Today I am going to share 14 images from yesterday’s “photo shoots” on the 2011 Myanmar (Burma) photo tour.
Our first stop of the day was at Mahamuni Temple, the holiest Buddhist shrine in upper Myanmar. We then traveled to Mahagandaryon monastery and photographed hundreds of monks receiving their daily meal. As usual there were more photo opportunities then one could ever hope to cover, so each person chose what interested them most.
I spent most of the time in one particular area photographing the monks going back and forth with their bowls of food. I did a bit of panning and also tried to capture something unique with “stairways” and “feet”.
George, one of the participants on this trip spent a bit of time with one of the monks who was interested in practicing his English. The monk asked George for some English slang phrases. It was really funny to hear the explanations of things like “pulling your leg”, and “hey dude”.
We all were having so much fun at the monastery that we didn’t want to leave, but there were more places to visit, like an old teak monastery with a small school with 11 students ranging in age from 4 to 12 years of age. The lighting in the old monastery was wonderful and we all made some beautiful images.
Later in the afternoon we visited my favorite nunnery on Sagaing hill and photographed the nuns who wear a unique combination of pink and orange robes. The “head mother” allowed us into their compound and we enjoyed photographing the nuns as they compared their evening meal. I think they had as much fun as we did!
Our last stop of the day was at one of Myanmar’s most well-known landmarks: Ubien’s bridge, the longest teak bridge in Asia which spans over 1 km. Some of our group chose to photograph the bridge from boats we hired so they could get a low angle shot, while others walked on top of the bridge photographing monks, bicyclists, and women carrying heavy loads on their heads. I had some fun photographing a young boy was jumping off the bridge. It is very similar to some images I made in July at Angkor Wat. I think that “jumping” is starting to be a “theme” for me.
All in all, it was another amazing day here in Myanmar!
Beautiful images Karl! This made me excited as I’m heading there this November. I’ll follow this adventure closely. And I could see Ruti on the previous posts! Hi! 😀
The photos are really inspiring me for the Burma trip next Feb. For some reason your new blog site really struggles to load on my slow internet connection. Often I just get half of an image. Are the file sizes large?
Wonderful ~ as always!
Thanks Ursula…and where are you these days? I’ll have to check your blog 🙂
Hi Katy,
Thanks for the positive comments….the Feb trip will be amazing too…I can’t wait.
In terms of the photos, they are 800×533 and all under 500KB, sorry you are having trouble viewing them 🙁
Great to hear from you Ferdz! Have a great trip while you are there!