Photo Fun

On Wednesday, I took a cab down to the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew to take some pictures. These are, of course, places that are pretty much must sees for anyone visiting Thailand. As such, I've already seen them a few times. In fact, last Spring I went to Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew to take pictures.

I went again for a couple of reasons. First, I have purchased a new camera and lenses since my last venture down there and wanted to test them out. Secondly, I wanted to try use some of the techniques that I've learned.

I shoot with a Canon 40D. Its a nice camera, although if you considering it now, you might want to consider paying the extra $200 or so dollars and go to the 50D.

Over the summer, I also purchased a wide angle lens. The Canon EFS 10-22 is a lot of fun, and allows for some very wide shots. Shooting wide can be a lot of fun, but there are two issues. One is that you'll get a little bit of distortion at the edges of the pictures. Sometimes something might look like its slightly bent, for example. The other issue is that with a really wide angle its easy to include unwanted objects or persons in the shot. During one shot, there was a woman who was sitting to the side of me and was just in the edge of my shot. I was kind of irritated at first, but the I realized that she would never imagine that she was in the shot. I wouldn't have thought so were I not looking through the view finder.

I did bring a couple of other lenses (Canon 70-200 2.8 IS USM and Canon 24-105 4.0 IS USM), although I shot ninety percent of the shots with the 10-22. I did use the 70-200 for the guard shots. I've shot people with the 10-22, and had some nice results. The problem is that to get the face to fill up the whole frame, you have to get really close. I mean less than a foot. I really didn't think that sticking the lens right in the guards face constitutes crossing a cultural barrier, so I used the 70-200.

I brought my tripod this time. Although its a pain to lug around sometime, it really helps in getting sharp photographs. As a bonus, it also let me put myself in the some of the pictures.

I created an album on picasaweb, and have a sample of pictures below. I took over 300 shots, but only am putting up a couple dozen for now. The number is a bit misleading, as I usually took the same shot multiple times. I may revisit some of the "unpublished" pictures at a later time.







Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew