aahhhh.... Phuket. Very nice. So, you're going to work for this diving company? Are your going to be leading dives, or what? Either way... sounds like a most excellent time.
Get an underwater PnS. You can get a good one for around $130 USD, you might be able to get one really cheap over there.
aahhhh.... Phuket. Very nice. So, you're going to work for this diving company? Are your going to be leading dives, or what? Either way... sounds like a most excellent time.
Get an underwater PnS. You can get a good one for around $130 USD, you might be able to get one really cheap over there.
Ooh, ten feet wouldn't be enough for us! I've already borrowed the shop's camera and been convinced that I definitely need gear of my own, but alas the budget for that would be more than we had at the beginning for the whole trip! I'll have to find a way to sell photos or something to make tons of money for that!
Yeah the company here has a program to train up to divemaster level and then get some experience as a divemaster. The work is certainly far less demanding than anything I do at home, so I have nothing at all to complain about. I'll have to work some on the side too though, so if anybody has an odd web design job or needs some photos of the tropics, I'm willing to provide!
Anyway, as I said, I borrowed the shop's camera for a photography dive and learned a few of the basics. It's a simple P&S Canon with no lights, so colors were quite tricky, but I'm just stoked to get to shoot at least a bit of what I see! This dive is at a place called Shark Point, a tiny chunk of rock sticking above the surface with a couple other smaller towers that don't reach dry air, surrounded by a reef teeming with life. We started our dive at one end of the group and without much ado we dropped beneath the surface to drift with a light current along the length of the rocks. Here's Paul at the surface, prior to descent.
A giant red coral fan backdrops a fish who seems a bit unsure of my proximity.
For those unfamiliar with the underwater world, one of the quirks you have to work with is the rapidly diminishing wavelengths of light as you descend. It doesn't take very much distance before you start to lose reds, then oranges, yellows, and so on. To compensate, you can set the white balance on the camera, but the closest thing I have to a white card is the back of my hand (very white Alaskan skin) and then the rest I try to salvage in post. It works, but this on top of the lesser quality camera equipment presents some difficulties that can be hard to successfully overcome.
Regardless of the light though, some things come across plain as day. One of these is the sea urchin's natural message: DO NOT TOUCH!
One of the more popular goals of divers worldwide seems to be to swim with the turtles. No problem in this area, evidently. This one was moseying along the face of the reef with a whole pack of diver paparazzi following along taking pictures. The area is popular with many diving operations, so there's probably not a moment's peace for such a valuable photo subject until they wander away from the rocks. It didn't seem too bothered though, and just swam along nice and slow, giving plenty of time for photos.
Moray eels are some very awkward looking creatures, protruding at any angles from whatever small holes they can find to worm their thin bodies into. These ones are only about an inch and a half thick, but they can get big enough to bite off fingers and such, should you somehow resemble food.
Clownfish are popular in photos of course, with their bright colors and interesting personalities. These guys hang around the anemones, often disappearing to safety within the tentacles. Another anemone fish has a habit of staring right at you as you swim by, even inches away. I'll have to get some photos of those while I'm here.
The plant life in these waters is just as interesting as the animals. This small fern clings to the tip of a coral fan in shallower depths where a little more colorful light is able to drop in and paint things nicely.
Of course watching the floor of the ocean offers spectacular experiences, but you can't forget to look up and around you as well. Often you'll find a school of barracuda, or a larger fish of some variety that you'd miss if you just stared at the ground!
Our dive ends with a safety stop at five meters down. Explanations for this for non-divers are complicated, but put simply, with so much compressed air flowing through your body, a brief stop for three minutes at five meters helps you clear out a lot of the nitrogen absorbed in various tissues prior to going to the surface where atmospheric pressure is much less. Paul is holding a line attached to a safety buoy as a depth reference so we don't have to stare at our gauges the whole time - at this point we've drifted out of sight of any feature but the surface itself, so judging depth visually is very hard!
Our stay here in Phuket should be all the way through April if the current plan is maintained. Hopefully I'll have plenty of underwater photos for everyone, and if dreams come true at some point, I'll get my 40D down there with a light setup and do things right! We'll see though. For now, enjoy!
Ahh... I didn't know exactly how deep you were diving. But, I suppose ten feet isn't very far regardless. The proper setup for a 40D will be a couple grand... so, good luck with that
The pictures you took are pretty sweet. Even with the screwy white balance a technicality that will be forgiven for being in such an awesome location.
Maybe you could try advertising yourself as a destination wedding photographer... I hear a lot of high end folks get married in Phuket. That would raise the underwater housing funds quite nicely.
I think by June we'll be touring Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Burma. It's too far ahead to really say for sure of course, though. If you figured out what you wanted to do, we could always come back through Railay again, or tour those countries before going there, or you can travel with us. It would all be very worthwhile!
I wish more of my friends would actually come visit us.
I think by June we'll be touring Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Burma. It's too far ahead to really say for sure of course, though. If you figured out what you wanted to do, we could always come back through Railay again, or tour those countries before going there, or you can travel with us. It would all be very worthwhile!
I wish more of my friends would actually come visit us.
I would like to tour those countries as well and I am sure we would both be in for it. Of course Shasta has not been to Railay before so I would love to take her there too. Also she wants to ride an elephant which shouldnt be any kind of issue. So if you wanted to wait for a bit to tour we could tour along too.
I would like to tour those countries as well and I am sure we would both be in for it. Of course Shasta has not been to Railay before so I would love to take her there too. Also she wants to ride an elephant which shouldnt be any kind of issue. So if you wanted to wait for a bit to tour we could tour along too.
What's your time frame? Why go home? Three cameras will make us more valuable to businesses, and we can just keep going! Sign up for some classes in Australia next semester... :ivar
What's your time frame? Why go home? Three cameras will make us more valuable to businesses, and we can just keep going! Sign up for some classes in Australia next semester... :ivar
Although not a bad idea, my brother is getting married on August 21st in Seattle...and I am supposed to be his best man! That would be bad of me not to at least show up
We were thinking...Early to mid June until August 16th or so and head to Seattle then after the wedding back to Alaska.
Are you ever planning on coming home? Hehe Looks like you are having fun!
Going home at this point is not an option - we simply don't have enough money to even begin. We'll just have to get there when we get there! Plus, we still have six or seven countries that we set out to explore and haven't reached, so we would hate to head back without seeing them.
Going home at this point is not an option - we simply don't have enough money to even begin. We'll just have to get there when we get there! Plus, we still have six or seven countries that we set out to explore and haven't reached, so we would hate to head back without seeing them.
That is a powerful way to travel.
Moderator Journeys/Sports/Big Picture :: Need some help with dgrin?
Well the responsibilities and pressures of life here have kept me from taking and posting as many pictures as I'd like, which is a shame. Phuket has its many beauties, but also many bits of ugliness both prominent and concealed beneath the surface of local society that put a sort of pressure on us that can be hard to shake off at times. We find ourselves daily leaning on our anchors in faith and finding the little bits of good in life, and it keeps us happy even in the sad state of things on the island of Phuket.
It's expensive to live here at first, until you get the hang of avoiding the scams and finding the cheap food. Local transportation costs are controlled by a syndicated mafia of sorts, so they're exorbitantly high, preying on the innocent naivety of traveling tourists who don't have a grasp of prices yet, or who have no other options to get places. Prices for anything sold locally are typically doubled at minimum if you're white, and the fact that the Thai language has its own written symbols for numbers makes this quite easy - t's simply written one price in Thai, and another in regular numbers. After a month living here we've managed to cut our outflow of cash to a minimum, but of course we'd be more than happy to find an income of some sort to keep it coming in while it goes out!
So regular living and the work I'm doing taking tourists diving have kept me from shooting a whole lot lately. It's a strange phenomenon in my photography as long as I've been shooting that this is always the slowest time of year for me. The camera is still at my side though, and occasionally makes it out for a shot or two. Here's a glimpse of life on a Thai Longtail!
Paul comes out of the water after diving with a few students at one of the local training dive sites.
A pair of students enter the water for a dive at Koh Weo - that's Rock Island in English.
Monja, one of my fellow divemaster trainees, goes over a briefing with a group of divers on the leisurely ride out to Koh Weo. The island is up the coast about 30 minutes from Kamala Beach, and the boat ride is a nice one to get warmed up or cooled down from a few hours of diving.
Sunsets on the beach here are beautiful of course, but rather spoiled for my tastes by the throngs of people in various states of nudity from "really gross" to "complete". Long walks on the beach are easy to find though. I shot this with the Silhouettes contest in mind, as the sun goes down on a number of Thais out fishing for an evening's catch.
And of course it wouldn't involve us without a mushy self portrait to make our friends at home roll their eyes and sigh!
Since we've been here a month, we've used up our free time we get upon arrival and have to split for the border to re-up. Thailand has issues with foreigners working illegally in the country while only holding tourist visas, so they make it as inconvenient as possible for those guys to renew. This makes things hard for the rest of us as well, since we have to travel to another country, find a town with a Thai consulate, and apply there, which takes a few days. For us though, it's a welcome vacation from the work we've been doing to get by in Phuket. As we roll out of town on the small local bus, the pressure releases and we find ourselves back on the road, travelers once more on an adventure to see everywhere. We catch a bus to Hat Yai in southern Thailand, and as the sun sinks low we're told that there's no more buses out of the country tonight, so we grab a cheap and convenient room and hit the market
I can't really tell you how nice it is to buy good food and not be horrendously cheated by people who think we're rich because we're white. We're stoked, and in our excitement we shell out more money than we would have back in Phuket, shoveling goodies of all sorts into our very happy bellies.
The market at the bus station in Hat Yai fills a fairly large area completely covered over with umbrellas and tarps, and sells just about everything. We wander around soaking in the relaxed atmosphere and wishing Phuket was more like this.
At length we wander to our room. It's not a lot to look at, but it's relatively cheap at 200 baht (six dollars) and the convenient location at the bus station means no stress worrying about getting to and from downtown. We're stoked, and settle in for a great night's sleep.
More adventures are sure to be had in the near future!
The Thai consulate in Penang is the place to hang out early on a Monday morning - a line forms on the street and taxis wait for customers to finish up their paperwork and need a ride to somewhere else. We walked there early in the morning, and were only missing one thing to apply for our visas, so a quick taxi ride to a nearby YMCA for copies of our passports, and our applications were submitted. "Come back at three-thirty" they tell us, and we move through the crowd back to the street. Several others in line are wearing worried looks, sweating profusely, and trying to find T-shirts to cover their tanktops, which are insufficient apparel for gaining access into the Thai consulate. People are actually being turned away for the class implications of the shirts they're wearing. We count our blessings and wander off.
Temperatures soar as we wander the town, saving our pennies and window shopping around. Eventually we find an air-conditioned grocery store, and while deciding what to buy for lunch, we wander past the freezer area. Fatigue from the severe heat and miles we've walked finally drives us to the breaking point, and as we leave the store our receipt is a clear statement of our current condition:
1.5L Water - 1 Ringit
1.5L Water - 1 Ringit
1 spoon - 1.5 Ringit
1 King Grand Ice Cream - 7.5 Ringit
Locals wander past and make noises indicating laughing approval as we thoroughly enjoy life for the next few minutes.
Later in the day, we shell out a few cents for some sugar cane that's been run through a crusher, extracting the juice which is then mixed with ice and served in a bag. It's a simple process generating a very cheap product, and the two Malaysians running the small cart are pumping these things out as fast as they can with movements practiced and perfected from long hours of repetition. Doing some math, I figure at the rate they're making and selling these on a day like today, they're probably doing quite well!
Unless you've been here, and been tired and hot for days on end, you have no idea how much this simple treat will vastly improve the quality of life. We're happy to be here to begin with, but this just piles more happiness to an already thoroughly blessed life!
We're back in Phuket now, with our visas to let us stay in Thailand for a period extendable up to three months. I'm not taking as many pictures as I probably ought to here, but rest assured, the journey will continue. It has to you see, because there's still at LEAST seven countries on our itinerary, and somehow we'll have to make it home someday as well! Hope you're still having fun with our photos!
I think by June we'll be touring Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Burma. It's too far ahead to really say for sure of course, though. If you figured out what you wanted to do, we could always come back through Railay again, or tour those countries before going there, or you can travel with us. It would all be very worthwhile!
I wish more of my friends would actually come visit us.
What do you think about flying to meet us in Vietnam and then heading back toward Thailand through those countries?
What do you think about flying to meet us in Vietnam and then heading back toward Thailand through those countries?
That could work I suppose, but flying is a whole lot more expensive for us so we'll need to drum up some work! Where are you thinking in Vietnam, north or south? And are you aware you'll need your visa in advance? We were thinking of hitting it from Cambodia and circling north to leave through Laos over to Burma, then run back through Thailand and Malaysia. We've been told not to miss Borneo, so we may hop over there and do some jungle trekking. What are your thoughts? If you met us in Bangkok and joined us for the bus over to Cambodia and Vietnam it might be pleasant and offer cheaper tickets for you guys, but of course we're flexible too...
Here's a shot from a couple days back during a bit of heavy rain that hit us on our way back from Koh Weo, our favorite local dive site. It's so hot that a rain shower even while moving is not an entirely unpleasant event. I was just happy not to have to take a cold shower to wash off the saltwater when we got home.
The rain on the ocean was especially beautiful, kicking up a light mist to add some depth to the swells. I was stoked, even though I was soaked.
I haven't commented yet because really, I don't have anything to add that is more meaningful than your journey itself, or what everyone else hasn't already said!
However, I have been telling sooo many people about this trip and your thread.
I haven't commented yet because really, I don't have anything to add that is more meaningful than your journey itself, or what everyone else hasn't already said!
However, I have been telling sooo many people about this trip and your thread.
Thanks a ton Schmoo! It's always good to hear that people are watching. Tracy says you're welcome to come visit us!
I haven't commented yet because really, I don't have anything to add that is more meaningful than your journey itself, or what everyone else hasn't already said!
However, I have been telling sooo many people about this trip and your thread.
This goes for me, also. I sometimes find it hard to give a meaningful response in the journeys thread, however I have closely followed this thread and your travels and am really enjoying them both!
Well once again I have to apologize for the lack of photos! But in response to a request from Cuong, here's a shot of the place we've been staying here. A couple other divemaster trainees rented a whole house, and offered the bottom half to us for 3000 baht per month, or 95 dollars. It's the biggest place we've ever rented, has the biggest fridge we've ever had, and it has AC too. It looks a bit smaller than it is, cause the back of the house extends considerably farther at an odd angle.
I shot this for the "Together or Apart" contest. Caged birds are immensely popular here, and every house has one or two hanging out front, or lining the sides of the streets.
And for another bit of local animal life, while waiting to rendezvous with a friend outside 7-11 the other day we spotted this enormously fat frog hanging out nearby. He was stationed at a cracked joint in the concrete sidewalk where a steady trickle of ants were coming out. They came out, but they didn't go back in - every few seconds another would venture forth and he'd quickly gobble it up, and pause expectantly waiting for the next. Seems like a pretty easy life!
As for us, we're working on finding an income and getting ourselves back on the road again. We're not sure how to do either of those at the moment, but as God has always provided in the past, we're sure we'll be alright one way or another in the future. Hopefully we'll have some more adventuring to share sometime very soon!
Looks like you guys are staying in quite the palace there! I really like the picture of the frog but thats because I seem to be a sucker for amphibians!
Looks like you guys are staying in quite the palace there! I really like the picture of the frog but thats because I seem to be a sucker for amphibians!
It's the opening days of the rainy season here, so this week every evening we've had heavy rainshowers. It's a totally awesome change from sun all the time, so we go out and get soaked every day on the way to dinner. The first day it rained, I left the camera at home safe and dry. There's a creek/canal/sewer/trash receptacle that flows past our favorite restaurant, which promptly filled with rushing waters. The locals spotted a huge frog struggling to climb the concrete walls and get out of the current, and very shortly one disappeared, and reappeared with a crossbow rigged with a barbed bolt and a spool of line attached. While I was kicking myself for leaving the camera (you ALWAYS see great stuff when you don't have it!) he leaned way over the waters and stuck the frog on his second shot, then reeled it in, hoisted it out of the water, and walked it right into the kitchen, still kicking.
Unfortunately we'd just finished eating, or I might have tried ordering up some fresh frog legs. Over the next few nights we've seen a few more frog catching efforts, but the crossbow hasn't come out again. I'll keep trying to get some good pictures of that.
Comments
Get an underwater PnS. You can get a good one for around $130 USD, you might be able to get one really cheap over there.
I want this one - waterproof up to 10 feet: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/600944-REG/Fujifilm_15939983_FinePix_Z33WP_Digital_Camera.html
Ooh, ten feet wouldn't be enough for us! I've already borrowed the shop's camera and been convinced that I definitely need gear of my own, but alas the budget for that would be more than we had at the beginning for the whole trip! I'll have to find a way to sell photos or something to make tons of money for that!
Yeah the company here has a program to train up to divemaster level and then get some experience as a divemaster. The work is certainly far less demanding than anything I do at home, so I have nothing at all to complain about.
Anyway, as I said, I borrowed the shop's camera for a photography dive and learned a few of the basics. It's a simple P&S Canon with no lights, so colors were quite tricky, but I'm just stoked to get to shoot at least a bit of what I see!
A giant red coral fan backdrops a fish who seems a bit unsure of my proximity.
For those unfamiliar with the underwater world, one of the quirks you have to work with is the rapidly diminishing wavelengths of light as you descend. It doesn't take very much distance before you start to lose reds, then oranges, yellows, and so on. To compensate, you can set the white balance on the camera, but the closest thing I have to a white card is the back of my hand (very white Alaskan skin) and then the rest I try to salvage in post. It works, but this on top of the lesser quality camera equipment presents some difficulties that can be hard to successfully overcome.
Regardless of the light though, some things come across plain as day. One of these is the sea urchin's natural message: DO NOT TOUCH!
One of the more popular goals of divers worldwide seems to be to swim with the turtles. No problem in this area, evidently. This one was moseying along the face of the reef with a whole pack of diver paparazzi following along taking pictures. The area is popular with many diving operations, so there's probably not a moment's peace for such a valuable photo subject until they wander away from the rocks. It didn't seem too bothered though, and just swam along nice and slow, giving plenty of time for photos.
Moray eels are some very awkward looking creatures, protruding at any angles from whatever small holes they can find to worm their thin bodies into. These ones are only about an inch and a half thick, but they can get big enough to bite off fingers and such, should you somehow resemble food.
Clownfish are popular in photos of course, with their bright colors and interesting personalities. These guys hang around the anemones, often disappearing to safety within the tentacles. Another anemone fish has a habit of staring right at you as you swim by, even inches away. I'll have to get some photos of those while I'm here.
The plant life in these waters is just as interesting as the animals. This small fern clings to the tip of a coral fan in shallower depths where a little more colorful light is able to drop in and paint things nicely.
Of course watching the floor of the ocean offers spectacular experiences, but you can't forget to look up and around you as well. Often you'll find a school of barracuda, or a larger fish of some variety that you'd miss if you just stared at the ground!
Our dive ends with a safety stop at five meters down. Explanations for this for non-divers are complicated, but put simply, with so much compressed air flowing through your body, a brief stop for three minutes at five meters helps you clear out a lot of the nitrogen absorbed in various tissues prior to going to the surface where atmospheric pressure is much less. Paul is holding a line attached to a safety buoy as a depth reference so we don't have to stare at our gauges the whole time - at this point we've drifted out of sight of any feature but the surface itself, so judging depth visually is very hard!
Our stay here in Phuket should be all the way through April if the current plan is maintained. Hopefully I'll have plenty of underwater photos for everyone, and if dreams come true at some point, I'll get my 40D down there with a light setup and do things right!
www.morffed.com
The pictures you took are pretty sweet. Even with the screwy white balance
Maybe you could try advertising yourself as a destination wedding photographer... I hear a lot of high end folks get married in Phuket. That would raise the underwater housing funds quite nicely.
On that note...will you still be there in May?
I Live at http://www.alaskamountainforum.com
No sadly the end of April is our last bit of time here I believe.
... At which point we hope to head over to Railay for a month or so.
www.morffed.com
Be that as it may I am not getting Married!!
Do you think you will still be in Thailand say June? I know im moving it around a bit but gotta do some more guidework first!
I Live at http://www.alaskamountainforum.com
I wish more of my friends would actually come visit us.
www.morffed.com
I would like to tour those countries as well and I am sure we would both be in for it. Of course Shasta has not been to Railay before so I would love to take her there too. Also she wants to ride an elephant which shouldnt be any kind of issue. So if you wanted to wait for a bit to tour we could tour along too.
I Live at http://www.alaskamountainforum.com
What's your time frame? Why go home?
www.morffed.com
Although not a bad idea, my brother is getting married on August 21st in Seattle...and I am supposed to be his best man! That would be bad of me not to at least show up
We were thinking...Early to mid June until August 16th or so and head to Seattle then after the wedding back to Alaska.
I Live at http://www.alaskamountainforum.com
Are you ever planning on coming home? Hehe Looks like you are having fun!
Going home at this point is not an option - we simply don't have enough money to even begin. We'll just have to get there when we get there!
www.morffed.com
It's expensive to live here at first, until you get the hang of avoiding the scams and finding the cheap food. Local transportation costs are controlled by a syndicated mafia of sorts, so they're exorbitantly high, preying on the innocent naivety of traveling tourists who don't have a grasp of prices yet, or who have no other options to get places. Prices for anything sold locally are typically doubled at minimum if you're white, and the fact that the Thai language has its own written symbols for numbers makes this quite easy - t's simply written one price in Thai, and another in regular numbers. After a month living here we've managed to cut our outflow of cash to a minimum, but of course we'd be more than happy to find an income of some sort to keep it coming in while it goes out!
So regular living and the work I'm doing taking tourists diving have kept me from shooting a whole lot lately. It's a strange phenomenon in my photography as long as I've been shooting that this is always the slowest time of year for me. The camera is still at my side though, and occasionally makes it out for a shot or two.
Paul comes out of the water after diving with a few students at one of the local training dive sites.
A pair of students enter the water for a dive at Koh Weo - that's Rock Island in English.
Monja, one of my fellow divemaster trainees, goes over a briefing with a group of divers on the leisurely ride out to Koh Weo. The island is up the coast about 30 minutes from Kamala Beach, and the boat ride is a nice one to get warmed up or cooled down from a few hours of diving.
Sunsets on the beach here are beautiful of course, but rather spoiled for my tastes by the throngs of people in various states of nudity from "really gross" to "complete". Long walks on the beach are easy to find though.
And of course it wouldn't involve us without a mushy self portrait to make our friends at home roll their eyes and sigh!
www.morffed.com
I can't really tell you how nice it is to buy good food and not be horrendously cheated by people who think we're rich because we're white. We're stoked, and in our excitement we shell out more money than we would have back in Phuket, shoveling goodies of all sorts into our very happy bellies.
The market at the bus station in Hat Yai fills a fairly large area completely covered over with umbrellas and tarps, and sells just about everything. We wander around soaking in the relaxed atmosphere and wishing Phuket was more like this.
At length we wander to our room. It's not a lot to look at, but it's relatively cheap at 200 baht (six dollars) and the convenient location at the bus station means no stress worrying about getting to and from downtown.
More adventures are sure to be had in the near future!
www.morffed.com
Temperatures soar as we wander the town, saving our pennies and window shopping around. Eventually we find an air-conditioned grocery store, and while deciding what to buy for lunch, we wander past the freezer area. Fatigue from the severe heat and miles we've walked finally drives us to the breaking point, and as we leave the store our receipt is a clear statement of our current condition:
1.5L Water - 1 Ringit
1.5L Water - 1 Ringit
1 spoon - 1.5 Ringit
1 King Grand Ice Cream - 7.5 Ringit
Locals wander past and make noises indicating laughing approval as we thoroughly enjoy life for the next few minutes.
Later in the day, we shell out a few cents for some sugar cane that's been run through a crusher, extracting the juice which is then mixed with ice and served in a bag. It's a simple process generating a very cheap product, and the two Malaysians running the small cart are pumping these things out as fast as they can with movements practiced and perfected from long hours of repetition. Doing some math, I figure at the rate they're making and selling these on a day like today, they're probably doing quite well!
Unless you've been here, and been tired and hot for days on end, you have no idea how much this simple treat will vastly improve the quality of life. We're happy to be here to begin with, but this just piles more happiness to an already thoroughly blessed life!
We're back in Phuket now, with our visas to let us stay in Thailand for a period extendable up to three months. I'm not taking as many pictures as I probably ought to here, but rest assured, the journey will continue.
www.morffed.com
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What do you think about flying to meet us in Vietnam and then heading back toward Thailand through those countries?
I Live at http://www.alaskamountainforum.com
That could work I suppose, but flying is a whole lot more expensive for us so we'll need to drum up some work!
Here's a shot from a couple days back during a bit of heavy rain that hit us on our way back from Koh Weo, our favorite local dive site. It's so hot that a rain shower even while moving is not an entirely unpleasant event. I was just happy not to have to take a cold shower to wash off the saltwater when we got home.
The rain on the ocean was especially beautiful, kicking up a light mist to add some depth to the swells. I was stoked, even though I was soaked.
www.morffed.com
However, I have been telling sooo many people about this trip and your thread.
Photos that don't suck / 365 / Film & Lomography
Thanks a ton Schmoo!
www.morffed.com
www.ivarborst.nl & smugmug
I shot this for the "Together or Apart" contest. Caged birds are immensely popular here, and every house has one or two hanging out front, or lining the sides of the streets.
And for another bit of local animal life, while waiting to rendezvous with a friend outside 7-11 the other day we spotted this enormously fat frog hanging out nearby. He was stationed at a cracked joint in the concrete sidewalk where a steady trickle of ants were coming out. They came out, but they didn't go back in - every few seconds another would venture forth and he'd quickly gobble it up, and pause expectantly waiting for the next. Seems like a pretty easy life!
As for us, we're working on finding an income and getting ourselves back on the road again. We're not sure how to do either of those at the moment, but as God has always provided in the past, we're sure we'll be alright one way or another in the future.
www.morffed.com
I Live at http://www.alaskamountainforum.com
It's the opening days of the rainy season here, so this week every evening we've had heavy rainshowers. It's a totally awesome change from sun all the time, so we go out and get soaked every day on the way to dinner. The first day it rained, I left the camera at home safe and dry. There's a creek/canal/sewer/trash receptacle that flows past our favorite restaurant, which promptly filled with rushing waters. The locals spotted a huge frog struggling to climb the concrete walls and get out of the current, and very shortly one disappeared, and reappeared with a crossbow rigged with a barbed bolt and a spool of line attached. While I was kicking myself for leaving the camera (you ALWAYS see great stuff when you don't have it!) he leaned way over the waters and stuck the frog on his second shot, then reeled it in, hoisted it out of the water, and walked it right into the kitchen, still kicking.
Unfortunately we'd just finished eating, or I might have tried ordering up some fresh frog legs. Over the next few nights we've seen a few more frog catching efforts, but the crossbow hasn't come out again. I'll keep trying to get some good pictures of that.
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