Last week we were checking out some of the exotic flowers here on Bali and we came across this friendly dragonfly. He hung out on this flower, staying very still and cocking his little head at me while I took at least a dozen photos. I got the distinct impression he was as curious about me as I was about him. After I capped my lens he went about his business and eventually flitted away.
We’re getting ready to post our ‘Nepal Roundup’ early next week and we came across this snapshot while we were sifting through our Nepal photos. These types of horse caravans carry everything from construction supplies to fresh eggs to some of the hardest to reach villages along the Annapurna Circuit. The men who lead the horses walk beside them and direct them almost entirely with different whistling sounds. On this particular day it was incredibly foggy and at times we couldn’t see more than 10 or 15 feet in front of us. The horses wear bells to alert walkers to their presence and we heard this caravan for quite a while before we came out of the mist and almost crashed right into them!
Ankgor Wat is undoubtedly the biggest tourist draw for the temples outside of Siem Reap in Cambodia, but there is so much more if you have a day or five to explore. There are dozens of smaller temples in the surrounding area and most of them boast intricate carvings, some of which are very well preserved. These particular figures can be found along the walls near the Elephant Gate, and we were fascinated by the different colors each figure had taken on despite the fact that they are all basically exposed to the same natural elements. Some were simply grey as the stone they’d been carved from, others were shades of green and red. Each figure is unique, and we spent nearly an hour wandering along the wall and inspecting the the details.
We were fortunate to be touring temples in Ubud, Bali during a holiday based around the full moon (though the celebration only happens either twice per year, or once every seven months…we keep getting conflicting information). The temples were packed with locals, the women dressed in brightly colored silks while the men wore crisp white shirts and patterned sarongs. We hung around on the sidelines and watched dozens of women parade by, carrying the offerings – gigantic platters of fruits, roasted duck, and sweets – on their heads.
One of our favorite parts of hiking in Nepal was coming across one of the many prayer wheel walls. Some were ornate and meticulously cared for, while others were made of old coffee cans with the prayers hand painted on them. We always took care to walk down the correct side, and spin each wheel as we passed by.
We’ve spent the last week lounging about and stuffing our faces on Koh Tao, in Thailand. My brother has been living on this little island for nearly 10 years, and even though we’ve been to visit him before, we never get tired of watching the sun set from one of the many local beach bars. After three days of clouds and rain we finally got a hot sunny day and were happy to sit at my brother’s bar, Maya Beach Club, sipping mojitos and checking out the longtail boats as they bobbed around on the tide.
I first went to Angkor Wat in 2005, and while there were plenty of visitors, it was nothing like our experience there last week. Tourism is booming in Cambodia and has definitely brought some changes. One of them is the inability for people to go climbing about on the temples as they please. In 2005 I snapped this shot of a monk climbing up the central tower in Angkor Wat. There was almost nobody else around and he had stopped to catch his breath, or perhaps just to admire the view and I happened to look up and catch him gazing out at the front of the temple complex. Today, you can’t just make your way up the crumbling stone steps, they have built wooden platform stairs on top of the originals, you have to wait in a long line to go up, and you are restricted to a brief 20 minute visit. It was sort of a bummer to not be able to wander at our leisure, though the new rules do make it safer, and better for the preservation of the temples.
Hiking up to the Thorong-La Pass on the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal was one of the most difficult days of our 12 day trek. We were both feeling a bit loopy from the altitude, and I had been battling a little headache since the night before, which was creating a bunch of stress about whether I was going to suffer the consequences of altitude sickness before I managed to make it to the top of the pass. We were so immersed in our own thoughts that it took a while for us to notice that the thick fog that we’d been hiking through for the last hour was no longer surrounding us. We turned around and realized that we’d broken through the clouds and could finally see some of the peaks behind us. We had just a few minutes of this view before the clouds rose up and obscured the views again. It was a good reminder to stop every once in a while and take a look at the majesty that surrounded us.
The Taj Mahal is one of the worlds most well-known pieces of architecture, and seeing it in person is just as impressive as you think it will be. We certainly took our fair share of the standard straight-on photo from the beginning of the gardens, but we also liked the views you get as you peek out massive doorways of the mosques that sit on either side of the Taj Mahal.
We’ve seen a lot of optical illusion type photos taken in the Salt Flats of Uyuni that come out terribly fuzzy, so we thought we’d share with you how we got ours to be relatively clear.
In the photo above, Bryan looks like he is about to eat Kristin. To get a shot like this Kristin had to be far enough away from Bryan to appear small enough to sit on the spoon. You can eyeball this and have the person in the background move as necessary. Whoever is taking the photo needs to be down on the ground, relative to whoever is in the foreground of the shot. From here it’s just a matter of lining them up so that she appears to be all the way on the spoon instead of just above, or below it. In some cases it’s easier for the photographer to move, in others you can adjust the subjects slightly.
The real trick, however, is getting all the subject to be in focus. To accomplish this we used the manual settings on our cameras, though really you just need to be able to adjust the aperture. We set the aperture to a high number (the higher the number, the smaller the opening that lets the light in) and then let the camera set the shutter speed. In the first photo, we had the aperture at f29, with a 1/60 shutter speed. We took 8 or 10 photos, adjusting the focus slightly in each one until we were happy. Sometimes it works to focus somewhere in between the subjects, other times it works better to focus on either the front or the back subject. At this point I can’t remember what worked best in each photo, but just take loads and you’ll be sure to get at least a few that turn out.
For some, like the jumping shots with the guidebook, the photographer has to get right down onto the ground in order for the effect to work correctly.
Again, the key for us seemed to be getting the aperture at a high setting, with a slower shutter speed. For the jump shot we used f25 with a 1/80 shutter speed.
Good luck, and don’t forget to bring some props!
The Parallel Life 