The Brown Pelicans of Cabo San Lucas
After settling into the hotel room, we sat out on the deck to watch the ocean. In twos and threes, squadrons of brown pelicans swing around the rocks and glide in front of the advancing waves, climbing over the top just as the water crests and slams into the beach.
American white pelicans summer in lakes across the Canadian prairies but I had never seen their cousins, the brown pelican, in the wild before. So, I was quite excited that these huge birds (they have wingspans up to seven feet) were residents near our vacation spot. For the next couple of days, I went down to the water’s edge and enjoyed taking shots of them on the beach, fishing in the water and flying along the coastline.
When we finally went into town and spent the day around the marina and the beaches along the Sea of Cortés, I was surprised at the number of pelicans settled into the dockside environment. They play the role of seagulls down there, massing on the boats and docks as well as lounging on the rock ledges along Land’s End. There are native gulls down there as well but they do not appear to have anywhere near the same numbers as the pelicans.
At the narrow entrance to the harbour, the pelicans bob in the water waiting. As sportfishing boats return to the marina, the birds fly up and follow just off the stern, expecting to get scraps from the fishermen.
On a water taxi from the main beach area to the marina we detoured out to Land’s End where we found clusters of pelicans throughout the rock formations vying for space with cormorants and gulls.
On our last morning before heading home, I went down to the beach early and sat down to watch some of the birds who seemed to just be lounging around, in no rush to start their day.
Great fun to be able to see these impressive birds in a wide variety of places. I feel lucky to be able to have seen them displaying the many different ways they live out the day.
Edges of the day in Cabo San Lucas
We were in Cabo San Lucas last week for a few days of vacation time. It was our first time to the Baja Peninsula and found it to be a beautiful spot. We spent a lot of time on the water or very close to it. After a few years on the Prairies, the ocean has an incredible pull for both Bobbi and I.
I got out for a couple good shoots before sunrise and again before sunset while we were down there.
We stayed along Sunset Beach, just outside the town on the Pacific side. Very quiet beach with wonderful rock formations the only breaks to the stretches of sand.
Definitely a place I am looking forward to shooting again.
Marble Carvers in Mandalay
Mandalay is known throughout Asia for their artisans. The area’s stonemasons have earned a reputation for their exquisite work with marble.
Our guide took us to a street in Mandalay that is a centre for marble carving. The street is packed with workshops with carvers mostly working on Buddha statues of all sizes.
The statues are lined up, in various states of completion, at the front of most of the shops.
Masks are not part of the uniforms and the fine dust created by the power chisels and grinders they use hangs heavy around most workshops.
Marble is mined in quarries near Mandalay in the Sagyin hills. The best of this stone is alabaster, very fine quality marble which most of these carvers were working with along the road.
When a statue is ready to be moved for painting or to be delivered nearby, a cart like the one below is often used.
For shipments to more distant clients, the statues are framed in wood and then wait to be loaded on flatbed trucks.
At one end of this road, a low slung building housed woodworkers, which provided the single exception to the marble work packed on this dusty street running for several city blocks in the middle of this sprawling city.
Here too Buddha remained the focus of most of the carvings, but there were a few different statues lined up on one wall outside.
One more incredible location in Myanmar that I am already looking forward to getting back to again.
The Edges of the Day – Sunset on Inle Lake
This is the second part of the Inle Lake Edges of the Day series. These photos were taken around sunset during two evenings spent out on the water.
It was a lot of fun working with the falling light levels and exposing to reveal different amounts of detail from pure black silhouettes to overexposed reflections in the water. Many different ways to shoot these scenes, I could stay there for another couple of weeks and not get bored just working with these guys.
The Edges of the Day on Inle Lake
a smoke break on the water
Inle Lake is a lake unlike any I have been to before. I was there for three days in February and each morning I went out on a longtail canoe on the smooth water and explored the lake, looking to capture some of the stillness and calm that preceded the sun climbing over the hills that rise above the eastern shoreline. Here are some of the images from those mornings on the lake with the fishermen.
We maneuvered our canoe around the fishermen to work with and into the light. Using longer lenses, we kept far enough from the men that we were not affecting their fishing. Through our guide, we were told that these gentlemen did not mind us photographing them, they just thought it was strange that we found them so interesting. Seeing the world through the lens continues to be an amazing way to experience life.
Myanmar Favourites
A short post with a link to a web gallery of my first set of favourites from my trip to Myanmar in February.
* If you can’t open the link, please scroll down to see the set.
Preparing springroll dough in Yangon's Chinatown
More to come as I am still working through the library of images I came home with.
Thanks for checking out the blog and the images.
Cheers,
Chris
* The link is to a Flash based slideshow so for those viewing on an iPhone, iPad or other device that does not support Adobe’s Flash, I have included the images from the slideshow below.
Studying at Chaukhtatgyi Monastery
Buddhist nuns praying in Sagaing Hills
Sunset over U Bein bridge in Amarapura
Sunset behind the temples and pagodas of Bagan
Senior monk at the Chaukhtatgyi Monastery
In Bagan
On the plains of Bagan
Marble stonemason carving a Buddha statue in Mandalay
Devotion during the full moon festival at Shwe Dagon in Yangon
Early morning on the water at Inle Lake
Fisherman's silhouette at sunset on Inle Lake
Chaukhtatgyi Monastery – Young Buddhist Monks Studying
In Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, lies the Chaukhtatgyi Temple which houses an enormous reclining Buddha. We traveled to the temple, enjoyed looking at the impressive statue but moved on to the focus of our first day in Myanmar, the monastery attached to the temple. The monastery houses monks both young and old. It is comprised of a collection of wooden buildings that serve as dorms, classrooms, eating halls and meditation spaces. We met the senior monk who offered to let us photograph some of the younger monks while they studied their scriptures.
Here is the senior monk in his living quarters on the second floor of one of the dormitories.
This group of boys were in one long, sparsely furnished room. The students were scattered around the room sitting, standing or laying down on the dark wooden floor reading their books with levels of interest which varied from passive up to completely focused. The younger boys seemed to be more the former with the older boys able and willing to devote complete attention.
The monk teaching these boys was a stern taskmaster. While I do not speak Burmese, when he was not pleased with one of the students, it was very clear that whatever they were doing was wrong and should be quickly corrected. He didn’t chasten often while we were there but when he did, the student under scrutiny amended the error immediately. While some of the boys stole a glance, or even a smile, while the five of us photographers moved among them, they kept alternately reading and chanting as they had done before we entered the room.
It was an incredible scene to photograph. Made all the more enjoyable as it was a window into the normal, daily lives of these young monks. Definitely a world away from Canada and it set a very high bar photographically for the tour, coming on the first day at the first location we visited. Hats off to Art Wolfe, Gavriel Jecan and our guide, Win-Kyaw Zan for this and many other great cultural locations.
The Fishermen of Inle Lake
I returned from Myanmar with several thousand images to work through. I was able to spend a fair amount of time editing while on the road but it has still taken a while to start ordering the different subjects into some cohesive groups. The first one that I have completed is a set of graphic art style images made of the fishermen on Inle Lake. I have made this into a book and am expecting my proof copy within a couple of days.
First, a little detail about Inle Lake, Inle is located in Shan state in central Myanmar and is at an altitude of 2800 feet. The lake is about 14 miles long, 7 miles wide and has an average depth of seven feet (up to twelve in the rainy season) and is roughly 50 square miles in area. It is large, shallow and filled with reeds that sit just under the surface – I never saw the bottom of the lake during our three days spent completely in boats and stilt buildings on the water. There are about 70,000 people living on and around the lake. Most live in stilt homes of all shapes, sizes and condition. The streets to all of the villages, large and small, are predominantly canals. While I was there, the dry season was in full swing and the water levels were very low which had the largest visible impact on the small villages where there narrow canals were just mud in many places. Dredging was constant and, beyond a bit of rerouting and a few pushes from friendly villagers, our boats weren’t impeded too much.
The fishermen ply their trade all around the lake and the river mouths. They all work off small, flat hulled oar powered boats that they stand in back to navigate and then fish off the tip of either end of the boat. Most fishermen man their boats alone but occasionally I saw two fellows partnering on one skiff. The boats are mostly made of teak wood and are about 15′ long and maybe 3′ wide. What draws particular attention, is their method of rowing. They stand up using one leg to balance on the canoe, wrap the other leg around their long oar and propel their boat using a kicking motion. When they are intent on moving quickly, they keep one hand on the top of the oar and then drive oar wrapped leg hard which results in them moving pretty fast. While fishing, they hook the oar with their leg so that they are free to fish using both hands and can still maneuver their craft with a high degree of dexterity. They fish using a tall, conical net which they drop into the water when they see fish directly below them. Once in place, they push it down into the ground with one foot, keeping the other foot on the canoe, and then use a spear to skewer the fish through a hole at the top of the net which sits above the waterline. It is a wonderful display of balance and strength as these men work from early in the pre-dawn, through the day and into dusk. There are a number of species in the lake that the fishermen catch. Of these, the Inle Carp is abundant and forms a staple of the lake people’s diet.
I will post a blog of the lake people, detailing the lives lived on Inle in pictures but in this series, I wanted to play with the constantly changing shapes and compositions of these men as they worked the lake. I focused on the angles and patterns created by the fishermen, the boats and the nets. To create the graphic effect, I overexposed the shots while I was on the lake, then converted the images into black and white and adjusted the contrast in Adobe’s Lightroom later. Shooting early in the morning, I worked in low contrast light mostly and was able to eliminate the horizon, the surrounding hills and other distracting background elements in camera via the overexposure approach. These men were concentrated on the fish but tolerated our presence. We provided the men photographed with a tip as we shot them for almost a half an hour. They were not distracted by the cameras and I was pleased to be able to capture their regular movement which I found very appealing.
more to come…
Another walk around the strip
Bobbi and I went to the Blue Man Group on Friday night. What a great show! The creativity was outstanding and we had a lot of fun. No photos allowed so I just sat back and enjoyed.
Afterwards, we wandered around the Venetian for a couple of hours. I really like that resort. The casino is certainly there but it is one of the places where I was able to really enjoy walking around without having the gambling around every corner. The halls are much like Italian back streets (except the stores aren’t local delis and bakeries – instead all the high-end shops are squeezed in side by each). Great restaurants with patios overlooking the canals are a real treat. We ate at one of Mario Battali’s restaurants – very fine food and a dessert of local dates and honey with homemade vanilla bean gelato made it memorable for both of us. The canals are great and wind inside and outside of the Venetian. I really enjoyed playing with the compositions in this place using the lensbaby muse (a new toy!) to throw focus all around the frame.
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We rode back to our hotel on the monorail and it was fun to watch the vegas skyline slide by.
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A big thank you to Kofo for taking care of our kids for the night. Another to Andy and Diane for making the show and the night a special occasion.
Burma Photo Tour with Art Wolfe
Completely unexpected and completely incredible!
My wonderful wife surprised me by sending me on a photo tour to Burma (Myanmar) led by Art Wolfe in February of next year.
I have avidly followed Art Wolfe’s work for a long time. Enjoying his photographs of cultures, landscapes and wildlife from around the world well before I had charted a course towards photography. Since the passion of this art has taken hold, now I love to study his images and am always inspired by his vision. It is no exaggeration to say he is the photographer who I am most inspired by and whose images I enjoy above all else.
In October, Art Wolfe was the keynote speaker kicking off the Digital Photo Expo held in Calgary, Alberta. Art’s presentation, Between Heaven and Earth, was a collection of images, stories and events detailing his journeys to the Himalaya regions of Nepal, China, Bhutan and India. I found the enthusiasm that Art brought to the evening and the emotion captured in the images of the cultures and the landscapes to be very impressive. At the conclusion of the show, Art invited any of the attendees to join him on his upcoming photo tours to India, Vietnam and Burma. Little did I know that I would be taking him up on the offer!
That night I came home charged up from the show and Bobbi apparently filed that away and started plotting. She shared her plans with my father initially and then with both of our sets of parents. In short order all were enthusiastically behind the endeavour. Now that they have shared the surprise with me, I am vigorously planning, drawing up lists, studying up on Burma and analyzing my photography to identify gaps that I want to fill in prior to this amazing trip. The link to the trip itinerary http://artwolfeworkshops.com/myanmar_tour.php
