baby girl obviously. Had she not woke me up, maybe I wouldn't have made it out, so thanks Evelyn.
The weather left a lot to be desired, a little bit grey and dull, not the usual Thailand morning glow but feeling optimistic so jumped in the car and drove 5 minutes to the rice fields, the first location. I wanted to use the reflections in the water but with no colour in the sky it didn't really work as I wanted. Here is one shot I got.
I loved this lone tree standing in the middle of the filed and took this shot. It would have been really nice had the sky lit up with colour and then utilised the reflection a little more. that didn't happen for me though, so I decided to use a tighter frame and shot with the idea of a black and white edit and this is the result.
Feeling a little deflated, I turned around and saw the warm glow of the sun as out tried to push through the haze. Then I noticed a cow in the filed accompanied by a few water birds, a crane and an egret I think (I'm probably wrong). The whole scene spoke to me, the glow, the trees and wildlife, it seemed to work. Here are the shots I took.
Feeling a little better that I had a few shots in the bag, I waited a while to see if the colour would materialise, but it didn't. So I made the decision to drive another 5 minutes down the road to the coast, again not know what to expect. What I found was actually pretty beautiful.
A very typical Thai scene. fishing boats in the ocean, fisherman off loading their catch and waves rolling into the shore. Doesn't get much better, well, it could have got better with slightly better lighting but I tried my best to work with what I had.
I knew I needed to focus on the subject and that was clearly the boat and its fisherman. The colours didn't pop as I would have liked so I wanted to show the warmth of the glow in the edit. Here are the fisherman shots.
Once I finished shooting the boat and fisherman, I turned my attention to the waves, rocks and boats in the distance. Snapping some shots of the waves lapping at the rocks, wishing I had a filter set, a must purchase for landscape photography I think. I tried my best to slow down my shutter but it didn't work quite as well as I had hoped.
Not bad but not as good as I had hoped for. By this point the sunrise potential had all but disappeared. I decided to drive down the coast road to a small river inlet that had some boats parked up. I tried to make some images here and feel they turned out okay. Again the light was not optimal, but you can't control that so you have to work with what you have and that's what I did. Here are the shots.
So that wrapped up my small photography session. Not too bad and I managed to drive home with a few photos un the bag. The biggest take away from this session was, I just love photography!
I don't have the best equipment, I didn't get great light, I didn't have a great plan but none of that matters. Getting out into the world, exploring and seeing what you can find is by far the most important thing for me, good photographs are definitely just a bonus.
The take away? Make time to get out into the world. You need to explore and see the world, that can be your own neighbourhood, your own city, your own country or continent. It doesn't matter as long as you leave your house and explore.
Thanks for reading guys, see you on the next one!