The Photography of Dr. Jeffrey P. Harper

I went out and about on a Saturday with my friend John Stiles.  We saw many wonderful things and listened to some fantastic music.

The Bangkok "Chinatown" is a very messy, noisy, busy place with a huge amount of human activity, mostly to do with commerce.

I really do not get down to this part of the city enough.  Even though about 30% of Bangkok is underwater, life goes on in the rest of the city without adult supervision, as we expats like to call it.

Busy, busy businessmen.  Here we see a shop dedicated to selling fake rice sacks; "Value Added" takes on a whole new meaning.

Chinatown, along the river, is the oldest part of Bangkok.  The buildings exude a worn and aged charm.

When I first moved to Bangkok I had the fantasy of living in one of these kinds of neighborhoods. What, exactly, is the beauty here?

I spotted a sign on the main street saying there was a temple down the alley.

We found a very old, and beautifully kept, Chinese Buddhist Temple wedged among the tiny passageways of old Chinatown, Bangkok.

The courtyard of the Chinese Temple was festooned with yellow lanterns.

I poked around a side and found the leprous temple keeper and asked if I could go in and pray.  He nodded yes. The space was magnificently decorated.

The new temple banners showed the signs of recent ceremonies conducted in honor large donors.

There were many small vestibule-like altar rooms around the temple . . . .

. . . that were exquisitely decorated with the phantasmagoria of the Chinese Buddhist pantheon.

Many famalies lodge their hopes, prayers, and wishes here.

Each altar had become a new construction of a unique spirit world.

Every detail tells a story from ancient Chinese spiritual literature, like these incense holders with peacock fronds.

The Buddhist Temples in Thailand are not archeological curiosities, but living places of spiritual refreshment. I love the celebratory use of twinkling holiday lights.

I made a large donation before we left and received a special honorary receipt from the kind temple keeper.

As it grew darker we descended into the deep back alleys of the Bangkok Chinatown.

A yellow inflatable boat in a dark alley was one of many clues that nearly thirty percent of Bangkok was under water from massive flooding . . . but not this part.

By nightfall we found our way back to the commercial streets.

The mix of mercury vapor and neon lighting played nicely upon the telephone lines across this old Chinatown storefront.

Every once in a while a photo just creates itself right in front of you.

Damn Tourists.  Not really.  Peter, an out-of-towner visiting my friend John, trying to figure out if it is better to take the Skytrain or taxi to get to Victory Monument Circle from Chinatown.  We took the taxi.

Victory Monument Circle on a Saturday night.  It seemed almost deserted, no doubt, because of the floods.

Down this small side street off of Victory Monument Circle you can find the best blues, funk, and reggae in Bangkok.

The Saxophone Jazz and Blues Club.  I am always happy to be there.  There were two bands on that night.

The House Band fronted by a very talented blues guitarist.

His BB King covers were noteworthy.

But the highlight of the evening  was a funk/reggae band I had never heard.  They came on at midnight and played until 3:00am! The completely rocked the joint . . . got everybody up out of their seats and dancing!  Definitely one of the best live bands I have heard in many, many years.  I will go back to see them again . . . and soon.

Only 4 foot 9 inches, but the most powerful and controlled singer in this quadrant of the universe.  Every band member was very, very talented.  Amazing!

Here are a few more images from that wonderful day . . . . saved as a slide show (which I am still figuring out).

We couldn't stand sitting around the house worrying abut whether the canal (klong) next to our house would rise and flood us out . . . so when an invitation came from good friends to go to Jomtien Beach to sit on the beach and play golf with them, we jumped at the chance.

Our friends happen to own the Siam Country Club, where my wonderful wife played for two days . . .

. . . . and a beautiful oceanfront condo . . .

. . . with a very beautiful Thai style interior . . .

. . . a very, very high Thai aesthetic at work here.

I roamed the beach and adjacent fishing port with my trusted 5D Mark II.

While walking down the beach, I came across students from the Thai-Austrian School, who had walked across the street from their school for a break on the beach.  Seeing I had a camera, they HAD to pose.

Thee are many, many expatriates living in this part of Thailand (Pattaya area), including many newly affluent Russians. They all like to sit under a parasol and drink beer all day.

Without a doubt, the number one beach chair.

Or one chair for yourself, and one each for your seven friends.

At the beach there were Hot Dog Kite Surfers (HDKS) showing off at all hours of the day.

Some of them were very good.

Some of them were excellent!

It was a family beach.  These boys were having lots of fun.

I could not make my mind up which photo to post of the boys in the surf . . . so here are both!

I remember doing this as a boy: just you and the sea.

On one end of the beach was an old fishing basin.

Very nautical, no?

I loved how the bows of so many boats lined up.  Beautiful.

Such a bright day . . . . with a polarizing filter on my camera . . . . and a mass of colorful Thai fishing boats.

There were workmen repairing the Jomtien pier, so I walked out in a supervisory capacity.

The Jomtien Pier, with a small tree, offered many photographic opportunities. This B&W is only OK.  I will work from the raw file for a better B&W shot.

Really, there was no reason to manipulate the image; it was quite wonderful as it came out of the camera.

Then again, with a slightly different exposure . . . . it becomes very moody.

It was a day for moody, almost Biblical, skies.

Heavily back-lit, this person in a tube gave the impression of floating in moonlight when converted to B&W.  Nice. Strange.

I woke up early on the second day and went down to the sea.  A fisherman was out casting his nets.

He set and retrieved his ring net many times, but, after an hour, I didn't see him catch any fish.

He finally gave up and left.

I walked back down the sea shore to the fishing boat basin.  The light was beautiful.

The fishing boat basin was man-made.  You can see the big hotels and condos of Pattaya in the background. Jomtien is about 20 kilometers east of Pattaya.

The sun was bright and clear, the colors vivid.

There was so much material for photography . . . so many evocative images.

Many curious details of the fisherman's life.

Dropping anchor.  Many small boats came in during the morning's high tide.

Wonderful colors and shapes . . . .

. . . . that could be photographed from several angles.  I was overwhelmed with trying to figure out all the possible compositions!

In the end, I just sat and watched this old fisherman make and repair nets.

Hua Hin is a Royal beach town about a 2 1/2 hour drive from Bangkok; close enough to drive for a week-end, far enough so it is no too crowded.  It is my favorite town in Thailand  . . .  well, besides Loei.

The Morning:

In addition to being a destination for Bangkok week-enders, it is also a real, bustling market town.

I am a bit of a creature of habit when it comes to my trips to Hua Hin.  My favorite place for breakfast/brunch is the All In Hua Hin, a German restaurant and store.  It is said that perhaps as many as 150 Germans and Scandinavian snow-birds retire to Hua Hin each month.

I don't know what it is about this place, but as soon as I sit down in it, I feel like I am on vacation.

All In Hua Hin is also, in some ways, a small town German grocery.  Cheese, meats, condiments, and other foods from Germany made available to the growing retirement community makes Hua Hin feel like a hybrid Euro-Thai town.  Nice. There are many such establishments in Hua Hin, but this is my favorite.

Warm, baked-just-for-me rolls, paprika sausages, German mustard, and the best god damn yogurt, beet, pickle, and herring salad on earth! My favorite lunch.

The Wet Market:

After my lunch I fitted my new 70-200mm USM II lens and went for a walk to the Hua Hin wet market. Although the wet market is quite large, you sorta-kinda have to know where the entrance is - amid the confusion.

The wet market entrance is on the left, half way down.  This same street is converted into the famous Hua Hin "Night Market.".  The cars are cleared and market stalls are set up.

The market area attracts a lot of local color . . . and local characters.

There are various ways to get yourself and your products to and from the market.

The pick-up truck bus conversion is common in small town Thailand.

The wet market spills out on to the streets nearby . . . into the cart world.

Cart world presents you with very hard decisions even before you enter the wet market.  These scrumptious little buggers are to absolutely to die for!

Once inside the wet market the world changes: the science of product arrangement fully on display.  Lots of dried shrimp, fish, and assorted fish snack here.

One of my lifelong hobbies is the worldwide quest for "What Counts As A Snack." This array of bagged finger food certainly rates a 9.3 on the Harper Scale of Obscure Snackage (HSOS).

Squid (sa-quid in Thaiglish) snack at its best; fresh from the drying racks. Pungent, piquant, pretty tasty.

The amazing new 70-200mm lens is an f2.8, so low light is no problem.  I wore a bright green t-shirt so I would blend right in . . . . a forest, not a market!

It's a good thing to have a long low light telephoto lens in a market so you don't have to get right up in people's faces. A chicken merchant at work.

Hua Hin is a seaside town, so fresh sea food abounds.  This iced squid in the wet market is surprisingly photogenic, don't you think?

Fish of every kind, size, and color is for sale.

The Hua Hin wet market.

A Hua Hin chicken tender, of sorts.  There is a large fresh meat section in the market.  No USDA inspectors to be seen anywhere . . . or refrigeration either.

The proper way to cure pork filet, au naturale. This may be my best meat portrait ever!

A potential Frank Zappa or Captain Beefheart album cover. Meat framing is novel, don't you think?

You don't see this every day, thank Goodness. The meat section of Thai wet markets always have these hanging about in their mock porcine serenity.

A part of the au naturale meat curing is a thick layer of grit and grime. "Waiter, I'll have that pork chop well done, if it's not too much trouble."

There is a small Islamic population in Thailand. The market had this delicious halal hot curry paste for non-pork cookery.

Islamic Thai halal curry paste vendor.

Grind these and press them for their milk, add to the curry paste, add some chicken and veggies and you have a wonderful meal.

There are many sections to this market, including the fruits and vegetables.  Life spent day after day in  the same market stall seems to conjure an indelible patina of longing.

Helping Mom in her market flower stall.

The accouterments of Buddhist practice are everywhere.

Incense bundles.

I can  spend all day in these markets: the light and shadow, color and smells are completely captivating.

The perfect Thai market photo? I love this still life.

My daughter's favorite snack: dried fish strips.

Portraits of stacked dried fish is not for everybody, I know, but I am fascinated by the color, textures, and pattern.

Dried fish with sesame seeds, a variation on the theme. A strong sense of otherworldly actuality is somehow induced in the presence of these wonderful assemblages of light and color.

Nice in soup and the Thai noodle dish, pad thai.

Back out on the street and down an alley to my truck, the view changes.

Right out of the pages of The Saturday Evening Post.

There is something to say for a lack of maintenance: it makes for beautiful aesthetic surfaces to photograph.

Like this.

The Seaside Buddhist Temple:

I decided I wanted to go to see the big Buddha statue on the sea. The beach is developed for tourism, but there aren't too many tourists these days. The only vacationers are the horses!

There were a few ocean bathers . . . with hats and t-shirts on so they wouldn't get dark from exposure to the sun, a major Thai concern.

The Hua Hin Buddha colossus.

There is a large rock head (literally, hua hin in Thai) that juts out into the sea with a colossal Buddha statue and Wat (Thai Buddhist temple) on it.

It was a wonderfully peaceful place.  This monk selling amulets, a nun selling incense, gold leaf, string, and candles were the only other people there.

I bought incense, a candle, and gold leaf to place on the altar; and two strings to tie around my wrist to remember the occasion as a blessing. These old Wat altars are fantastical things, thick with age and the residue of its own devotional history.

Some Buddha images are considered extra-ordinary and seem to command more gold leaf application than others.

Small Buddha statuary is available for purchase to adorn the family altar.

Many Thais wear these encased Buddha amulets, sold at Wats.  There is a huge trade and speculative market in these, seemingly against all the tenets of Buddhism.

For me, the Buddha image is an advertisement, from the past, for what good can be done with the mind, in the present.

Flower actuality.  Thanks Buddha for helping me notice.

The Night Market:

After a wonderful two hour afternoon oil massage I met my wife at her golf course and we headed to the Hua Hin night market.  At dusk every day the same street that accesses the wet market is cleared of cars and the many stalls of a night market are erected.

Hua Hin is not called a market town for nothing.  There is something Medieval about the night market, as if the setting up of this market has been going on for thousands of years.  It's good to see it has lasted into the present, in spite of the cancerous spread of the multinational mall and cheap goods emporiums.

The same street in which I took photographs this morning in front of the wet market entrance, now a beautiful blue dusk.

The night market was strangely empty . . . it was not a three-day week-end and there was a threat of flooding in Bangkok.

As darkness descended, the brightly colored textiles stood out in the night stalls.

The Night Market is made up of walking vendors, stalls, and carts, like this sticky rice and mango vendor has.

My favorite desert, beautifully displayed.

A mother and son sweet roti cart.

Other desert carts specialize in Asian Ice Deserts. "What Counts As Desert" also applies here: beans, corn bean paste, wheat, green gelatinous worms . . . . all very good on ice with coconut milk.  Your choice!

Fancy some dried meat?  Fresh or packaged? 

The Hua Hin night market is a good place to go for a seafood dinner . . . and we have many times.

Looking into a market stall is like looking into a face; complex and telling.  These photos are like a human portrait.

You select your own ingredients for your fried noodles.

A smoothy cart enveloped in the immensity of the universe.

And what would the universe be without tropical fruit?

You can find just about anything at the Hua Hin Night Market.

See anything you like? Wood carvings and bronze castings.  The Hua Hin night market has an endless variety of . . . . .

. . . . beautifully hand-crafted, hand-carved candles in wooden boxes . . . . .

. . . . and mundane things . . . . and . . . .

. . . . and sacred Buddha votive items for the home altar . . . .

. . . . many, many sacred Buddha things. I do not approve of the selling of dismembered Buddha parts (heads, hands, and feet are common) as tourist souvenirs.  If you own a [whole] Buddha statue, you must take care of it; it belongs on an alter and must be tended with respect.

The faces of the stalls fascinate.

These night market stall portraits never cease to fascinate.

* In my tropical garden and around the house with my new Canon 5D Mark II and my trusty Sigma 70mm macro lens.  All shots were taken hand held with available light.  Here are the results.

It is the wet season and moss and mold is growing on everything, even my garden path.

All the foliage is healthy and lush.

It was an overcast day, so I am very satisfied with the low light performance of the 5D. There is so much new growth . . . unfurling all around the garden . . . secret growth.

Highly scented flowers are dropping now with the hope of propagation,  although some get waylaid.

Spiny textures everywhere.

Nothing is going to eat this one . . .

. . . or climb this one.

The polarizing filter helps cut the reflections for photos like this.

As the palms grow and their trunks expand, they shed this twine-like fiber. Very beautiful.

We have a small stand of "slow growing" bamboo too.

Shocking red.

The gloomy light left a wonderful mood in the garden.

Like most people in Thailand, we have, and maintain, a Spirit House. This is a maintenance detail.

There are so many beautiful things to see in the garden, like this lotus urn, but I want to go inside now.

Living and travelling in Asia means you accumulate little somethings.

Memories and talismans from here and there, for this and that.

If you don't know, don't ask.

We enjoyed building our home; so many materials from around the world either find their way to Bangkok, or are made here.

We live near Koh (Island) Kred, famous for it's red clay ceramics.

We had booked a golf tee time for Sunday afternoon, but the weather was threatening  . . . . so we decided to drive the 30 miles to Nakhon Chai Si for lunch and a little shopping for the local small town delicacies my wife and I both like.

The old section of Nakhon Chai Si is a typical Thai market town.  Its close proximity to Bangkok brings out the Sunday drivers in search of the rare taste treat - a favorite Thai pastime.

We had lunch at a floating restaurent specializing in sea food . . . and aesthetically pleasing presentation.

We had beautiful fish simmering in a spicy sour sauce.  Yum-yum.

After we engorged ourselves on the fantastic lunch, we headed to the old market.  Lots of sea food there, and many other amazing little bundles of good-tasting Thai food-to-die-for.

We brought back our favorite salted sea bass for dinner this week.

There was much fruit to be had.

This "organic packaging" is stuffed with gooey coconut delight.The local way of cooking spiced rice is steaming inside bamboo tubes.

Thai chilis, known as prick in Thai, are hot.  Period.

These are delicious steamed with olive oil and lots of salt.

The market was framed by old shop houses smudged with the patina of age.

The light was incredible as it fell on the old shop doors.

I estimate that this part of Old Nakhon Chai Si is more than 100 years old.

The old wooden Thai towns are relics of a bygone era.

It is nice to see young people taking over these old shops and adding a modern touch, yet retaining the old charm.  Coffee time?

Some of the shops, like this old pharmacy, have been kept in their 1950s state.

The old town of Nakhn Chai Si is under royal patronage. The ailing King of Thailand is much revered.

We had some car trouble (shift linkage) while parked at a Wat that led to an adventure in getting home.  Part of the adventure landed us at this small suburban shop; so forlorn in its commercial nakedness.

The shopkeeper's pretty young daughter perched among the array of goods, sad and shy.

The shop was in a neighborhood peopled by motorized food vendors.

It is always a good day when I can hang around a holy tree and contemplate The Buddha, The Teachings of The Buddha, and The Followers of The Buddha.