The Photography of Dr. Jeffrey P. Harper

If you are ever in Bangkok and are looking for the best music, you can't beat the Saxophone on Victory Monument Circle. I was there last night with my old friend John Stiles and we saw and heard a great blues set with another of my old friends, Khun Chai, sitting in with the house band.  Khun Chai is perhaps one of the top 10 blues guitar players in the world, and I have seen all the great blues guitar players over the years.  Chai is magic. (Photo taken on my iPhone4.)

Dr. Jeff, Where do you live? What's it like there?

This is Chaengwattana Road in the northern suburbs of Bangkok.  It is a fast growing area with even faster growing traffic.  When I moved out here 14 years ago you could shoot a canon ball down Chaengwattana and not hit anybody.  Drive west about three miles from here and you come to my house. These two photos were taken from the same spot, facing 180 degrees apart.

The Thai Government has relocated most of the bureaucracy from the beautiful Thai style old buildings downtown to bright and architecturally plain modern buildings out in my part of town.  This has caused the traffic. You are looking east here. But I forgot to say . . . that I LOVE Bangkok!

I happened to be at my favorite camera store (!) and I happened to notice they had a (used) lens I happened to be looking for (!) and it happened to be at a good price (!), and it happened: I bought it!

So I took the aforementioned new (used) lense out for a test spin in the garden . . . to see wht it would do.

And as usual, there is always new beauty appearing out of the blue.

Like these African Violets I had never seen before . . . .

. . . . or these otherworldly waxy red things with a collection of white sticky protuberances jutting out of the top.  I was afraid to get my head too close because they were pulsating like something out of the movie Alien!

Too sweet red buds.

The new (used) Sigma DG OS 18-200mm performed admirably in all kinds of lighting . . . and the optical stabilizer (OS) actually worked.  Although this is not a perfect lense according to the reviews (although it is perfect for my purposes; these 850 pixle-width images for this web blog), this could be a sweet 'walking around' lens for me.

This is a very difficult lighting situation: bright color and deep shadow.  It came out pretty good . . . and at 200mm, it was great.

A trip to my garden wouldn't be complete without a photo or two of my beloved Lotus Flowers.

Yes, all-n-all, I am very happy with the new (used) lens.

During the past five days Alan Morton and I took 32 high school students from the International School Bangkok (ISB), as a part of their Global Citizens Week, into a poor neighborhood of Bangkok to do a community service project.  The project involved painting a pre-school for poor children as a part of the Human Development Foundation's (Mercy Center) poverty reduction efforts in Thailand.  A number of years ago a large conference (coincidentally in Bangkok) met and determined that the very best "development dollar" was the dollar used to "keep a girl in school through the 6th  grade," the consequence of which was lowered poverty, disease, infant mortality, and the lessening of the "cycle of poverty."  In Bangkok, Father Joe Maier, an old Height Ashbury Hippy (like myself) who founded the Human Development Fooundation (HDF), realized the issue related to keeping poor girls in school longer was the "eldest daughter syndrome" -- a situation where young girls drop out of school to take care of still younger siblings while their single mother is out earning money to support the family -- and therefore become trapped themselves in the "cycle of poverty."  The pre-school we painted represents a way to keep "older" girls in schools by taking care of the young children while the older girls are in school. Our painting will help maintain the infrastructure of this useful and successful program.  This is the 17th such HDF school Alan Morton and the ISB students have painted for Father Joe over the past 14 yeas in Bangkok.

The hard working students sanded, scraped, and cleaned all the surfaces in prepartation for painting.

Once the surface preparation was competed, the paint was applied.

The school cooks supplied us with delicious Thai food for lunch.

We prepared and  painted one half of the one-room school while the the students were in the other half of the school -- then switched sides.  The 107 students of this school were very happy with the brightness and cleanness of their "New School."

It was a very big job, made harder by the complexity of painting the slatted walls in the heat and humidity of Bangkok. But, as they say, many hands made light work!

Our student painters came from 10 different countries.

This child was very curious about what was happening on the other side of her classroom!

We used sweet pastel colors to make the "Nursery School" look like a nursery school.

The finished school looked great . . . and will be protected from the elements for at least 10 years.

As always, I couldn't help myself from taking photos of amazing images.

What is it about corrugated tin roofing that evokes the image of Poverty? The view from the school kitchen.

Yep, I celebrated my 5th Cycle (60th birthday) on October 10, 2010 (10/10/10), a day I have been anticipating since my 10th birthday (10 on October 10th).  It was a wonderful day spent with family and friends at the Rang Mahal restaurant atop the Rembrandt Hotel in Bangkok.

Yep, you guessed it: it's 10:10:10 on 10/10/10 . . . . a rare moment.

With my wonderful wife, Onchittra, and her brother Vechai's family.

The whole group of family and friends at the Rang Mahal, one of my favorite restaurants in Bangkok.

The table.  If you can imagine a five star Indian BUFFET, then you understand the attraction of the Rang Mahal . . . .

The Birthday Boy and Bangkok on 10/10/10.