Travel Diary: Bangkok - Part 1

In 2007, I boarded a plane to Thailand, about to take my first plunge into living overseas. I was the walking, talking version of a clueless 20-something in search of purpose. After 34 hours in airports and wildly uncomfortable plane seats, I landed in Bangkok around midnight. The city hit me like a ton of bricks— the sounds, the smells, the chaos. Tuk-tuks zipping by, street food at every turn, and the heat. It was sensory overload in the best possible way. It was like a shot of adrenaline, and I felt alive in a way I had never experienced. Over the coming months, I went through every emotion — excitement, confusion, loneliness, wanderlust, the lot. Though after a month, I was convinced I’d never leave despite the absolute mine field of emotions I was going through. I felt like I was on the right path even though I had no idea what that path actually was.

From Bangkok, I made the trek to Phuket where I set up my base. I had picked up a little point-and-shoot camera and starting taking photos of my neighbourhood and everything else, really. After posting some images on the interwebs, I started receiving messages like, “Wow, this is beautiful!” and “Are you a photographer now?” I hadn’t even considered it, but hey, what the hell, why not try and make it happen? Hindsight is 20/20 and looking back, I kind of wonder if my friends were just blowing smoke up my ass… but whatever, it lit a fire, and I started chasing something that ended up being that path I hadn’t had a name for. I reached out to every photographer I could find, maybe someone would take me seriously off my stellar point and shoot portfolio…… Cue crickets. Finally after a couples months or so of persistence, read badgering and repeated emails, I finally got a response and a contact at a local paper. I reached out to The Phuket Gazette and miraculously, they gave me an assignment. I panicked, flew back to Bangkok, and bought a Canon 300D. Now I was a pro, right? Yeah, I had no idea what I was doing, but I dove in headfirst. Naïve much? Totally. But here we are.

As I started shooting events, people started to ask if I could photograph interiors and exteriors. Without a clue about what that entailed, I said yes. So, off to the internet I went. I started reading everything I could and fumbled my way through my first couple of jobs. Spoiler: Photoshop doesn’t make up for inexperience, but somehow I stumbled across the line with work just good enough to where clients were happy. I was getting paid to make pictures despite my serious lack in experience. Having to execute on demand certainly made it necessary to try and learn as fast as I could.  After all, that adage of “don’t write a check your ass can’t cash” was something ingrained in my head from an early age. All that being said, talk about watching a clown show. I spent countless hours trying to reverse engineer every photo I saw, and experienced what seemed like an infinite number of failures trying to replicate them. Basically a trial by fire.

A year and a half later, I thought I had a decent understanding of what I was doing. My time in Phuket was coming to an end and I was moving back to the States. So much for never leaving. I was deadset confident I’d slide right into a full-time photography gig upon touchdown back in Atlanta, and I’m sure you can see what’s coming next. Big reality check— way more competition, more developed market, and I was nowhere near the calibre photographer that what it would take to make it. I ended up taking a job in hospitality to pay the bills and started reaching out to commercial photographers. I obviously needed to level up. For months, I heard back from a grand total of no one despite casting an absurdly wide net. When I was starting to doubt why I moved back and maybe this whole thing was a flash in the pan that could only happen when I was back in Thailand, I got a call back for gig as a second assistant. The second assistant doesn’t touch cameras, have any creative input, or really anything to do with photography. Essentially, I was the guy who carried gear, built sets, did all the grunt work. Ahh.. these were the dues everyone kept talking about that I thought I had dodged. No such luck, but I was going to be damned if I didn’t take this whole thing seriously. Best believe I studied lighting, styling, camera settings…every little detail and realised I knew so very little about my chosen path.

Fast forward 16 years, and I’m a full time photographer. My craft has evolved, and I’ve been fortunate to make a living off it. The journey’s been a wild one - often times uncertain, sometimes incredible, but this is my thing. I don’t know how to live my life wth out it. The act of photography turned into a kind of therapy for me when things were getting a bit hectic. That time with the camera became time where I could be present. The process quickly superseded the end results, so the photos ended up being a reflection of that process and somehow I got better.

So… Why am I rambling about all of this? I hadn’t been back to Thailand since I left 17 years ago. When I moved back to Asia, this time Vietnam, when I had the chance to travel, I wanted to go somewhere new. Over a decade slipped by without ever really considering going back. But recently, I had the chance to swing through Bangkok again before the Sri Lanka workshop. My curiosity got the better of me. I wondered how the city had changed in nearly two decades? How had I changed? Maybe I’m still the kid with a camera, wandering and trying to figure it out, but I’ve got a few more years under my belt now so maybe I’m just an older kid still trying to figure it out.

Gone are the days of Khao San Road. No need to relive those days. I wanted to see what’s new - cocktail bars, dives, interesting places to shoot, and all the food. I still have old friends living in Bangkok, so I reached out and ended up exploring areas of the city I didn’t realise even existed. Old places and new eyes right?. Felt like a completely different city than what I remember. Whether that’s a result of it changing, me changing, likely a combination of both, but damn what a cool city and I can’t wait to get back. 

For my photographers, I kept it light and fast with the Fuji X100V and the two lens adapters, covering 28-50mm. Everything is edited in Capture One though wiith Fuji’s colour science, I didn’t have to do much. It kind of made me want to shoot only jpgs, but not quite ready for that whole rabbit hole. Anyways, enough waxing on. Here’s part one and stay tuned for part two next week. 

Travel Diary: Basel, Switzerland

Home of Art Basel, Basel sits around an hour by train from Zurich, so I figured it would be a nice little jaunt to head over before meeting family back in Zurich in a few days. Not knowing a whole lot about Basel except for the association with Art Basel, the only thing I really expected is maybe seeing some cool art, so off I went and wandered the city for a few days. Decidedly laid back and chill, the vibe of the city mimicked the flow of the Rhine river through the city. Complete with essentially a party every afternoon on the river with scenes reminiscent of beach hangout days I’ve seen in the tropics, folks were sipping drinks, having a swim, playing tunes…living the good life. Not too shabby. Not too shabby at all.

I had heard of a graffiti scene in Basel so after a quick google search, I walked across the city in search of a long stretch of wall near the train station. Tunes in the ears (Digable Planets, Tribe Called Quest, etc) and a bounce in my step, I caught myself dancing down the streets. I only realised I was doing this after catching smiles and laughs from passersby. It’s funny how contagious good energy is. Mundane strolls turn into moments of joy. I’m here for it. Graffiti pieces were scattered over the city, from commissioned to maybe not so commissioned. I’m a sucker for trains, so seeing the stretch of painted walls that stretched for kilometers between Zurich and Basel immediately conjured memories of that first time I saw Wild Style as a kid and fell in love with writing my name all over the place. I haven’t done that in a long time other than scrawling in the margins of my countless notebooks, but I’ll never not pause and check out handstyles, bombs, throw ups and full pieces on walls. Similarly, these days, I’ve grown a liking to finding little pools of light and watching what happens. Everything kind of slows down and the only thing that matters is what’s right in front of me. It’s not therapy per se, but damn is it a good exercise in being present. Chase the light and find out what happens.

For my fellow photographers, everything was shot on the Fuji x100v. I picked up the telephoto adapter back in Osaka, so I had the option between the default 35mm and throwing the little adapter and getting a 50mm frame. Super small, I could still travel light and fast.

Travel Diary: Zurich, Switzerland

I booked a flight to Zurich to meet up with family and did absolutely zero research on really anything. I pretty much outlined the last meet up with the family and this time they had taken care of most of the planning, so I figured I’d let the places just kind reveal themselves to me. My first time to Switzerland, I had only the stereotypes and I was sure there was more to it than visions of cowbells, Alpine chalets and expensive watches. That said, I didn’t expect to find some grittiness in the cities. I should have known there will always be areas where the misfits, the strange, and fringes go. Leave it to me to stumble into these areas without realising it. I basically chose my hotel based on its decent proximity to the train station and it ended up right on the edge of the red light district. Needless to say, it’s a bit of a departure from the quaintness of the old part of the city. Aimlessly wandering, I popped into Old Love Tattoo shop to check it out and ended up hanging out with a few of those guys on the street just watching the endless stream of amusement on Langstrasse. Side note, go check out Bug Nasty aka Marlon Muralles’ work. He’s actually in LA right now for you folks back in the States. Go tell him I said whats up. Anyways, even though it was filled with all kinds of sketchiness, I never felt unsafe. The American in me experienced a bit of cognitive dissonance in that places like this in the States necessitate your head being on a swivel for sketchballs and people trying to jack you. This didn’t feel like that. It’s this juxtaposition that I love seeing anywhere I travel to…The swirling mixture of modernity and tradition, clean and grit, new and old. It’s where all the interesting stuff lives.

For the photographers, I shot all of these on my trusty Fuji X100V. I took along the tele conversion lens to give me a 50mm equivalent, so I guess I cheated the system a bit on the whole fixed lens camera game. This little set up is so light and easy to run and gun with it makes me wonder how I ever traveled with the bigger, heavier set up. Yeah, the files may be better on the other camera and I may have been able to shoot some things that the smaller setup’s limitations prevented, but, you know, who cares. I’m not trying to be a pack mule and lug around a ton of gear and end up looking like Quasimoto hunched over shuffling around. Maybe I’m lazy….maybe I have it figured out. Maybe neither, but here we are, and I’m not mad at the images, so I’m going to keep it going this way. After all, if “F8 and be there” is good enough for Arthur Fellig aka Weegee (if your’e not familiar, it’s time you get acquainted) then its good enough for me.

The Week in Photos: Volume 5

We’ve wrapped up a few commercial projects and had a few days before preproduction started on a couple of others, so I wanted to go out and shoot some images for myself a few days this week. Technically some of these are from the week before, so this is the week(ish) in photos. I’ll get better about the scheduling of this whole thing, but it’s been hectic lately so this will have to do until I get it together on the schedule.

Looking at what I’ve shot recently, I’ve noticed how I’ve gradually been shooting more and more at night. I think this probably has to do with a smaller camera that I can take with me on social outings and snap some images along the way, but also I think I’ve just become more and more intrigued with how pools of light and their contrasting shadow makes for such dramatic moody images. If you’ve been to Saigon, you’ll know how frenetic it is and how there’s never any shortage of energy when you’re walking around the city. Similarly, its easy to have very busy compositions and I’m a minimalist at heart. Using shadows to hide distractions and isolate my subjects is always going to be my first approach. So here’s the last week and a half in photos.

Travel Diary: Osaka Part 1

On a whim, I found a cheap ticket to Osaka for a sneaky weekend and hopped on the redeye from Saigon and woke up at 8:30 am in Osaka. Gotta love time travel. I’m absolutely smitten with Japan and the opportunity to spend a few days in Osaka was too good to resist. With the yen at a 35 year low, there’s no better time to take advantage. With no real agenda aside from going to Universal Studios for some rollercoasters and Mario goodness (stay tuned for those images) I just wandered, rode trains, ate all the food, and took pictures of every nook and cranny of this incredible city. I only took my Fuji x100v and the ease of shooting definitely reflected in the mountain of images I had to sift through when I got home. Maybe I need to temper that itchy trigger finger so I can limit these posts to just one part? Maybe not. This will be part one of three so stay tuned for more later in the week!

The Week in Photos: Vol.3 - Rainy Season's Arrival

It looks like rainy season has decided to make an entrance. Cue thunderstorms, unexpected downpours, and slight inconveniences in travel - read ridiculous traffic. While most lament the rain, photographically I’m loving it. The light right after a storm, drama in the skies, reflections… its a new season and it’s nice to have something different to photograph. While I don’t have the seasonal changes like I did in my upbringing, I love having the demarkation of time through different weather. I’ll take what I can get. No waxing on poetically this week, just the images of the week. Complete with the obligatory reflection shots, and they ain’t stopping any time soon…so get used to it until the rains cease in around 6 months. There are some randoms from the day to day sprinkled in as well for good measure.

Most of these were taken on the Fuji x100v, but I snuck in a couple from my Sony kit too. Can you tell which ones they are? Put your guesses in the comments! Also, everything edited in Capture One or is straight out of the camera with most of the Fuji shots.

The Week in Photos: Vol. 2

Busy with commercial work this week, I’ve not had too much time to come up for air. That said, in the downtimes, I’ve made an effort to find some time for myself at least once a day to disengage and walk around so I can keep a clear headspace. Even if I’m not managing to make it far, I’m trying to see things I’ve seen countless times with new eyes. Shoot places multiple times in different light, different parts of the day, different angles… dig a little deeper and slow down a little more to really look at things rather than merely strolling by. Finding beauty in the mundane.

The older I get, the more I feel like boredom is more and more my own fault. Focusing on the details around me and paying more attention by slowing down, I find beauty and interest in what I’ve glossed over a million times. When I first moved overseas, like many, I went through an existential crisis and had to make sense of this new reality I had chosen for myself. I wasn’t really all that happy and I couldn’t figure out what the deal was… I was living on a tropical island, I was chasing my passion of becoming a photographer, life was relatively good… on paper. What was I to be unhappy about?? But, I was often bored, I wasn’t inspired, motivation was fleeting. Something was missing. I was always thinking about what was next and it was kind of a grass is always greener type situation. Nothing was good enough. One afternoon I was complaining to a friend of mine and he casually said, “you alone are responsible for your own happiness” Cue the record skipping as I tried to make sense of this short and to the point sentiment. I’m not sure if he was saying it off the cuff, or was repeating his own personal opinion, but it’s stuck with me after all these years. That phrase can be interpreted in myriad ways, and I think about this mindset in varying ways when it comes to the different areas of my life. But as it pertains to the day to day, I often look back on this encounter and realise there are rarely times that boredom is inevitable, but rather it’s my perspective that isn’t right. Maybe I’ve needed to step back, or forward, or maybe sideways, to look at things in new light (pun intended). Maybe I needed to choose to see the beauty and appreciate my immediate surroundings. To take note of the present, appreciate the moment in time, notice my breath, feel the wind move, listen to the bugs… and more often than not, for me at least, take pictures of the little things that make up my life.

I realise I’ve written about this sentiment in the past, but I think its important to reflect back. On work, on life, on the little and the big things. In the past, while I’ve more or less felt this way in general, the execution or following through with it was often forced rather than a part of an every day routine. I’d have to remind myself to do these things and it was often after weeks of grinding out job after job and it was the eject cord to keep myself from burning out. I’d get my fix and then right back into it…and the cycle repeated…work work work, realise things were going pear shaped, stop and smell the roses, love life, and then right back into the fire… It took me far too long to understand that it wasn’t a “thing to do” to keep from burning out, but rather a way of looking at the world in general that maintains balance. Instead of always looking forward to the next big thing, finding these moments of beauty every day is tantamount to having smooth seas rather than trying to right the ship in the midst of a shit storm.

Okay, enough of all that. These were the moments, downtimes, and photographic evidence that have nothing to do with my work. Just happy snaps from the day to day.

The Week in Photos: Vol. 1

Now that I’ve got a camera on me all the time, I’m faced with the fact that I have all these images I’ve taken mostly just for the sheer enjoyment of walking around and shooting. I mentioned before how the final image is probably secondary at this point to the process and being present when I’m shooting. I guess it’s a sort of mindfulness… mine is just with a camera instead of a mantra or a pair of yoga pants. That being said, I want to be able to archive these too, but they’re not from some epic trip or incredible assignment. It’s just my life. I suppose I could put these on a hard drive and just come back to them, but I’ve got this platform, so why not share? So here’s the birth of “The Week in Photos.” This is Volume 1.