Kevin Thom - Hamilton, Toronto, Ontario Photographer

It’s been a pretty busy couple of days here in Bangkok. I’m doing my best to help with the wedding, which is turning out to be a massive affair. Today, I was part of a really beautiful traditional Thai engagement ceremony. I don’t have photos of it, because I was part of the groom’s engagement procession, and was carrying a bag full of diamonds. There was no way for me to shoot as well.

Yesterday, I helped the groom, who’s my best friend from high school, at his rehearsal with the Thai Philharmonic Orchestra. They’ll be accompanying him as he plays a song at his reception on the piano. There are going to be a couple of thousand people there, so he’s understandably a bit nervous about it all.

At night, we went to a meet and greet at a restaurant that boasts of being the highest al fresco restaurant in Asia. It’s not hard to believe, since it’s on the 64th floor of an enormous hotel, and has a magnificent view of the city from its terrace.

Anyway, here are a few photos from the last couple of days’ events. The actual wedding happens tomorrow afternoon.

Okay here’s a little bonus entry for all of you beginner night photographers. Ever notice how hard it is to get a proper exposure of something that’s lit up at night? If you do a long exposure of that lit subject, it ends up that the rest of the photo is too dark, or the subject is overexposed. I figured out that the best way to solve this problem is by “dodging” certain areas of the photo during the exposure.

In this particular photo, the exposure was 13 seconds at f8. Shot normally, the well-lit church would be completely white and overexposed. My technique is to use hold the lens cap close to the lens, obscuring the brightest parts of the image. In the photo above, I covered the top portion for at least 9 seconds of that 13 second exposure. I move the lens cap back and forth quickly during that 9 seconds, so that the area is blended, and doesn’t just appear as a darker circle in the final image. The bottom part of the image gets the full 13 second exposure, so the reflection is nice and bright.

The lens cap is great for most things, but experiment with other items for blocking the light. When I first started using this technique, I was using my fingers to block the light, but I found that I’d get strange color patches in the image because light was reflecting off my skin and into the photo. I find that a soft piece of black cloth is the best, because it reflects no light, and can be folded into different shapes to be more precise with the dodging. Plus, it won’t scratch your lens as you move it around.

I always try to get the exposure as close as possible to perfect in the camera. That way you don’t lose image quality or create excess noise by manipulating the levels too much in Photoshop.

Try this out and be creative with it. Let me know how it goes!

Is it an oxymoron to say that I’m getting used to culture shock? I’m settled in to my favorite little hidden hotel in Bangkok, the Silom Convent Garden. After weekly doses of culture shock from exploring various regions of China, from cosmopolitan Shanghai to the outskirts of Tibet to the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, I’m in a whole different world again. The language, people, money, food… all are different, of course. I woke up in Beijing this morning, with a climate like Canada’s, and got off the plane into Bangkok’s 33 degree Celcius heat. Even getting on the Internet is different. I don’t need to worry about someone snooping what I’m writing and banning my access to my server. My mini suite at the Silom Convent Garden has a rainshower bath, kitchenette and a king sized bed, which is a far cry from the hard and narrow beds served up by hostels in China.

Dinner tonight was at one of Silom’s finest street-side eateries. It’s literally a woman with an array of fresh ingredients, under an umbrella on the sidewalk. There are tables and chairs set up in a the alley behind her. It smells like sewage. The food, however, is divine. I ordered a plate of shrimps, stir fried in a pungent red curry with those delicious Thai licorice-scented basil leaves. I also got a piece of grilled chicken, sliced over shredded cabbage and fresh leaves of lettuce, with a sweet chili dipping sauce. All of this for about $5. Why can’t I find a Thai restaurant in Canada that cooks like this, at any price?

During dinner, it started raining, and I mean pouring. The brief but violent rain temporarily washed away the city’s nearly pleasant stink, and cut the substantial humidity by about one percent.

This week is going to be filled with festivities pertaining to Tan’s wedding. I’m looking forward to the arrival of many of my friends in the city tomorrow.

It’s been a long day! I started shooting around 9:30 this morning, and just got back now. It’s just after midnight and I’m ready to finally pack it in. This was my full day in China, and I felt rewarded with this gorgeous weather. After I shot those blue sky photos from the previous entry, Dad and I departed to explore the city a bit. We hit a hutong neighborhood, which is a classic Chinese residential area built in a series of alleys. I’m caught off guard by things that make perfect sense to the very pragmatic Chinese, like a leg of pork hanging to dry with the laundry. I mean, why not?

We wandered for hours, eventually finding ourselves in a major tourist area and then at a bus stop. After studying the various out-of-date maps posted for everyone’s inconvenience, we worked out how to get back to the hostel on the bus. I find these little adventures to be rewarding.

Dinner tonight was Peking duck. No visit to Beijing would be complete without the city’s famous roast duck recipe. The food was so good last night that we decided to eat at the same restaurant again. The chef and owner of this restaurant clearly appreciates that having good Chinese food doesn’t mean you need to have a dismal dining experience to go along with it. The presentation and service were top-notch, and the price was very reasonable. There was even a dude who stood by our table and patiently wrapped and served us the traditional “duck burritos” that are an essential part of the Peking duck experience. I remembered to bring my camera this time. No, the wriggling still-alive scorpion skewers are not from our dinner. They were from a local street-food market. I was gratified to note that everyone, including domestic Chinese tourists seemed grossed out by the scorpions.

Immediately after dinner, I set out to the Olympic park to try again at shooting the “Birds Nest” stadium and “Water Cube” aquatics centre. This time, I had better luck and managed to score a few shots of these iconic structures. That’s good, because between walking and the subway, it’s about two hours each way to get to the Olympic park.

Now it’s time for bed. I’m leaving for Bangkok tomorrow. More thoughts about China later.

Beijing was determined to prove me wrong after what I said about pollution yesterday. The rain and wind blew away the haze, and we were treated to an absolutely spectacular day today.