'Hot Summer Days' -- Thailand

This photo seeks to capture 'street' with less tight cropping than is

usual for me in a section of Thailand a decade or so ago, during the

sweltering heat of summer, when it is so still only the sweat moves as it

trickles down a hot sweltering brow. This is a scan from a film file from

long ago, recently recovered. Your ratings and critiques are invited and

most welcome. If you rate harshly or very critically, please submit a

helpful and constructive comment; please share your superior

photographic knowledge to help improve my photography. Thanks!

Enjoy! John

John you know I'm waiting more of these stuff :-)) if you have more "film days" shots like these I want to see them...I know its a blasphemy to even mention it but I would crop the right part from the tree and after where the third person in the distance is seen... a good one getting to the mood of the...place

You're right. Blasphemy! You'll go straight to hell! So will I.

 

Actually I think it needs that space and the light at the top to show how 'hot' it is - a little 'blowout' in this film capture doesn't hurt it much, and in fact I had to 'burn in' digitally the foreground as it was quite reflective, but really stopped from doing it too much, as doing it more would have made it look like it had been rained on.

 

I don't mind cropping where justified and this photo might use some judicious cropping, but it's meant to capture the 'openness' that was the 'older' Bangkok and yet retain the 'mirroring' or the distant subject bent over, -- repeating somewhat the stance (if you can call it that) of the subject, leftmost, with his unusual posture and his head slumped.

 

Where I can, I prefer a full frame capture, and that way someone can view the challenges I faced in the field trying to fit everything into a composition rather than how I manipulated the capture in a darkroom. I understand Helmut Newton took all with a Hasselblad or other medium format camera and always expected to crop; I don't.

 

It's also a 'three's shot' before I ever began counting those things, but then again, one of those shots is in this service from my first roll of film (three ferry boat passengers, three benches and three poles through benches -- metal poles that is for those looking for a pun).

 

I really don't have more than five or six other film shots that even might be displayed, so don't wish too much. This was supposed to be scanned as a TIFF and came back as a JPEG, and I need a refund from the lab that charged me a fortune to do it and a refund (they only do strips of six at a time).

 

I've not had good luck sending out scans recently to the most reputable labs. Just goes to show you (no, Adan W. this wasn't K&S, but in Santa Cruz instead).

 

I am glad to see you return here; I posted this in a lesser folder at first to see if there was any interest as it's not a 'knock you in your face' photo.

 

But it has historical interest, and some photographic qualities that I overlooked even when I looked at the neg. I have one other than I even blew up and didn't like so much but now I see it better and may post.

 

I only took a few frames that trip and other trips took no cameras at all, if you can imagine that. I just did to be with a friend who had interest and to show this to a friend in Germany who had interest, and she has developed into a world famous photographer -- who lectures on both sides of the Atlantic about her specialty in photography. That's the only reason then I even picked up a camera. She gave me my first exhibition (in part) in Wetzlar, Germany of all places. (home of Leica, get it?, though mostly overlooked of course, as I had only a few and had no name).

 

Nice to see your comment, Billy.

 

John (Crosley)

There's an old joke that cost former Agricultural Secretary of the US Earl Butts his job -- and has to do with saying about 'loose shoes', and Butts was an earthy man and certainly did not use the term 'loose shoes' exactly as the press widely reported. Anyway, it cost him his job.

 

However, in this photo, look at the two guys, nearest the camera, and look at their footwear. It's hot in Thailand in the summer and any chance to doff one's shoes is a good chance. Although showing the soles of one's shoes to anyone is deemed a sign of high disrespect (as is throwing or showing a shoe sole in parts of Africa or the Middle East where a thrown shoe is akin to starting a blood feud), these men have doffed their shoes for the sake of comfort -- but there are not shoe soles showing upright -- a social taboo and a sign of 'very low social standing' similar to caste in Indian society.

 

Also, footwear in Thailand at the time was not 'custom made' and any old thing that would cover the foot was OK; even if it came off easily. It's very warm in Thailand almost year round (even December is not jacket weather in Thailand in December when many Americans trek to Bangkok for the warmer weather, and summers are positively four shower days, with the shower set to 'coolest' just to wash the sweat off and cool the body (but the joke's that the person showering -- the desired 'cold' water is tepid at most, having been heating under the blistering sidewalks and streets in the water mains.)

 

(Bangkok is one of the world's largest and most crowded cities, yet crime there (overt, physical crime) is fairly rare given the city's size, and especially compared to a metropolis such as say, Mexico City, which has endemic corruption and a society based on corruption at the highest levels.

 

Thailand also is rumored to have endemic corruption, but it seems not to touch the common people directly in the form of physical violence, especially since the country lives, eats, and breathes off the health of its wonderful tourist trade, which depends on its reputation as the nation of 'a thousand smiles'.

 

John (Crosley)

John, I like this one really much. The bw tones and the man's white shoes.... the people just sitting around. Maybe I would have chosen a slighlty lower angle but never the less, this photo is great!

I love it.

 

greetings

annie.

I saw this reduced to 35 mm in an old film strip when I was having others I found scanned and said to myself 'what the hey, it looks interesting enough' and now I see it full size for the first time, it looks worthy enough and complex enough with its repeating theme. It's not a first class photo winner, but it's certainly not my worst either, as some raters had thought. I see ratings are mixed from 3s to 6s.

 

Just goes to show you that some photos are ratings proof. Some can see worth where others see none.

 

It is reminiscent of my 'style' even now. I can imagine taking this style of photo even today, though I would have the same issues I have today with it I have then, but I would have labored over it now a lot less than I labored over it then.

 

Photography now is so much easier, for whatever reason; maybe somewhere on the line I had one of those 'brilliant strokes' that unleashes part of the creative process? It's not entirely impossible; then it was 'hot sweaty work' and now it is mostly pure pleasure. in part because I know what I am doing.and can 'see' where I am heading and not driven by sheer talent without knowledge of where I have been and where my 'work' fits in. Then I had no real feeling of where my photography belonged. This would best be termed my 'middle period' when I seldom picked up a camera.

 

Thanks, Annie, for the nice comnment.

 

John (Crosley)

Looks like an "easy" shot, but the complexity of the composition and the counter points are almost impossible to find in non stage photography, except for you, it seems.

 

Nobody can stand because of the heat, and even sitting seems too difficult.

 

the two men in dark clothes, both in profile but mirroring each other have even more difficulties to stand the summer heat than the 2 persons wearing white shirts, those last 2 persons, also mirroring eachother.

 

Only two elements are able to stand the heat, and just "stand" : the tree, which is representation of Life, and can actually stand whatever the condition, as well as the bike, a mechanical non-organic entity...

 

great photo as usual !

 

take care

laurent

 

I did not intentionally start out to post a photo (or even 'take' a photo) about 'heat' but it just seemed to turn out that way.

 

And as I wrote, I saw the elements of 'heat' in what I had captured some decade and a half ago.

 

And I saw the shoes, and of course shoes are not entirely optional in Thailand, especially in Bangkok, but they're 'sometimes optional' depending on whether one needs them to walk and avoid broken glass, irregular pavement, and to kick a stray wild dog, (actually nobody kicks those dogs at all, and they don't seem either to end up in anybody's wok who'll admit to it, and in fact the same dogs may be roaming today that were roaming a decade and a half ago -- and all stray dogs in cities gone feral seem to look alike the world over -- ever notice?)

 

But you're right about the bike and the tree being the only stationary objects that seem able to withstand the heat, as well as the bench, which has a semi-tenuous relationship with its bench-sitters.

 

One does not know the word 'swelter' until one has tried to sleep in Bangkok on a summer's night without air conditioning (or lived summer nights in any Texas city, or say, Mississippi, or somewhere else in the South in former times).

 

But except in December, when it cools a little bit and March when it's more dry (but very, very hot), the nights are sweaty things, but there's an incredible amount of activity at night because it's at least 'cooler' in a relative sense.

 

In fact, daytime is for tourists who want to visit temples, and others who must drive them in their tuk tuks (motorized tri-wheel taxis) if they're still around -- they're sort of disappearing, or even the city's many kamikaze motorcyclists, who generate quite a breeze in their suicidal hyperleaps through physical space.

 

It's just too damn hot.

 

But the photography can be amazing. Just don't be as heavy as me, or you'll be sweating through shirts and pants at an amazing rate. Thais are skinny by necessity - it helps to radiate the heat.

 

Thanks for an insightful comment, L-P. Robert.

 

You have helped me understand my own photo, and maybe why I posted what I considered to be a very below average one (at that).

 

John (Crosley)