Monday Memories – A Blur of Monks in Bangkok Thailand

In last week’s Monday Memories post I mentioned that there were several other photos in my ‘finals’ folder that I had taken at the mass alms-giving that was Visakha Bucha Day. However, sometimes, when you have a specific layout for your photographs in mind, you can overlook other images that have just as much impact but didn’t suit what you were working on at the time.

In this case, I went back and looked through every photo that I took that morning. I had been reading a great post on editing your portfolio by photographer Zack Arias, as I’m currently doing the same thing.

He recommended going back and looking for shots that didn’t make the first edit for the job at hand. So I did just that.

At the end of the alms-giving ceremony, as I was crossing the road with a mass of monks, it occurred to me that I could create a good shot if I blurred the monks a little.

I tried a few shots at street level before deciding to go up to the BTS Skytrain platform above.

Although I wasn’t carrying a tripod at the time, I wanted a slow enough shutter speed to capture the movement.

I spent about 20 minutes there as the monks spilled out from the event and crossed the street to their buses lined up down the road.

This was the best photo of the experiment and while I don’t think I ever really achieved what I envisaged, the shot still takes me back to that morning and reminds me of the colossal number of monks at the ceremony.

Details: Nikon D700, 35mm F2 @ F8 @ 1/40th second @ ISO200. 

Monday Memories is a random series of reflections on photographs taken by pro photographer Terence Carter, half of the team/couple behind Grantourismo, a project/site launched in 2010, dedicated to slow, local and experiential travel and food. Terence has a decades-long career spanning editorial, portraiture, and food and travel photography.

If you enjoyed this post and found it helpful to your photography, do browse these Monday Memories posts on Flying into Siem Reap for the First Time, Street Photography in Siem Reap, Siem Reap Dance Troupe Portraits, Photographing Phnom Penh in the Wet Season, My Kind of Blue, Traditional Shadow Puppet Show in Phnom Penh, Capturing A Face in the Crowd to Convey a Vast Crowd, A Girl Crossing a Suspension Bridge in Battambang, A Student Stretches at Battambang Circus School, Love at First Click of the Camera, An Elephant Encounter in Siem Reap, Reality Bytes, Bangkok’s Junior MasterChef, A Monk on the Mekong River in Laos, and The Dubai Camel Handler.