My Day

Got up early this morning at 530 am it was still dark outside. I had a breakfast of white bread and fried chicken with some ice tea, took a shower and got my 4x5 gear ready. Headed out via taxi to the slum where I walked down the track areas looking for Lek, A and Same who I photographed in September, I had made prints for them and wanted to hand them out. It was Saturday and my Western ideas had me thinking it was a day off, but this is Thailand and most people work on Saturday so no one was home. I have to try and get up early tomorrow and give it another try, on Sunday Thais have the day off.

I continued walking down the tracks to an area I had been through many times at one point I stopped by a group of older men in an open space. I talked to them then asked one old man with a very strong face if I could take his photo. The mans name was Ootom he was 70 years old but looked closer to 90. I made a number of photographs of his face, back and while he was standing using the reflector which another man held for me. There was one drunk tough looking young guy there named Don, he had those wild angry drug like eyes. I tried to stay clear of him but he was hovering around looking rather menacing through out the shoot. When I was done this man Don asked for 100 baht ($3.30) for water (!), I kind of avoided him and continued talking to the man I photographed but you could see he was a bit intimidated by this Don fellow. Eventually I said goodbye to everyone, took Don aside and tried to befriend him a bit and ended up giving him 40 baht ($1.30). I also asked if I could photograph him at a later date, he agreed but I am not sure I want to meet him again, he seemed dangerous.

I walked on and photographed a group of people in a small caged park area, I photographed one middle aged man with drunk friendly eyes (Biak 56) and one old lady (Naung Kien 78). Later when I left the park I photographed a smelly canal area, hopefully I can do 3 or 4 connected images of that canal area. On one side of the canal they had chickens running about and on the other side the peoples homes, they would take these styrofoam wooden rafts to get accross to the chicken farms, the rafts look like they would take about 5 seconds to sink if someone my size climbed aboard.

I then walked down and through an areas where I met and talked to 5 little old ladies (he blog above) followed by a photo session with 5 young Thai boys, I gave them 5 or 10 baht a piece for posing, plus taugh them how to shoot the 4x5. The boys were hard to control and were jumping around a lot so am not sure if I got any sharp negs in this group shoot.

I was out of 4x5 film at this point, it was 2pm, I had been out on the street for about 6 hours, had put on sunscreen 4 times and drank more than 8 bottles of water. I headed to my room, quickly showered and changed, grabbed my Leica bag and headed out again. This time I headed to the Muay Thai gym, took photos there for 2 hours, gave everyone there photos.

I had a meal but still feel hungry, will try to get some street food to take back to the room. Its now 830am, I have to load film yet as well, feel exhausted (a good tired thou), wanted to go out to the slum early tomorow again but am not sure that will happen.