Project Equator » Photography http://www.projectequator.com A Family Gap Year Tue, 10 Nov 2015 17:03:49 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.26 ေက်းဇူးတန္ပါတယ Myanmar! http://www.projectequator.com/%e1%80%b1%e1%80%80%e1%80%ba%e1%80%b8%e1%80%87%e1%80%b0%e1%80%b8%e1%80%90%e1%80%94%e1%80%b9%e1%80%95%e1%80%ab%e1%80%90%e1%80%9a-myanmar/ http://www.projectequator.com/%e1%80%b1%e1%80%80%e1%80%ba%e1%80%b8%e1%80%87%e1%80%b0%e1%80%b8%e1%80%90%e1%80%94%e1%80%b9%e1%80%95%e1%80%ab%e1%80%90%e1%80%9a-myanmar/#comments Sun, 23 Mar 2014 13:37:49 +0000 http://www.projectequator.com/?p=3673 After failing to get VISAs in Hanoi for Myanmar, we almost canceled the Myanmar leg of our trip. But Etienne urged us to go and said “you gotta go now! It is changing fast.”  Thank you Etienne for the push!!

 

With only a week in Myanmar, we leave feeling it is a MUST to come back!!!  So much yet to see and explore. A week is a mere appetizer! As we exit Myanmar, headed back to Thailand, we assemble these observations:

 

1) AMAZING!!! our Hotel in Bagan was called “Amazing Bagan Hotel” which we thought was quite funny. But we realize that “amazing” is the right word to describe most everything in Bagan. The entire week we felt as if we were floating around a magical, make-believe land that doesn’t have anything to do with real life.  The whole place is quite surreal from the temples to the sunsets and sunrises, to the people who are so gracious.  It is AMAZING!

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2) WHEN PEOPLE TELL YOU GO TO VISIT SOMETHING NOW, THEY ARE RIGHT! How right was Etienne to urge us to go now.  We could see that things are changing fast with tourism ramping up quickly.  This destination may have to go on our “5 year travel plan” because 2025 is too far away :)

Major road to our hotel that was spectacular and never had anyone on it!

Major road to our hotel that was spectacular and never had anyone on it!

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3) PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER. Why didn’t we learn this trick sooner? Cliff wrote about our new strategy of touring each destination with a professional photographer. It added such a cool element to our experience.  I recommend that whether you are interested in taking pictures or not, taking a tour with a local photographer is a really cool way to explore a destination! You can be sure that we will continue this strategy for the remainder of our ATW itinerary :)

I took this with my iPhone under the tutelage of Maung Maung!

I took this with my iPhone under the tutelage of Maung Maung!

*****

4) IF YOU BECOME A BILLIONAIRE, BUY A HOT AIR BALLOON! Ballooning over the temples at sunrise was EPIC and will certainly be remembered as a highlight for us all…even Otto who was barfing for most of the time over the side of the balloon :) Wescott got so into it that he chatted with an Amazon Sales Rep online about buying one! Amazon doesn’t sell hot air balloons but the agent was so nice, she sourced it for him and sent him directly to someone who he could buy one from :)

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*****

5) AMAZING! …See #1 :) …. Muang Muang, the professional photographer who we had the pleasure of hanging out with for the day in Bagan, also takes people on tours around the entire country!!! I can’t imagine how much fun that would be!! Sign me up in 2016 for my 50th bday!

It is like a fairytale!  I was there and still can't believe this photo is real!

It is like a fairytale! I was there and still can’t believe this photo is real!

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Picture Perfect http://www.projectequator.com/picture-perfect/ http://www.projectequator.com/picture-perfect/#comments Wed, 19 Mar 2014 13:52:21 +0000 http://www.projectequator.com/?p=3529 We take a lot of pictures. Just past halftime for Project Equator, our family has collectively snapped over 40,000 digital images, over 500 gigabytes of video, and a mountain of black and white film Lisa is hand-carrying around the world. While mere facsimiles of the collective connections experienced by each of us on 3 continents, our images serve as the primary communication medium to our family, friends and the world (look forward to the all-day slide show upon our return!). These digital ghosts will also serve as the primary recall mechanism in the days, months and years to come, undoubtedly triggering the warm glow of a truly golden time in all of our lives. All of that is to say that our library of images is kind of important! Recently, Lisa and I clued into a genius activity that takes some of our photos to a whole new level while consistently providing unexpected adventures and a whole lot of fun: hire a local professional photographer to tour us around for the day.

In Hoi An, Vietnam, Bagan, Myanmar and Chiang Mai, Thailand, we found three awesome photographers and genuinely nice people to spend the day with. Each encounter shared the attribute of the unexpected, with the day unfolding organically, leading us to amazing sites, meeting with interesting people and connecting to local culture in a myriad of ways.

Étienne: Prince of Hoi An

Ettiene Bossot, a French photographer living and shooting in Vietnam for over 5 years

Etienne Bossot, a French photographer living and shooting in Vietnam for over 5 years

Luckily, this young, bright guy is a good marketer, snagging us into this new activity with a well placed and designed sign out in front of his gallery down the lane from our hotel. Advertising a photo tour package to a local fishing village from dawn through lunch, we met Etienne and made plans to be picked up the next morning. His demeanor and graciousness as host to the 10 of us who accompanied him was evident from the moment he came to get us at our hotel gate. With a range of skill sets and cameras, he balanced his time perfectly with each of us, offering advice on equipment, lessons on some of the basics of manual photography, and personal guidance on getting “the shot.”

For me, the most fascinating part of the day revolved around how to take pictures of people, one of Etienne’s specialties. It never dawned on me how important the ability to make personal connection and exude an outgoing demeanor is to great photographers. In observing and listening to Etienne, I have a whole new respect for the broad range of interpersonal and technical skills that go into a memorable image.  Effortlessly navigating the docks and streets of this sleepy, tiny fishing village, his boy next door / comfortable-in-his-own-skin attitude won smiles, hugs and conversation with many of the locals. As we learned about the daily ritual of the fisherman coming home from the evening’s catch, navigated the impromptu market that sprung up around the docks, breathed in the pungent smells of a fish sauce producer, meandered through the back pathways between local houses, and rode bikes along the river back to Hoi An, we snapped to our hearts content and enjoyed the company of an interesting band of travelers.

 

Maung Maung: King of Bagan

Maung Maung is a local photographer who has achieved International acclaim

Maung Maung is a local photographer who has achieved International acclaim

Credit for this whirl-wind day goes almost entirely to Etienne, having insisted that ProjectEquator would be incomplete without traveling to Myanmar. We had recently given up on obtaining visas, and had almost finalized new plane tickets to cut Myanmar from the itinerary; but after Etienne’s passionate plea, we realized our error and made a major overhaul to our plans to get us to Bagan via Bangkok and Mandalay.  After some research, we were connected with Maung Maung, a Myanmar citizen who has made an international name for himself for his outstanding images. It could not have been a more dissimilar experience and adventure than our day with Etienne, teaching Lisa and I about a completely different method of “getting the shot.”

Maung Maung is a master of light. He knows exactly where he needs to be at precisely the right time of day to create a moody, evocative image. Shooting in and around Bagan’s thousands of temples for decades, he has a network of friends and access to unreachable places that made us feel like we had a golden ticket for the day. Unlike almost any other photographer we’ve met, Maung Maung offers to recreate and teach you how to get some of the award winning images he’s taken over the years. In contrast to the documentary-style of Etienne’s photo essays of people, Maung Maung creates extremely deliberate shots that have been scouted, planned and rehearsed.

When in Bagan, surrounded by thousands of thousand year old temples, monks offer a wonderful subject to photograph. We had the opportunity to meet several as Maung Maung zoomed in and out of a few monasteries to pick up our own personal monk to accompany us to various locations. As bizarre as it sounds, these boys served as authentic models in elaborate, stunning locations. Maung Maung, like many people in Bagan, spent months in the monastery we kept returning to, so he knew everyone very well. Each monk barely spoke, and rarely smiled as Maung Maung would direct the scene for our awaiting lens. We zoomed precariously from place to place in his small car, tracking monks and nuns collecting daily offering of food from the locals, visiting a monastery at mealtime and entering many locked pagodas cracked open for our king, making the entire day action-packed and slightly overwhelming. He offers a private 15-day tour of Myanmar, and you can bet that Lisa and I are already scheming on when we return!

 

Ryan: Documentarian and Environmental Crusader of Chiang Mai

Ryan Libre lives in Chiang Mai and spends lots of time nurturing young documentary film makers and photographers

Ryan Libre lives in Chiang Mai and spends lots of time nurturing young documentary film makers and photographers

Joined by our very own Ryan Jones from Mercer Island, we decided the kids should jump in on the fun as we connected with another Ryan (Libre) who owns and curates the Documentary Arts Asia in Chiang Mai. When he is not documenting life in Kachin State in northern Burma, or on some assignment elsewhere in the world, Ryan teaches photography at Chiang Mai University and takes people like us around the countryside to practice photography. Like the other expeditions, we had no idea what to expect, except of course, the unexpected!

The morning started on an organic farm about an hour or so north of Chiang Mai. Amidst idyllic rice paddies and rolling mountains, this permaculture / sustainable living commune is owned and run by Thai folks, and offers wonderful views and whimsical adobe architecture. Ryan owns land between this farm and the next organic farm called The Panya Project, which is a school that teaches people from all over the world the arts of adobe construction, permaculture, organic farming and community development. We hiked both farms and got a taste for how flexible, sustainable and malleable adobe architecture can be.

While chatting with some folks at Panya, we learned that all of the students were in the village building a 2-story adobe house for a local resident who needed a house. Off we went into a traditional, rural Thai village, where Wescott, Ryan and Yve were invited to join the work crew and get covered in mud. They laid a row of adobe bricks for one of the walls and learned the basic principles of how easy, fun and environmental this construction can be.

For lunch, we dropped in on the village chief who owns a sprawling homestay that would give any Marin County artsy / organic / zen compound a run for its money. Tasty vegetarian fare in a spectacular setting gave us renewed energy for our afternoon, which included a visit to an enormous, almost never-visited temple complex. It was a great location to contrast Thailand’s elaborate, palatial Buddhist Wats to the more primitive, ancient style of Bagan’s pagodas.

The last part of the day took an even more unexpected turn, as Ryan was invited to interview a famous Swiss photographer named Rene Burri at one of Chiang Mai’s most exclusive resorts, Dhara Dhevi. Sending the kids home, Lisa and I accompanied the press corp, consisting of an entourage of several photographers and handlers. The whole thing was a bit surreal as we were ushered into a magnificent suite, greeting Rene who sat on an expansive veranda with his son and wife. For the next two and a half hours, we sat riveted like disciples as Rene waxed on about his experiences being invited to shoot the Cuban revolutionary Ernesto “Che’ Guevara, his friendship with Pablo Picasso, his thoughts on photography and many pearls of wisdom about an 80 year (and counting) life that has taken him to over 200 countries and in the middle of countless world events.  For photography collectors and enthusiasts like us, it was a very special surprise and a wonderful end to an unexpected day.

 

 

 

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