Two young monks stop watching their fellow monks play football to have their picture taken by me.
Location: Nyaungshwe, Myanmar
Lens used: 24-105mm f4.0 IS
Several vendors and a single customer at the town market.
Location: Nyaungshwe, Myanmar
Lens used: 24-105mm f4.0 IS
The white powder you see folks all over the country wearing, both in rural and urban settings is both a local cosmetic and sunscreen. Children and woman seem to wear it primarily, but it certainly isn't unusual to see men with it on, as well. Sometimes it's slathered on pretty thick, like these two women have theirs. Other times, it's applied selectively with swirls and other artistic touches.
Location: Inle Lake, Myanmar
Lens used: 24-105mm f4.0 IS
Inle lake isn't deep - probably no more than 2 meters for most of it's area.
This man's bamboo-framed net goes into the water upright and sits on the lake bottom. By 'pumping' the net inside the frame, he creates suction that draws the fish into the net.
Location: Inle Lake, Myanmar
Lens used: 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 IS
The boatman of Inle lake are known for their 'leg rowing'. However, I'd read before going there that this technique had fallen out of favor and wasn't used much anymore, with the locals only turning it on when tourists were around. However, I saw a ton of boatmen using it while working their nets when there wasn't a tourist anywhere near. It must not be that out of favor.
Location: Inle Lake, Myanmar
Lens used: 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 IS
Many of the villages around Inle Lake have workshops full of craftspeople making tons of crap for the local tourist market and/or export. Visitors taking boat tours around the lake get drug to them, which can be tedious if they're not what you're after. Thankfully, there is very little pressure to buy and some of the workshops can even be interesting if paper maché, weaving, or metal work are your thing.
I took this in the umbrella factory.
Location: Inle Lake, Myanmar
Lens used: 24-105mm f4.0 IS
From what I understand, there are tribes in this region of Asia that still practice the tradition of elongating the necks of their women with these disks. In Myanmar, from what I was told, they live 'in the south'.
Because I photographed these two women at a tourist craft shop, there is the question of their authenticity. The disks they wore, however didn't appear to be of the removable-at-the-end-of-the-work-day variety, so my guess is they're the real deal. Perhaps these women relocated from their remote villages to the much more touristy Inle lake region to try to increase their income-generating opportunities.
Location: Inle Lake, Myanmar
Lens used: 24-105mm f4.0 IS
Though very few of the Bagan temples are venerated anymore, they're not completely ignored by the locals. Like the foreign tourists that come here, the locals also enjoy climbing them and hanging out. These young guys climbed the same temple I was enjoying this evening to work on their biology homework and later, as the sun started to set, admire the view.
They were cool and were willing to indulge me in my desire to get a good photo. Here, they gave me a pretty 'natural-looking' pose of contemplating the view. Thanks Guys!
Location: Bagan, Myanmar
Lens used: 10-22mm f3.5-4.5
The Myanmar government has closed off roof-access to some of the larger Bagan temples, such as this impressive gold-plated one in an attempt to get people (foreigners and locals alike) to pay to go into the man-made viewing platform they built in the middle of the Bagan plain. Ignorant folks on organized tours, near as I can tell are the only ones that fall for this ploy. Independent-types are usually much more savvy than this and try their darnedest as they travel around the country to give the repressive Myanmar regime as little money as possible.
Thankfully, the vast majority of the thousands of temples at Bagan are free and open to whomever wishes to climb up them and soak up the views.
Location: Bagan, Myanmar
Lens used: 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 IS
A late afternoon shot of the Irrawaddy river and a couple of temples, taken from on-high.
I like how the dirt roadways draw you into the shot.
In hindsight, I probably used too intense a Grad ND filter for this shot as the whole scene looks a little 'fake' (a 2-stop may have been more appropriate). But I'm okay with it.
Location: Bagan, Myanmar
Lens used: 10-22mm f3.5-4.5 w/3-stop Grad ND filter
The nearly 100 meter tall Shwedagon Pagoda is the most sacred shrine for Burmese Buddhists. It's covered in many hundreds of kilos of gold and topped with several thousand rubies and diamonds.
The main structure is surrounded by numerous other stupa and shrines. In this shot, you get a sense of how the main stupa dwarfs everything around it.
Location: Yangon, Myanmar
Lens used: 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 IS
Sacks of peppers and pepper seeds at the weekly town market. Just the thing to give your cooking a little 'kick'.
Location: Nyaungshwe, Myanmar
Lens used: 24-105mm f4.0 IS
A market vendor measures out and bottles cooking oil.
Location: Nyaungshwe, Myanmar
Lens used: 24-105mm f4.0 IS
Legumes and veggies at a market stall.
Location: Nyaungshwe, Myanmar
Lens used: 24-105mm f4.0 IS
Parents love showing off their kids.
Location: Nyaungshwe, Myanmar
Lens used: 24-105mm f4.0 IS
A market vendor scoops up - something - for a customer.
So much of what one sees at foreign markets, particularly in Asia is unknown to westerners (or at least to me). This is what makes eating out in these places fun and exciting.
Location: Nyaungshwe, Myanmar
Lens used: 24-105mm f4.0 IS
