2010 Favourite Photographs – People

Nuns at prayer in a convent in the Sagaing Hills in Mandalay, Myanmar in Southeast Asia.

In 2010, I made a goal that I wanted to photograph people more.  My first love is nature photography (landscapes and wildlife) but the more portraiture, street and travel photography that I do, the more I enjoy it.  To support this extension of my art, I have attended lighting workshops, read a wheelbarrow full of books, tried to spend more time photographing humans and shared some of the knowledge gained with other photographers in my ecosystem.

Much to learn and practice yet but 2010 was a good step forward.  I’m excited to build on this momentum and see where the people I photograph in 2011 take me.

Here are some of my favourite images from last year.

My trip to Myanmar in February was a really wonderful experience.  Photographically, this land is fantastic for the variety of people, cultures, landscapes and other opportunities.  Here I wandered through Yangon’s Chinatown and was able to have a few good conversations with the residents as they spoke Mandarin as a first language instead of Burmese.

I was fascinated by these young men who ran blocks of ice from trucks, up the cobblestone street to these ice crushers and then back down to the dock for the fish to be packed in.  Very hard work done barefoot without any breaks through the morning while the fish are being shipped out around the city and beyond.

This marble carver in Amarapura works in his family’s yard along a street filled with stonemasons.  These craftspeople create incredible statues from the alabaster mined from the hills in the surrounding Mandalay area.  Again, very hard work.

The monks of Southeast Asia are magnets for many photographers, and I was no exception.  I thoroughly enjoyed talking with many of these men that I met and loved photographing them in their surroundings.

A very kind man who I gestured and chatted with briefly in Old Bagan after he motioned me over to have a look at my camera.  He was happy to let me photograph him and gave this picture a nod when I showed him the screenshot.

Probably the coolest guy I met in Myanmar.  This gentleman had a group of younger monks and lay people circling him and they were having an animated conversation which I enjoyed watching as much as I enjoyed making this photo.

The younger monks line up to receive offerings from the community, grateful for the dedication of these boys and men to the faith they all share.  The food collected is distributed among the monks and eaten in silence.  A large portion is distributed outside the brotherhood to the less fortunate who wait patiently for the monks to hand it out.  There is a dignity among even the poorest which can be glimpsed in the photograph of the man below but I was not able to wholly present here.

The monks showered using metal bowls.  A fast shutter speed froze the droplets and the motion of this simple action.

In Amarapura while walking through a monastery, I looked in on this monk as he swept the courtyard seemingly lost in the repetition.

My children always figure prominently in what I’m up to and here are just a couple of what could be a near infinite series of photos of them through the year.

A couple of black and white portraits to complete this set.

Thank you for scrolling through a few of the highpoints of the year with me.