Wednesday, March 30, 2016

My First Day

My first day was so so. I left the room around 7am, it was already Farley hot. I handed out the photos and said hello to the people who live under the free way , Khune Anapon and Khune Ooh. Then walked down the train tracks to explore. I did not find to much but eventually made it to the Klong Toey subway station and the heart of Bangkok Sukhumvit road.

On Sukhumvit road I did a bit of uninspired photography of some homeless people sleeping alongside people walking to work. Did a lot of walking but did not feel much inspired by what I saw. Visited the tourist sex bar area of Nana on Soi 4 (street 4) and was surprised many of the beer bars were open at 910am. Who the hell needs booze and sex workers at 9 in the morning! Do these foreign sex tourist dudes guys wake up lusting to get wasted and laid? Heck the bar just closed around 2am, not enough last night? I asked a local taxi tout who was looking for gullible tourists what time the bar opened, he told me 8 or 830am. WOW!

The only positive photo sequence of the day was a series I shot with Rollie of isolated people waking past me on busy Sukhunvit road with a neutral background. I tried to capture them as they quickly walked past. Hard type shooting with iffy focusing at best. I shot everything at 1/250 and f 4 or 5.6. Ended up shooting around 10 rolls this way, possibly a waste of fin, am far from sure this worked at all. This style of photo was inspired by Walker Evens and Harry Callahan. The Rolleiflex works well for this type of photography, most folks do not know what your holding or that your photographing. Hope I got something out of all those rolls. If it works will try again the future. For now thou I want to save my 120 film for the families at the dump.