Meeting the monks

It has been a week filled with monks, tall ones, short ones, smiley ones, thoughtful ones, old ones, young ones, kind ones and playful ones but the below are my favourite ones!

‘Anyone for a trim?’ ~ Kampong Chhnang

On tour recently assisting Nathan Horton we were wending our way to the river at Kampong Chhnang when this cheeky face, with a Paul Weller haircut, asked if anyone needed a trim. There’s only one way to get engaging close up photographs and that’s to get to know your subjects so in the spirit of the photography tours I settled myself into his rickety, red leather chair resting on ten foot stilt poles where thick batches of anothers freshly cut, jet, black hair fell through the floor boards into the rivers rubbish below.

I don’t get many photographs of me these days so thank you to Alex and Alissa for capturing one of the lighter moments of going on photography tour!

PS ~ I have his number if anyone wants it?!

Strange Fruit

This amazing bloom was as large as my hand and the huge towering tree from which it hung was coated in them and their cannonball like fruit. Known as the ‘Nagalingam’ flower, which we think directly translates as the ‘snakepenis’, the local women tell me that a tea can be made from the petals that is good for a woman’s womb after having a baby. So now you know!

Sunday Mornings

On Sunday morning some people wash their cars. This chap on Koh Dach, more commonly known as Silk Island, was washing his cows…

 

 

My joy is the golden sunset…

‘My joy is the golden sunset’ ~ Jonathan Lockwood Huie

On a mad and very mysterious moth hunt for a book jacket commission (so mysterious a moth that I cannot find it!) I was riding a tuk tuk past a lake I have stopped at before for sunset when I caught this image of a little khmer boy leaping in joy through the golden light. A beautiful spot away from the crowds it is ideal for Green Tours guests to take in the beauty and peace of the Angkor landscape away from the hordes of coach travellers as well as photograph stunning sunsets. I think I may take a picnic blanket and a bottle of something appropriate next time!

The Blue and Yellow series…

Inspired by last post the blue boy somewhat but with a little yellow for jollity these were taken on a great weekend tour working with National Geographic Traveler recommended www.nathanhortonphotograph.com. Working part-time with Nathan is starting to really improve my photography and working with the guests, helping them gain confidence, spot shots and relax in their new surroundings is really a rather enjoyable way to spend ones day!

All of the shots below were taken on Nathan’s Phnom Penh weekend tour which I can highly recommend for teaching aesthetics and technical photography, with five different locations shot over the weekend I am still working my way through what I have but I hope that you enjoy these for now and they inspire you to visit wonderful places and learn to make great images and memories too.

Bye for now, I move towns again tonight, heading to Siem Reap to launch Green Tours Cambodia and have some silly fun with new friends. This will be the third place I have made home since my time in Cambodia, think of me on the dusty, bumpy road in the dark on the 7 hour sleeper coach won’t you. It’ll be a ride!

The Blue Boy Series

‘Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.’ K Vonnegut.

This lad sadly knows not yet the benefits of being the outsider. I watched him, watch the children, in a Koh Dach pagoda on a quiet Sunday morning, doing their traditional musical instrument practice and I wondered which instrument he would play if he could…

Kung hoi fat choi!

Year of the Dragon

Phnom Penh town can be heard at night to have the thrumming of drums and the thumping of dragon feet as practice and preparation is underway for Chinese New Year on the 23rd January.

I was wondering around last night and found the dragon dancing school. Wow! Photography just can’t reproduce the skill of these dancers!

Hand in Hand with Hope

This morning I presented the images to Eric Lyons I made for his charity on New Years Day. Eric is the founder of Hope for the Silent Voices, ‘a not-for-profit organization, founded to bring attention and resources to the severely neglected, disadvantaged, abused and discarded globally.’

Christmas and New Year were a little lonely for me with friends and family so far away so spending time with Eric, the wonderful HSV tour group, and surrounded by the humour and laughter of the children that his charity supports as well as the tender connections made with the community at the shoot featured here was a fitting way to welcome in 2012.

I’m really pleased with my reportage shots made at our visit to Steung Meanchey, the old mountainous rubbish dump where people still live, outside brand new walls with gold tipped railings, from the fetid rubbish that we leave outside our homes. A friend said to me yesterday “Oh don’t do [shoot] the dump , so many have..it’s been done to death…”, when I mentioned how pleased I was with the images I had made there. This surprised me but was indicative of the state of affairs of this now forgotten again site where children walk through inner city disease and syringe ridden water barefoot to find food, sleep in two meter square shacks seven people deep and an old women dies alone with the good will of the poorest of the locals to keep her unsoiled.

We stayed awhile at the site after the charity dispersed the food and toothpaste they had come to deliver. Dental care is a low priority for the poor here and these small bags of goods, an offering, say to the community here that they are not forgotten.

A local woman took me through flooded water, playing hop scotch on slabs of concrete, rusting oil cans, old toys to show me her home; my nikon swinging wildly as I concentrated on not loosing more camera kit and dunking myself.

I felt akin to her as I was told her story, of recent family loss, of working hard in difficult circumstances, of still smiling through grief, of still making connections and attempting faith in humans in this troubled world. She stood close and held my hand, no english at all, language unnecessary.

To be trusted by the most vulnerable in society is a deeply touching connection so often ignored and sometimes so brutally abused. I put the camera down as she put her arm around my waist and held her too as we watched the dusty sprawling site before us where she sleeps and lives, children walking half naked, dirty but hand in hand.

Here, I found forgotten friends on the first day of a New Year.