One of my dreams in the last seven years has always been to be able one day to publish a book with my best photos from Asia. I love photography, but above all I love travel photography and undeniably the centre of my travels in the last years has been this wonderfully vast and variegated continent.
At first I thought I wanted to visit all the countries in the continent before proceeding with a screening for the photos that would go on the book but at a certain point I had to admit that it might take me ages for that! I mean not only does Asia have 48 or 50 or 52 or 55 countries, depending on which wikipedia website you check (apparently there seem to be a dispute whether you can count Russia and Turkey as Asia, since they're counted in Europe as well, this is the explanation for the 48 or 50, I found no explanation about the other differences but I'm sure it's something similar)...anyway... A LOT, but they're also slightly more difficult to go to than others, for almost every country you need a visa and for some of them it's a long and costly process, not to talk about the fact that most visas are valid from the release date, not from the date in which you enter the country, therefore you must always keep an eye for expiring dates in case you visit more than one country in a prolonged period of time.
And that's why I've decided to start sorting out the photos before I got to even 50% of the continent.
I've been to 13 countries in Asia, in 7 years. To some of them I've been more than once, China, India, Nepal, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, to some of them I've been numerous times, Thailand.
Some of them I really liked, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, some of them I fell in love with, Nepal, Japan, India, in one of them I actually fell in love with my husband, Vietnam, in one of them I was mugged, China, in many of them I've been a little bit sick, Japan, China, India, in one of them I've been scarily sick, Myanmar, in all of them I've had the time of my life.
When it comes to choosing a theme for the photobook I've been oscillating between 2 main choices, people portraits (I certainly have a lots of those!) and portraits of live along the rivers.
I was born in a city that has a miserably small river (you can't really call it a river, it's called Bacchiglione, in Padova, Italy), but when I was little it obviously looked gigantic to me, even though sometimes there was no water at all in it, especially during the hot summers we used to have. I was going to school for 5 years of my life right in front of one of the most beautiful bridges on that river and that gave me the possibility to stop by and admire it at least twice a day cause we were driving on it to go to the other side of the city and the guardrail was quite low not to mention with lots of gaping holes therefore you could have a good peak from the car.
It was always full of ducks, beautiful fat ducks, sometimes with the ducklings following them, and swans and some other bird that I cannot now recall.
It was full of life.
It was right in the middle of a city that was founded in the 10th century BCE (also found it in the internet, even though we were taught in school that it had been founded a couple of centuries after that, but certainly before Rome!), in any case, an OLD city. Some of the roman buildings are still visible, the roads are the same they were using during the roman empire (I mean the same routing obviously, not the actual roads, the viability in Italy is not THAT bad!).
If you lived in the city centre like I did, the river was your companion, him following you rather than you following him, through all your chores and stops. It was there when you were going to the supermarket, there close to the gym and right in front of the school and it stayed with you for a while even when you were going away on holiday, until you were definitely leaving the region.
This is one of the reasons why I like rivers and the bustling life that grows from them and around them.
I've never been to Egypt but I reckon the only reason why I would want to go one day it would be to have a good look at the Nile and not for the pyramids.
Rivers in Asia are majestic! The are full of power and very large especially during monsoon seasons and even thought these sudden downpours can represent a bit of a nuisance for the occasional tourist, they are a constant source of fun and occasions for good photos for me.
I remember once I was in Bangkok on my own and I had a couple of hours to kill before boarding the plane to Dubai and since I had been there before probably a dozen times I didn't really want to stand in line to go visit the Royal Palace again (or any other sight).
I just decided to walk down to the river and sit there with my book.
When I reached it there was a guy standing on a boat gesturing and yelling something at me.
I was curious so I got closer and I understood that he was asking me if I wanted to have a tour on his boat. Why not? I thought, and off we went. His english wasn't good so we couldn't really agree on a route but I told him to go towards the inner canals on the western part of the Chao Praya.
I had never been there before and this was really outside of the beaten track since there ware no tourists at all but there were a lot of longtail boats used for fluvial transportation.
It was amazing!
We were supposed to navigate for only half an hour but after a while the monsoon came and we had to stop under a bridge to let it pass, therefore when I was back at the starting point it was time to take the train to the airport.
In a couple of hours I saw a huge (and I mean HUGE) komodo dragon (not the famous one you can only spot in Indonesia, the "normal" one 2 m long with a very colourful blue tongue) making its way out of the water and slowly inside a garden, numerous kids diving into the water, playing under the rain, screaming and laughing and generally having lots of fun, monks feeding fishes with breadcrumbs, other boats stopping temporarily under the brides for shelter, blacksmiths with their "bottega" right on the river using the water to smother the hot iron, families gathering on a small terrace and play cards, people watching tv, numerous shrines and really odd post boxes, disposed almost in the middle of the river in such a way that the postman coming via boat wouldn't have to go too much out of his way to deliver. It was then that I knew why I'm so fascinated by rivers. It's like you're in a different planet. Its life is powerfully evolving around it, taking in its moods and joyfully adapting to them. The City in the city. Anywhere in Asia where there's moving water it's the same world apart. And it's always fascinating.
At first I thought I wanted to visit all the countries in the continent before proceeding with a screening for the photos that would go on the book but at a certain point I had to admit that it might take me ages for that! I mean not only does Asia have 48 or 50 or 52 or 55 countries, depending on which wikipedia website you check (apparently there seem to be a dispute whether you can count Russia and Turkey as Asia, since they're counted in Europe as well, this is the explanation for the 48 or 50, I found no explanation about the other differences but I'm sure it's something similar)...anyway... A LOT, but they're also slightly more difficult to go to than others, for almost every country you need a visa and for some of them it's a long and costly process, not to talk about the fact that most visas are valid from the release date, not from the date in which you enter the country, therefore you must always keep an eye for expiring dates in case you visit more than one country in a prolonged period of time.
And that's why I've decided to start sorting out the photos before I got to even 50% of the continent.
I've been to 13 countries in Asia, in 7 years. To some of them I've been more than once, China, India, Nepal, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, to some of them I've been numerous times, Thailand.
Some of them I really liked, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, some of them I fell in love with, Nepal, Japan, India, in one of them I actually fell in love with my husband, Vietnam, in one of them I was mugged, China, in many of them I've been a little bit sick, Japan, China, India, in one of them I've been scarily sick, Myanmar, in all of them I've had the time of my life.
When it comes to choosing a theme for the photobook I've been oscillating between 2 main choices, people portraits (I certainly have a lots of those!) and portraits of live along the rivers.
I was born in a city that has a miserably small river (you can't really call it a river, it's called Bacchiglione, in Padova, Italy), but when I was little it obviously looked gigantic to me, even though sometimes there was no water at all in it, especially during the hot summers we used to have. I was going to school for 5 years of my life right in front of one of the most beautiful bridges on that river and that gave me the possibility to stop by and admire it at least twice a day cause we were driving on it to go to the other side of the city and the guardrail was quite low not to mention with lots of gaping holes therefore you could have a good peak from the car.
It was always full of ducks, beautiful fat ducks, sometimes with the ducklings following them, and swans and some other bird that I cannot now recall.
It was full of life.
It was right in the middle of a city that was founded in the 10th century BCE (also found it in the internet, even though we were taught in school that it had been founded a couple of centuries after that, but certainly before Rome!), in any case, an OLD city. Some of the roman buildings are still visible, the roads are the same they were using during the roman empire (I mean the same routing obviously, not the actual roads, the viability in Italy is not THAT bad!).
If you lived in the city centre like I did, the river was your companion, him following you rather than you following him, through all your chores and stops. It was there when you were going to the supermarket, there close to the gym and right in front of the school and it stayed with you for a while even when you were going away on holiday, until you were definitely leaving the region.
This is one of the reasons why I like rivers and the bustling life that grows from them and around them.
I've never been to Egypt but I reckon the only reason why I would want to go one day it would be to have a good look at the Nile and not for the pyramids.
Rivers in Asia are majestic! The are full of power and very large especially during monsoon seasons and even thought these sudden downpours can represent a bit of a nuisance for the occasional tourist, they are a constant source of fun and occasions for good photos for me.
I remember once I was in Bangkok on my own and I had a couple of hours to kill before boarding the plane to Dubai and since I had been there before probably a dozen times I didn't really want to stand in line to go visit the Royal Palace again (or any other sight).
I just decided to walk down to the river and sit there with my book.
When I reached it there was a guy standing on a boat gesturing and yelling something at me.
I was curious so I got closer and I understood that he was asking me if I wanted to have a tour on his boat. Why not? I thought, and off we went. His english wasn't good so we couldn't really agree on a route but I told him to go towards the inner canals on the western part of the Chao Praya.
I had never been there before and this was really outside of the beaten track since there ware no tourists at all but there were a lot of longtail boats used for fluvial transportation.
It was amazing!
We were supposed to navigate for only half an hour but after a while the monsoon came and we had to stop under a bridge to let it pass, therefore when I was back at the starting point it was time to take the train to the airport.
In a couple of hours I saw a huge (and I mean HUGE) komodo dragon (not the famous one you can only spot in Indonesia, the "normal" one 2 m long with a very colourful blue tongue) making its way out of the water and slowly inside a garden, numerous kids diving into the water, playing under the rain, screaming and laughing and generally having lots of fun, monks feeding fishes with breadcrumbs, other boats stopping temporarily under the brides for shelter, blacksmiths with their "bottega" right on the river using the water to smother the hot iron, families gathering on a small terrace and play cards, people watching tv, numerous shrines and really odd post boxes, disposed almost in the middle of the river in such a way that the postman coming via boat wouldn't have to go too much out of his way to deliver. It was then that I knew why I'm so fascinated by rivers. It's like you're in a different planet. Its life is powerfully evolving around it, taking in its moods and joyfully adapting to them. The City in the city. Anywhere in Asia where there's moving water it's the same world apart. And it's always fascinating.
Interesting blog, it reminds me of Wat Arun in Bangkok, actually it is called Temple of Dawn as the first light of the morning reflects off the surface of the temple on the Chao Phraya river creates a wonderful cinematic vision.
ReplyDeleteI tried to write a blog about it, hope you also like it in https://stenote.blogspot.com/2020/07/bangkok-at-wat-arun.html.