The Photography of Dr. Jeffrey P. Harper

Took a soothing long-tail boat trip up the rural canals (klongs) of Samut Songkhram recently. Wish you were here.

If you have ever driven from Bangkok to the beaches of Hua Hin, you will have driven by the salt pans of Samut Songkhram.

Sometimes when you drive this road you see workers out in the salt pans preparing the salt for harvest.

The pans are flooded with sea water, from the nearby Gulf of Siam, and left to evaporate.

As more and more sea water evaporates, and more is added, the salt in solution becomes so saturated that it crystallizes.

To help the process, the salt crystals are raked up into rows and piles.

Working in that briny water all day in bare feet . . . . .

After all the salt has been removed, it is prepared for flooding again by a rolling machine.

These salt pan rolling machines are unique.

Wind mills are used to power the pumps that supply the sea water.

Borobudur Temple Complex is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  As such it is visited by many tourists, 99% Indonesian, every day.

Boroburdu Temple is one of the great archeological wonders of the world.  Built in the 8th century, it was abandoned not long after it was completed, covered with a heavy ash fall from a nearby volcano, and covered with thick jungle vegetation until it was discovered in 1901.  It is te Pompeii of the Buddhist world.

A panel from the Borobudur Temple in Central Java, Indonesia . . . one of the wonders of the ancient world.  I will post more of these amazing panels depicting the life and lessons of The Buddha soon.

 In addition to chronicling the Life of the Buddha, the panels that completely cover the temple also depict the lives of the elite, royal class.

The workmanship and artistry are of the highest order.

The views from the steps of Borobudur over the tropical landscape of Central Java was breathtaking.

The name "Lost Temple of Borobudur" certainly fits: it lay hidden beneath ash and jungle for 1300 years before it's rediscovery in 1901. 

We saw what must have been the most beautiful sunset of our lives on the way back to the Phoenix Hotel in Jogja.

Indonesia is a nation made up of thousands of islands.  Not all of the islands are served by large ships, so there is a need for smaller freighters to deliver the goods and bring back the products of these far flung places. Amazingly, these ships are still wooden and they are still loaded by stevedores, a process from out of the past.

Hand loading a wooden freighter.

In the age of the container ship it is quite remarkable to see scenes like these.

There are going to be a lot of happy little girls on some island somewhere in Indonesia. What a sight: a boatload of Barbie Doll de lux sets!

The docks were a rough and tough place filled with hard-working men and women.

OK . . . not everyone was a hard-worker.

The stevedores were all very friendly, and many asked to have their photos taken.

Many different kinds of cargo were being loaded and off-loaded.

The ships seemed very old.

The old ships require constant maintenance.  Here men are chinking the seams in the ship with jute.

It seemed like all the boats were being chinked.

It was a kind of photographers paradise: incredible images everywhere (despite the "poor" grey/silver light).

There were so many characters around, like this old "gopher."

I found a good excuse to go out on the road to try out my new Canon IS 24-105mm f4.0L lens with my new Canon 5D Mark II DSLR.

On the road with visiting friends Jeff & Sharon from Oregon.  This time we drive west out of Bangkok to Kanchanaburi Province where e visited the famous "Bridge over the River Kwai."

Many thousands of Dutch, British, Canadian, and American soldiers were killed in the building of the bridge and the "Death Railway" from the Thai coast up through Hell Fire Pass to the Burmese boarder. Many of the killed were buried here in an Allied Forces cemetery in Kanchanaburi.

There seemed to be many, many cemeteries in Kanchanaburi.  These are Thai Chedis at a Wat.

A Chedi forest.

The two hundred mile drive was through rough, dry hills dotted with many interest features, and typically strange development.

At the Hell Fire Pass Memorial there was an ostriche farm.

Hell Fire Pass, the route of the Death Railway from here to the Three Pagoda Pass and the Burmese boarder..

A fun thing to do on a road trip in Thailand is to turn off the main roads when you see tourist signs like "Tiger Temple." Tigers under construction.

We saw this fabulous hilltop Thai Wat from the road and turned in for a look see.

Strange hills at dusk in silhouette at the Wat.

The Wat had a special water Bikku.

We spotted this flower, some kind of a fly trap, growing from the trunk of a large tree. 

We arrived at the Burmese boarder just as it was getting dark and were turned back by Thai military personnel.  We drove back to the Nature Resort, rented a cabin that didn't have water, complained, and were given individual de lux cabins on a lake.  I awoke the next morning to geese in the fog.

The fog slowly lifted revealng a fantastic nature reserve . . .

. . . and this tree house.

We enjoyed "magic light" of the morning taking photographs of everything.