This is a break from our usual blog posts about tech and Lightroom, as I’m currently in Thailand photo tour scouting. I will be traveling through Thailand and then in Qatar during March working on multiple projects. I’m helping my wife, who is working on a children’s book about elephant sanctuaries; I was asked by a client to put together a bespoke tour of Thailand and I have an upcoming series of Lightroom workshops and talks scheduled in Doha for the end of March and beginning of April. I wanted to share some of my photos. This trip is too much fun to keep to myself.
Thailand Photo Tour
The first part of this trip is in Chiang Mai, Thailand photo tour scouting for a client. This northern Thai city still retains ruins of ancient walls and moats and has hundreds of elaborate Buddhist temples. The sheer number of temples is overwhelming and, at times they can be both magical and bizarre. For example, the Suttichit Buddha Place Park, south of Chiang Mai. It’s a temple complex with curious array of hundreds of odd sculptures along with traditional ones. There’s a massive mountainside reclining Buddha and statues of Godzilla, a pterodactyl, three-headed elephants along with Buddha sculptures in a dragon’s mouth Buddhist and Disney characters. It’s quite challenging to shoot this place, as everything gets in the way of everything else. I guess that’s why I enjoyed trying to convey the oddness. I definitely have to include this place in my Thailand tour.
Suttichit Buddha Place Park
Then there’s the Silver Temple in Chiang Mai’s old city. In contrast to the Suttichit Buddha Place Park, it’s hard to take a bad photo here. There are beautiful interior and exterior juxtapositions of light and dark of this nearly all silver temple.
With contrasts of gold, this is a stunning location. And yet there’s an undertone of wackiness here as well, with Marvel characters and UFOs. Another definite location for the tour.
And let’s not forget the monks.
Chiang Mai is an amazing city for any photographer. First, you can’t throw a rock here without hitting a temple.
Second, every temple is uniquely different and there are thousands of them, so it’s hard to run out of places and things to shoot.
And third, the people. Thailand is a country of kind and generous people. You’ll never get tired of that.
My next stops are Bangkok on March 24th and Doha, Qatar on March 28th. I’ll make sure you see more photos on upcoming posts.