My World: Simple photos

[fahim mohammed]

One of the ' usual suspects ' again. But I discuss and post photographs. Lots of them. Discuss and talk.

Keeps the forum active!

No ' art ' here, just documenting about people and places I was lucky to travel to.

Something a bit different than visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art or some empty cultural centers.
Wonder why some cultural centers are empty? Maybe they have had enough of culture.

Back to some images. This is a tributary of a river. I am told that most of the trees in the foreground are either covered or washed away by the force of the water during the rainy season..

There are many tributaries of the main river. It flows through six countries before it empties into the sea via a delta...

Some tributaries are small but looks can be deceptive. I lived on the banks of this tributary for a few days. Just down the river it becomes ferocious...rafting, rubber tyre riding, diehards swimming.

Me, I like the gentle pleasures of life. Boating with good company to pass the time. I had many boats to choose from...

Where did I shack up?...on the river bank, of course. Simple, effective and with no pretensions..just the way I like it....

When not just watching the world go by from my shack ( the second hut in the pic ), I would walk down to the village to meet the people. And while boating the river bank gave me a glimpse of the simple life..the kind I seek. And they had clean sheets, as a norm!

Almost forgot..which river? The Mekong.

Which Delta? Now there is history there...turbulent history...the Mekong Delta. Want to hear about the history?

No, that would be an assault on the cultural sensitivities of most OPF's ' usual suspects '.

Let's stick to ' art ' galleries and cultural centers. Keeps everyone happy.

p.s. while I discuss lenses, I am not married to some fancy imaging equipment. Use what comes in handy or is available. These are with the Sony RX 100. And the sw. Nothing fancy..photogene and snapspeed on the Ipad. Layers and such like are for the ' artists ' amongst us.

After all it is just point and shoot.

 

[Asher Kelman]

One of the ' usual suspects ' again. But I discuss and post photographs. Lots of them. Discuss and talk.

Keeps the forum active!

Fahim,


Your pictures bring us to places we'd miss otherwise. Thanks! We wish you all the verve, finacnes and health to travel further and bring us back scenes like this one:

I prefer the pictures with people, as here. The scenes are very interesting in themselves, but it's the people that are draw to my own full attention.

Tell us how you travelled and how long you stayed. did you manage to get to stay long enough to really talk to the folks and get to know something about hteir lives.

Too often, we whizz through places and then check it off our itinerary as "done"!

Asher

 

[fahim mohammed]

Fahim,


Your pictures bring us to places we'd miss otherwise. Thanks! We wish you all the verve, finacnes and health to travel further and bring us back scenes like this one:

I prefer the pictures with people, as here. The scenes are very interesting in themselves, but it's the people that are draw to my own full attention.

Tell us how you travelled and how long you stayed. did you manage to get to stay long enough to really talk to the folks and get to know something about hteir lives.

Too often, we whizz through places and then check it off our itinerary as "done"!

Asher

Asher, I was fortunate that during my entire trip I had a guide and a driver at my disposal. This eased many problems. The biggest was the language barrier. I was surprised that even in the biggest cities
English was secondary to French ( obviously since the French had colonized these people ). But even then French was not as commonly spoken as I would have expected.

This limitation does not apply to tourist oriented places and tourist traps.

There is a saying in our part of the world which goes something like this..' No one serves a miser '...this applies to not only money matters but how one relates to the people one deals with.

My first job was to get my guide and driver more as friends than as someone paying for services only. They were surprised, initially, that I insisted we eat and drink together. This came easy for me. My skin color helped me along. My features were different, but somehow I understood their cultural nuances. Cannot explain it..it is the east. Respect. Not patronizing, but respect as a way of life for elders, places of worship, in the way one instinctively behaves..all this played a part. I was lucky.

I avoided the touristy places, once we has visited the major sites. I concentrated on the local villages.
Early, during the afternoons, dinner time, sleeping nearby.

I met with the guide and driver's families. We shared bread in their home. Their children, I played with.
I took their family photos. Surprisingly, it was they who asked if I would like to visit their home and families. Would I ? This was what I had come for.

Not all photos were the result of such Familiarity. But most were. My friends eased the initial phase for me. Once I had been introduced, the ice broken..it was up to me.

The main city. A big hotel. Everyone spoke English and French. Tourist groups in and out. The staff were trained to go out of their way to help. The Lao ( Laotian is wrong. They are the Lao. ) people are polite in the extreme by nature. More so to foreigners. But I needed to go a little further...I had to convince those I met that I was genuinely interested in them as a people and culture. Genuinely..not just for the afternoon. Here my friends were invaluable.

This young lady works in an office that I needed to visit multiple times. We had to break the ice. There were many foreigners queuing up for official business. I wanted to present myself more as a friend. I wanted to get to know a person. Not trying to pick a girl up for an evening. Others might have done much better than me here. But as I said I was lucky..

This photo, posted previously, in a result of that ice breaking..and our subsequent going out together.

It might seem cheesy, pretentious but I honestly subscribe to the view..

' go as a tourist, leave as a friend. '. I hope and expect I did that during this trip. Along the way I showed a bit of what we in the desert hold dear. Our values, the simple way of life. Money becomes very secondary. I know, we hardly discussed it after the initial meeting with the people that were my company for more than two short weeks.

Sorry for what seems as another lecture..not meant as such. This is how Ayesha and I behave when we visit another country. ' go as a tourist..leave as a friend ' Else, for us the travel is just a stamp in the passport. Photographing monuments is not why we travel. We can see most sites on the Internet.

We are lucky. We can travel alone. Affords us opportunities that we might miss traveling as a group to fixed schedules.

' you with the group '. No, I can honestly answer. I travel alone. For good or for bad. This is how and why I travel. To leave as a friend, at least to the few I come in contact with.

 

[Robert Watcher]

It might seem cheesy, pretentious but I honestly subscribe to the view..

' go as a tourist, leave as a friend. '. I hope and expect I did that during this trip. Along the way I showed a bit of what we in the desert hold dear. Our values, the simple way of life. Money becomes very secondary. I know, we hardly discussed it after the initial meeting with the people that were my company for more than two short weeks.

Sorry for what seems as another lecture..not meant as such. This is how Ayesha and I behave when we visit another country. ' go as a tourist..leave as a friend ' Else, for us the travel is just a stamp in the passport. Photographing monuments is not why we travel. We can see most sites on the Internet.

We are lucky. We can travel alone. Affords us opportunities that we might miss traveling as a group to fixed schedules.

' you with the group '. No, I can honestly answer. I travel alone. For good or for bad. This is how and why I travel. To leave as a friend, at least to the few I come in contact with.

I like that Fahim. Much like my methodology on my long excursions to Central American countries. I always enjoy visiting your photographic posts.

BTW - while checking my Google+ page morning, I came across this nice little online article that may be useful for people trying to get the most from their photography - such as you do Fahim - - - http://shoottokyo.com/daily-shooting/




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[fahim mohammed]

Robert, thanks for looking in.

I am sure that a great many of the photos in your Nicaragua narrative could not have been made but with having stayed a comparatively long time in the place and having the freedom to move around.

More importantly, it provided you with the chance to get to know the people. Become more than a gringo amongst them. Earn a bit of trust, respect and their friendship.

The rest is easy. As seen by the results you achieved there. People are the same..there are initial hangovers..once one gets over those, the rest becomes relatively easy for the most part.

I pity the tourist with an attitude. He/she must carry that attitude where he/she goes..abroad or in their hometown. Pity.