Thursday, December 1, 2011

Oops I'm Going Back To My Room!

So there I was on the front of the canal garbage photographing and waving to Thais who kept yelling hello's to me. I photographed the trees, the workers, the work, the buildings the water, everything. I was trying to curb my shooting a bit so as not to use up to much film to fast (something I often do is overshoot subjects).

It was very hot up front, I was under the sun, sweating without a hat the other workers all had hats, rubber boots etc, they had asked me if I wanted a hat but I declined (hard to shoot photos while wearing a big ass). I was situated in the front section of the boat with Khune Wan-rop, she kept talking and telling me stuff. This fruit you can eat this way, that fruit is put in naum blah (fish sauce) this tree here is called this here but in a temple called that (there is often a different word, more polite word for Buddhist things in the Thai language). Eventually I sort of went into nodding, uh huh, yes I understand mode. Eventually she started to talk to me about the best bus to go back to my room with, so that I could save money on a taxi. If I took bus #115 from the market area it would only cost me 8 baht to travel home. I nodded and thanked her and told her later I would do that. We continued to float along, they worked picking up garbage, I continued to shoot, and as we got closer and closer to the market she kept talking about bus #115, I keep nodding and agreeing etc.

It turns out I nodded and agreed a bit to much, I nodded a few to many times and said yes sure that sounds good to clearly, it seems Khune Wan-rop misunderstood me and thought I wanted to take bus #115 NOW, immediately, not at some future date! Something had be lost in translation and Wan-rop had misunderstood what I wanted. She got me to an area where she could climb a metal ladder out of the boat and the klong and then up some rickety stairs before leading me out to the road, across the road and way down the street to the bus stop! She took me to where I could catch bus #115! She actually stopped her work and the work of the others and walked me maybe 1/2 a kilometer to the bus stop. I guess when I was in the boat I could have told her no I did not want to go but I decided to go with the flow of it. I basically had the shots I could get from the boat and of the workers already anyway, and I did not want to shoot all my film, so just thought what the heck its my fate, I will take a bus home!

Plan on returning to the same area tomorrow with the 4x5 and do some portraits of the workers there. I should also get them something for all the help they have given me. I  made an unexpected exit today so did not have a chance to buy them some beer or something else.

Got about 2 hours shooting done in the boats on the canal today, not a lot but enough. I think the head shots and portraits with the 4x5 I can do tomorrow should be better.