Better Day

Slept in and then had an afternoon nap getting up at 4pm before going out to make portraits. The long sleep helped my stomach problem, felt a lot better later on in the day. I wandered down to the area outside my hotel where goods are transported between Thailand and Laos across the Mekong river.
The goods include coke, sprite and other groceries, building materials, today I even saw a small refrigerator. All this stuff arrives via truck or motorcycle which is then loaded onto shallow wooden (dangerous looking) long tail style fishing boats and taken to the other side of the river where it is sold in Laos.

I walked down to this port transfer area and did portraits of 5 or 6 different men who were loading or working around the port area. They were all cooperative and I tried to photograph them as quickly as possible so as not to interfere with their work to much. I did on average 4 photos per subject. I was a bit nervous doing these portraits again (had not shot any since December) but things soon fell into place and I regained my comfort zone. The language skill stuff came in quite handy as always. There are many farang (westerner) tourists around the port area who sneak a picture or two (hmm 4 hippy style backpacker farang just walked by to the 7/11 as I was typing this) but for a farang man to speak and joke in passable Thai is surprising to the subject and they tend to open up more easily to the idea of being photographed. I am not sure how photographers in foreign lands can make such wonderful portraits without speaking the language of the subject but I find it of great benefit to speak Thai when photographing Thai people. I worry about the the coming days when I am in Laos and cannot speak Laotian, I need to try to pick up some words as best I can to help the photographic process along.

It was a short day of photography today but I think a good day a day to work out the kinks before I move into more serious portraiture tomorrow. My plan tomorrow is to do a morning light series of photographs and then in the late afternoon light do a second series. I have 15 4x5 holders with me so can do 30 pictures in each session. Hopefully I can photograph upwards of 10 people tomorrow.