Images shot with the classic F.Zuiko 38mm f1.8
I’d spent an evening exploring the Bangkok protests. I’d got some shots from Khao San Road.
Next on the list was to shoot some vintage lens Bangkok street photography.
While a city can be anything to anyone, Khao San Road is Bangkok for some. It certainly has been for me, on occasion.
There have been times when I’ve visited Bangkok, spent a few days around Khao San, and left again without seeing anything else.
This time though, I fancied seeing more.
While Bangkok is a unique city in many ways, it shares one common thing with every other city in the world: it’s a veritable playground of unexpected scenes for shooting street photography.
I would suggest, however, that Buddhist monks and tuk-tuks are more common in Bangkok street photography than almost anywhere else.
I saw the monk checking out the Buddhist amulets at a street market. I don’t know if he was looking to buy or just browsing, mate, but he seemed very interested in what they had.
The tuk-tuk was around the area of Wat Saket, more commonly known to tourists as the Golden Mount.
A chedi built on top of an artificial hill, it’s one of my favourite places to visit in Bangkok, once, and is worth going for the views of the city you get from the top.
Graffiti is graffiti, whether in Bangkok street photography or anywhere else you may go.
The lady sitting on the floor? I presume some sort of fortune teller.
Wat Arun and more Bangkok street photography
Another temple that I would not recommend missing in Bangkok is Wat Arun, which is also known as the Temple of Dawn.
Designed in Khmer (Cambodian) style and with Hindu elements too, it’s a symbol of Bangkok, one of the city’s most visited sights, and even features on one of the Thai coins.
As ever with the F.Zuiko 38mm f1.8 on the Sony NEX, you’re kind of restricted from taking the full width or full height landscape shots you see in travel brochures, but you shoot what you can.
The restrictions sometimes lead to more interesting photographs anyway.
Away from Wat Arun, I explored a few canal-side backstreets and found a game of takraw going on.
This volleyball/football hybrid, played with a rattan ball, is popular in much of South East Asia. I guess street games like this are quite common.
It was a good find and a good chance to shoot some lesser-seen Bangkok street photography scenes.
Nobody asked me to stop, even when it seemed money was changing hands for some reason or other.
I didn’t ask why.
Future Bangkok street photography
Despite my propensity for not often venturing far from Khao San Road, there is obviously a lot more to Bangkok than what the tourists see and do.
A little exploring away from there and the tourist sites in general can easily lead to the kind of real life, local activity found in any other Asian city by those willing to leave the backpacker ghetto and go look for it.
Having sorted through these images, I’m looking forward to doing just that, and to shooting more street photography, the next time I’m back in Bangkok.
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