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Well, not wanting to seem a copy cat of DEATH, I spent most of July in Thailand and Cambodia on vacation, and ever since I got back I’ve been sorting through all the pictures I took(over 1700!) Click on the pictures for bigger versions, and more pictures.

After arriving, we started our vacation in Hua Hin, a beach/resort town. I didn’t actually get that many pictures there, but the beaches were beautiful. Later I should have some panoramas of it.

While there we went on a deep sea fishing trip. On the way out we passed some of the local fishing boats:




They were all sorts of bright colours, but unfortunately it was very overcast, so most of my pictures came out really dull.

Here is the captain of our boat:


I think he was a bit confused by me sitting there snapping away.

There are also lots of dogs in Thailand.



That’s pretty much all my good pictures from Hua Hin. Next up will be pictures from Bangkok!

Next stop, Bangkok, the capital of Thailand. From there we went on many trips into the surrounding area.

Our big trip out took us first to a floating market:



It was basically a large tourist trap, but it was pretty cool going around in a boat, looking at all the things they were trying to sell us.

After that we went out and fed monkeys on a river. There were so many monkeys, and a few even came right up to the boat. Most held back a few feet thought.





Monkeys apparently have huge nuts!

There were even cute baby monkies!


All my other monkey pictures are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dwillmott/tags/monkeys/

I also got to put my new macro lens to use in Bangkok.


I think this lily was about an inch across at most. And this is an uncropped shot:



There were also lots of bee things:



And then there were lots of dogs on the streets in Bangkok:



There are also lots of beggars in Thailand:


I then left for Cambodia. I did return to Bangkok after that, so more pictures from Bangkok to come after my Cambodia ones!

Dang man, you have some AMAZING photos in there. Best are: The first of the man in the first set, monkeys in the second, and the flowers. Really amazing proffessional looking shots.
What's your gear, remind me?

DEATH wrote:Dang man, you have some AMAZING photos in there. Best are: The first of the man in the first set, monkeys in the second, and the flowers. Really amazing proffessional looking shots.
What's your gear, remind me?

Thanks! I love taking shots of flowers and animals.

My gear as of now is a Konika Minolta Maxxum 5D, thought I am looking to upgrade to the Sony A700.

For lenses I have a 50mm prime, a 50mm macro, a 70-200 tele, and a 18-80mm. The two 50mm lenses were new to me for this trip and were awesome. The prime gets some amazingly sharp pictures. The macro is nice and sharp, and auto focuses up to 7 or so inches, but if i manually focus I can focus in pretty much as close as i want, light allowing. I can get up to 1:1 on it.

I would highly recommend a prime lense if you don't have one. The 50mm might be a bit of to much of a zoom, but I like how you don't get a fisheye effect with it.

Darth Mall wrote:

DEATH wrote:Dang man, you have some AMAZING photos in there. Best are: The first of the man in the first set, monkeys in the second, and the flowers. Really amazing proffessional looking shots.
What's your gear, remind me?

Thanks! I love taking shots of flowers and animals.

My gear as of now is a Konika Minolta Maxxum 5D, thought I am looking to upgrade to the Sony A700.

For lenses I have a 50mm prime, a 50mm macro, a 70-200 tele, and a 18-80mm. The two 50mm lenses were new to me for this trip and were awesome. The prime gets some amazingly sharp pictures. The macro is nice and sharp, and auto focuses up to 7 or so inches, but if i manually focus I can focus in pretty much as close as i want, light allowing. I can get up to 1:1 on it.

I would highly recommend a prime lense if you don't have one. The 50mm might be a bit of to much of a zoom, but I like how you don't get a fisheye effect with it.

I only have an amateur's sigma 18-200, without even a filter to go along. I'd love a prime and/or a macro, but I didn't even have the budget to buy this gear, let alone more for myself .

I LOVE how accurate and "realistic"/shaded your photos are, especially of people (and the first monkey photo, for example), have you edited it in photoshop much or used filters?

My 50mm/1.4 lens is my most heavily used lens. It really is fun to use, even though it's equivalent to an 80mm lens on my 400D.

Also ... dang, there's a dearth of affordable primes for the Four Thirds system. Nikon F and Canon EOS both have cheap 50/1.8 lenses.

DEATH wrote:

Darth Mall wrote:

DEATH wrote:Dang man, you have some AMAZING photos in there. Best are: The first of the man in the first set, monkeys in the second, and the flowers. Really amazing proffessional looking shots.
What's your gear, remind me?

Thanks! I love taking shots of flowers and animals.

My gear as of now is a Konika Minolta Maxxum 5D, thought I am looking to upgrade to the Sony A700.

For lenses I have a 50mm prime, a 50mm macro, a 70-200 tele, and a 18-80mm. The two 50mm lenses were new to me for this trip and were awesome. The prime gets some amazingly sharp pictures. The macro is nice and sharp, and auto focuses up to 7 or so inches, but if i manually focus I can focus in pretty much as close as i want, light allowing. I can get up to 1:1 on it.

I would highly recommend a prime lense if you don't have one. The 50mm might be a bit of to much of a zoom, but I like how you don't get a fisheye effect with it.

I only have an amateur's sigma 18-200, without even a filter to go along. I'd love a prime and/or a macro, but I didn't even have the budget to buy this gear, let alone more for myself .

I LOVE how accurate and "realistic"/shaded your photos are, especially of people (and the first monkey photo, for example), have you edited it in photoshop much or used filters?

I have a circular polarizer, but never use it. I've never found any effect from it that I can't get in post processing.

I do uselightroom to post process all my pictures. Its just exposure things I tend to fix, though sometimes I will change the saturation. usually it's just a matter of darkening the darks, and lightening the lights a little.

As for lenses, you should be able to get used ones for cheap. There should be a whole bunch of them on the market now, because if i remembre correctly you shoot with a canon, and alot of the pro photographers have recently switched over to nikons.

My prime and macro were both used when I got them. I bought them at www.adorama.com. There is also B&H photo, and even amazon. here is one. I'm sure that there are also used shops in Israel.

I'll get my Cambodia pictures up in a minute

Next stop was Siem Reap in Cambodia. This is where the famous Cambodian temples, including Angkor Wat.

On our first day out our tour guide pointed this out to us. Apparently it is the only carving of its kind, and it bears a striking resemblance to a stegosaurus:


This is a Nāga, a mystical 7 headed snake. They show up in many different asian cultures.

This is a view up a temple we went into:

This was a carving that had had a tree grow around it, leaving the face poking out. Many of the temples were overgrown with trees.

Here is another example of the trees. They often bust down walls and ceilings, and much of the renovation in the temple complex is to fix damage from the trees:

This picture and the following are from Ta Prohm or as it is also know, the Tomb Raider temple. Parts of Tomb Raider were filmed here.

This was someone who was working at cutting the grass in the area down resting.

Here is the first view of Angkor Wat that I had. We approached from the back of the temple, opposed to the traditional approach from the front.

You can see here how there is reconstructive repairs on the temple.

This is a view down one of the hallways that surround the temple. The wall on the right is covered in carvings of various Hindu myths.

This is a carving that was on the base of the pillars on the left of the hall. Many of them were damaged and worn.

Here is a carving from the right hand wall.

This is a carving of Aspara dancers.

These pillars were in all the windows:

A view from the front of Angkor Wat. There are pools of water infront of the temple, allowing you to get great reflection shots

These guys were out collecting vegetation from the water:

This is a shot from a balloon I went up in. It had a great view of Angkor Wat, but it was far to hazy to get any good pictures of the temples.

This was some carving on a temple wall:

Statues that have had their heads knocked off

Another Aspara dancer:

One of the faces of the Bayon temple. The temple has around 200 of these massive faces carved into its towers.

More faces:



We went out to a boat for dinner one night, and this was the view of the sunset:

Another carving, of some human bird hybrid:

A Cambodian lion. Supposedly the reason that the lions aren’t very life like is that the carvers had probably never seen a lion, and were going off what they had been told they looked like.

Another temple:

A macro shot of a beetle that had just shed its carapace:

This picture is a combination of 16 pictures that I took with my 50mm prime and I then stitched together:



a quickr pickr post

Feel free to comment or ask any questions. I would highly recommend travelling to Thailand or Cambodia is possible.

I've seen that 'stegosaurus' picture before because some creationists were using it as evidence that dinosaurs existed alongside humans.

Your pictures are stunning. So how was that other great thing about going to foreign countries, the food?