Telephoto lens and candid portraits

Among all the photography trips I made, this Myanmar trip is by far the lightest; much due to I was invited by Steve McCurry to join this workshop as his assistant, also because I intended to focus on just the portraits.  I have with me just a small Domke F6 bag, but I do pack one Canon 1Ds III (my primary camera), one Canon 5DII (back up and filming), 3 Canon L lenses: EF 24-105/4L USM, EF Macro 100/2.8L USM and EF 70-300/4.5-5.6L IS USM, and a RØDE X/Y Stereo Video Mic for use with 5DII.  I also packed some M&Ms, mints in the F6, still compact, but a little heavy.  I also have a Sony NEX-5 with me, with an accessory stereo microphone attached, an E 16/2.8 and an E 18-55 – with most of the video taken with NEX-5, more on this later.

The Canon EF 70-300L is a new lens, and a mighty one.  Certainly this Myanmar blog is not intended for gear talk or review, I have to say that a zoom of this range is a perfect lens for portrait such as this boy with the binocular, that the long reach allows me to be a good distant away from the subject and a nice compression to bring the little boy who was playing with his binocular. The high quality glass resulted extremely sharp image, which made possible also due to the highly effective image stabilizer. Although most of my images came from the basic 24-105/4L, this one among few others could not have been made without the long reach of 70-300L.

From curve to straight

The famous American comedienne Phyllis Diller once said, “A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.”

Here in this little village in Mandalay, with a camera on hand, and a smile, I am not a stranger.

Door

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us. ….. Helen Keller

Children, is the door.

Welcome to Mandalay

There are people travels for photography, and they are people do photography in order to travel. And if you were photographer, self-claimed one like me, then you are both.

I have just discovered that I spent almost 2 months to cover this “Faces of Myanmar” blog – started March 12 till this date: May 18 to cover basically one late afternoon and one day of the Steve McCurry Myanmar Workshop, in Yangon.  And just about to start to post images made at the new destination, Mandalay. Not that I took so many images that I cannot manage, often, it is because to digest each image and to put myself back to the moment of each image made, is a process I simply don’t want to do in a hurry.

Travel with purpose of making photographs also put one’s mind in an intensified mode, more focus on the photography itself, spend more time, and shoot a lot more. Certainly, traveling with folks of different countries, each with varies talents and walk of lives, is also inspiring. 

On February 18, the earliest flight from Yangon to Mandalay, and ½ way from Mandalay airport to the city, we stopped by a small village, started the photography journey in Mandalay. 

Then and now

Perhaps few would argue that Dr. Louis Cha, or better known by its pen name – Jin Yong is the most popular fiction writer in Chinese language, and due to such immense popularity, certainly one of the most popular writer in exist today. I am his fan and I read his books, almost all of them, multiple of times.

Once remarked in one of this book, Jin Yong said that the story he created, although fictional, is largely built around the time frame of true history, and apart from that, he continued, the focus is always on people.  Emotions such as love, hate, joy, sorrow, anxiety, fear, torment…… of or between human has little change, if at all, for as long as human exists. A person touched or moved by an ancient poem today is indifferent from those thousands of years ago.

Here I am with my camera at the Yangon harbor, looking at the labors at work, they use their strength or even way of moving objects, is no difference from ancient people. Not because there is no progress in our world, or may be all the progress in history are all-artificial?  At the end, we are all the same people of same basics.  Or may be just like Albert Camus said, “Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.”

The workers

A shot of the workers rest at the Yangon harbor, reminds me of what Karl Marx once said: “History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles.  It is men, real, living, who do all this.”

Moon and the stars

Kids all over the world may live differently, but most of them share one thing in common – optimistic.

It is the age that having a CEO father and a construction worker father matters nothing, will run to a house maid mother than Angelina Jolie without hesitation, and living on a non-air-condition, diminutive room on a fishing boat or a palace matters nothing.

Les Brown said it well, “Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you’ll land among the stars.”  - may considered a motivation talk to adults, taken as what it is supposed to be by kids.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

First book is almost like first love, and to me, “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” – written by Richard Bach, is such love.  And it is also the first book I read it again as soon as I finished the first. And just like what inspired Richard Bach to write the book, every time I see or heard the seagull, Jonathan Livingston’s voice echoed in my mind.

Here in the late afternoon, by the harbor of Yangon, seagulls singing and flying.  The little monk stood by the boat, and I remembered, says Jonathan Livingston, “Perfect speed isn’t moving fast at all; perfect speed is being there.”

Naps

Wikipedia has much to say about “nap” but I found Carrie P. Snow says it, “No day is so bad it can’t be fixed with a nap.” And in Myanmar, or for that matter, in Thailand, one would often see people taking nap between works, not just happened in afternoon, it could also happen it the morning. So perhaps a nap is not a nap? 

Happiness

Children find everything in nothing; men find nothing in everything. – Giacomo Leopardi.

Here I am at the Sule Pagoda, with a camera looking for subject and eventually land on this happy face. To many people outside Myanmar, it is a sad place, perhaps for many locals who have seen the country from hopeful to hopeless.  Not for the kids, they always find way to be happy, genuine happiness.