Taking a Look back: Red Shirt Protest in Bangkok 2009 - 2010 (Part 1)

The articles are based on my own personal experience photographing the Red shirt protest, conflict and its aftermath in Bangkok between the year 2009 - 2010. The first part presented here covers the event in April of 2009, Bangkok, Thailand.

My first experience covering political event in my hometown of Bangkok involved a protest by the Red shirt when they moved in to the city. It was in the middle of April in 2009, just before the Songkran festival. At that moment I already had an idea who they were and what their ideology were supposed to be; namely they support Thaksin Shinawatra as the rightful leader of the country, and they were against the Democrat government. I was going in to the protest with an open mind to listen to what the Red shirt had to say, what did they stand for, what they believed in and why they were against the government. I went in expecting an exercise in democratic process with the people speaking out against the wrongdoing of the government, social injustice or a concrete demand for change.

The Red shirt protest gathered at Victory Monument

The message I got could be summed up in a few very simple points.
"We (the Red shirt) are right."
"They (the government) are wrong."
"We are a peaceful protest."
"We will win."

Thaksin Shinawatra; their rightful leader & idol.

"Thaksin...Come back!"; the Red shirt's top priority

After spending sometime among the mob and listening to their rhetoric, it was very clear to me that what I thought the Red shirt were and essentially what everybody had been saying about them was true. It was all about their leader Thaksin Shinawatra. There never was any real substance to their accusation of the government being dictatorial or undemocratic. Their issue with the government was that it was not the government they wanted.

That was early in the afternoon.

Later in the afternoon was a different story. 

As I moved away from the Victory Monument, the Red shirt also started to move as well. We happened to be going in the same general direction, towards the historic part of Bangkok. The mob as I saw them at that moment was a whole different animal from the one just a few hours earlier. There are only a few photographs that I can show here because the mob was starting to get hostile...at least towards a photographer like me. As they were marching to their destination, I started to notice weapons being carried by many members of the mob. Many of the weapons were improvised like clubs and shields made from whatever stuffs they could get their hands on. Another piece in their arsenal was a curious, strangely-colored liquid in plastic bottle, Molotov cocktail??? I could not take photographs of the mob carrying their weapons because if they saw me taking a photograph, other members would came up to me demanding that I stopped and deleted any photos I had. That was the first time the Red shirt mob stopped me from photographing, but it wouldn't be the last. I remembered vividly being scared for my life.  

The mob manning the road-block and re-directing traffic

Foreign press covering the event

"Peaceful Protester"

In the evening nothing eventful took place. But the real violence started the following morning. As far as I'm concerned, this is how the Red shirt protest will operate from then on; organize a demonstration, publicly announce that they are peaceful and finally commit random act of violence and set something on fire before they leave.

Bantus Thailand, Street Roda

On November 23, 2012, members of the local Capoeira club performed street Roda at Asiatique the Riverfront.

Capoeira is a Brazilian art form combining martial art, dance, music.

As a former member (back in college) I was invited to join in the action :)

Full report on Assignment: Wedding in Hua Hin

An alternate title of this report would be 'how I got my photography butt kicked by harsh afternoon sun', because that was exactly what happened.

Here's a little more details of the day. The wedding involved over 80 couples, most of them from China. The ceremony was done in traditional Thai fashion. The event took place at a hotel in Hua Hin right next to the beach. I arrived at around 12 noon to meet the clients who were already dressed up in Thai customs. They told me that we had until 3 in the afternoon until the ceremony started. So they had a quick lunch, and they were ready to start taking some photos. So I got just minutes to scout the location, find some good spots and develop some ideas for the photographs. And at the same time, somehow deal with the afternoon sun.

The result was ugly. I did get by, barely. But that was not the standard I set for myself. Complications with the camera's light metering and flash unit control made the whole experience quite a bit of a struggle for me. Most importantly what happened really pointed out to me how much more I got to learn to be where I want to be, how to evaluate lights, control flash output and how to put everything together to get the image I want.

That is definitely one area in need to improve to be a better photographer

At around 3 in the afternoon, all the couples (all 80+ of them) had a quick photo together before moving indoors for the ceremony, all the while being accompanied by a parade of dancers and bands leading the way. Once inside, the mayor (I think) of the city made a opening statement before proceeding to the ceremony itself. An hour or so later, all the coupled were wedded.

And that was it actually.

Pre-assignment: Wedding in Hua Hin

Tomorrow morning, I will be taking a little road trip from Bangkok to Hua Hin to photograph a couple in their wedding ceremony. This is not an ordinary wedding. There will be 25 couples taking part in the wedding at the beach side hotel in a traditional Thai ceremony.

The lucky couple are from China. I met them for the first time yesterday. It was very important for me to meet them before the wedding as I want to a chance to get to know them a little before the wedding day itself. I met them in the city, took them a little shopping before I drove them to the hotel out of town (they were kind enough to buy me dinner, first time they tried Thai food!!). This won't be their 'real' wedding, that will happen later next year. They are simply taking part in the ceremony together.

The wedding will take place at noon and they requested that I stay until the evening, taking their photographs at the beach. The beach actually faces east so we won't see the sun setting into the ocean. So my assignment here is two-fold. First, shoot the Thai traditional wedding, and second, photo shoot at the beach in the evening.

And after dinner, I get to drive all the way back to Bangkok at night. Tomorrow is gonna be a long day...

Amphawa Floating Market & Lightroom 4

Amphawa Floating Market, located in the province of Samut Songkharn, west of Bangkok. It is a famous tourist destination during weekend for city dwellers to get out of Bangkok for a day. I went there and took the photographs on the 1st of October, 2011. Until now, I have kept the whole photo sets in archive and here is why.

One of the shot I wanted to take was from a bridge over the river going through floating market itself. The time was late in the afternoon ans I was staring directly at the sun to take the photo. What I did was to take 3 bracketed exposures and merge them in HDR program. I was shooting hand-held at 8 fps, but the results weren't quite good enough. All the shots were't aligned perfectly. So the HDR plan was a no-go. Here's one of the shot of the bracketed exposure with no exposure compensation.

The details in the sky and the market in the shades were lost and it didn't capture the feel of the time and place as I remembered it. The sun was blazing hot and the light would hit the corrugated metal roofs and reflected off them making the already quite harsh weather even more so. And the market along the river, while mostly in shades, was never dark. I could see all the people and all the bustling activities you would expect from a weekend market. The photograph shown here wasn't what I saw back then.

Enter Adobe Lightroom 4...

Since I started shooting RAW, I have only use the Canon Raw editing software. But recently I got to try Lightroom for my assignment (which you can read here and here), and I was AMAZED at the things I can do with my RAW files. Long story short, came across this file so I gave it a try, see what I can come up with. And here is the result.

Now I am one happy photographer!

It is an eye-opener what can be done with post-processing. The photo now looks a lot closer to what I remembered seeing on the bridge, the sun-baked rooftops and the busy shoppers hiding under the shade, away from the sun. Everything just looks more alive now, like a real market supposes to be.

When I take photographs I want to capture the scene as I see it. That means I do very little post-processing (tiny adjustment on exposure or contrast), or in this case a lot more post-processing. The point here is to overcome some technical limitation of my camera where the sensor cannot 'see' all the details or the dynamic range that my own eyes can see. In such a case, post-processing can help me achieve the final photograph that I want...the scene as I can see it with my own eyes.

Peace,
Thana

Full report on Assignment: Rooftop Marriage Proposal

Here's a first full report on my assignment. This is where I will be sharing and discussing some of the details of what happened on my assignment. Some of it might sounds generic, some a little technical...but I just want to share what I have learned from this experience and hopefully you might find some of this useful or entertaining. So, here we go.

Post-Assignment: Rooftop Marriage Proposal

This is a quick update on the assignment. My client made an elaborate plan to surprise his girlfriend on her birthday by proposing to her on a rooftop of a 61-floor hotel. And it was a great success. She accepted the proposal, all the while trying to control her tears.

Congratulations to both of them. I felt truly honored to be a part of this very special moment in their lives.

Full report on the assignment coming soon.