temple monk
In 2003 I journeyed off to Thailand after taking a leave from work.
This was anonther in a series of departures for me – starting with leaving college, followed by moving to San Francisco, leaving my job at Intuit, and this time, leaving my job at Wells Fargo – each time without a job lined up. And this would not be the last.
I really enjoy the freedom of having time off and being able to take stock of my life and see a little of the world. Taking time between jobs (or when moving, leaving school,.) has been a great way to take that time and see things that have really changed my perspective on the world.
In Thailand I started in Bangkok, traveled North to the hills, and finally made my way South to the beaches. I was taken with the country and the people (as I find most people are) and have recommeded Thailand as a destination to just about anyone who will listen.
This photo was taken in Chiang Mai, in the Northern hills of Thailand. There are many temples in Chiang Mai, this image is from Wat Chedi Luang – known more for its elephant-adorned facade. This statue was in a small building on the edge of the property. There were several of these monk statues, each fitted out with gold leaf. I loved the way the gold leaf flaked off of the statues and I loved the light coming in through the openings in the building – large windows and doors which allowed light and a good breeze to come in.
Being 2003, I was still shooting film at this point. I had recently converted from my Contax system so this image was taken with my Nikon N80 camera and a standard zoom lens (24-85 AF-S ED G 3.5-4.5). I still own this lens and while its small size and shooting range are convenient, the variable 3.5-4.5 minimum aperture is annoying.
I shot this using Kodak Tri-x black & white film, by far my favorite black & white film. It is a little on the slow side but I just love the quality of the images it produces. Occasionally I would play around with other film, Fuji, other flavors of Kodak (tmax, which I’m not a fan of), but my usual go-to film was Kodak Tri-x or it’s higher-sensitivity cousin Plus-X.
On trips like these I would carry an average of at least 1 roll of film per day (so I had about 40 rolls for this trip) and on any day walking around I’d be carrying 4-6 rolls with me as well as a film-puller, which I could use to switch film before the roll was used up. This was handy when moving from daylight to indoors or lower-light situations, but it was more critical for switching between black & white and color. It’s amazing to think of where we’ve come with digital.
I really like the way this image came out – it was fairly dark in the room, though not as dark as this image would have you believe. I shot the image a little dark, so as to keep details in the gold leaf (and to avoid a slow shutter speed and the accompanying camera shake). After scanning in the image I darkened it a bit more to darken out the background but keeping in enough elements to keep the sense of place.
Later on this trip I ventured over to Japan, spending a few days around Kyoto. There too I visited many temples, which were quite different from Chiang Mai but still maintained much of the same tranquility.
In 2007 I made it back to Thailand, and I look forward to my return.
