Bangkok

[Jim Kuo]

Just returned from a longish holiday in Thailand and Australia. I managed to produce over 71G of mostly junk image files (I probably should do something to improve my keeper rate), luckily some of them came out alright .

Here is a small selection of my favourites.

#1, coconut jelly, yum .

#2, three generations.

#3, street cleaner with bling in Bangkok China Town.

#4, tuk-tuk overloaded with boxes of beers.

#5, vast selections of wonderful looking dishes.

#6, in the old Thai capital called Ayutthaya, a street vender selling mung bean noodle stuffed sausages.

#7, a local taking a bath in the river outside his front door, doesn't seem to be shy to pose for photos.

#8, dinner in a nice Thai restaurant next to a railway station, waiting to be served.

#9, as usual, it was a hot day, and the fan ain't working...

#10, the railway next to the restaurant, people are neglecting the foot bridge that's only 10 meters away... (and I was crazy enough to get in position on the track to take this picture, 5D2's liveview saved the day )

#11, two of the hosts at the dinner.

I hope you find these interesting. Thanks for viewing .

Jim

 

[Brodie Jackson]

Really wonderful set, Jim! I especially love numbers 4, 6 & 11.. idk, they just seem to have a great feel about them

 

[Jim Kuo]

Thanks Brodie, I think 6 and 11 are my favorites of the lot .

As soon as I saw the scene in #6, I knew it could be something wonderful before I took the shot, I am thrilled that it worked out well.

I thought Tan's face in #11 has got strong character, I am really happy with how this picture turned out.

 

[Paul Lange]

Great set Jim. I must admit I saw The Hangover II yesterday. I don't know if you have seen it but all sorts of stuff came into my head when I saw the title of your post.

 

[Jim Kuo]

Thanks Paul.

No, I haven't seen The Hangover II, but now that you mentioned it, I think I will look it up this weekend .

 

[Brian Moore]

As mentioned previously, Jim,...Great set. And I agree wholeheartedly. I especially like 3, 4, 5 and 6.

 

[Dan Cattermole]

Oh yes! Fabulous Jim! Would love to visit sometime in my life!

 

[Jim Kuo]

Thanks Brian and Dan .

I really didn't do well with the heat, apart from the temperature, it was a very lovely place to visit.

 

[Darren Bradley]

Fascinating.I can't wait to visit Thailand someday. Thanks for sharing these, Jim. Very well done!

 

[Chris Dodkin]

Jim - that last shot is awesome - loving the close-in portrait of the hosts

 

[Hamish Gill]

Your a proper natural at this eh?!
But let me get this straight ... 71gb of files?! That's a lot! How longs you go for?

Really interesting!
I've said this to a few people now, but it would be very cool if you made made a travels ebook!

 

[Jim Kuo]

Thanks Hamish

We went for 3 weeks in total, and I took over 2000 pictures (5D2's RAW file is around 26M each) in Sydney alone. I think the most of pictures were taken in Sydney Aquarium. The Zeiss is the only fast lens I have, I was only barely able to keep the shutter speed above 1/60 s in that fairly dim environment at ISO3200/6400, and F1.4-2.0.

Shooting moving subjects with those configs while manual focusing was a very difficult task (even 5D2's focus confirmation failed to work), I ended up having to take many many shots for the same scene, and hoped that one of them would be in focus enough...

I am glad you like the pictures, will think about the ebook idea .

 

[Pete Askew]

What a super set there Jim. Love the Tuk-Tuk and the final portrait. Fabulous.

 

[Jim Kuo]

Thanks Pete, glad you like them .

 

[Pete Askew]

I can imagine you must be pretty overwhelmed by shots at the moment having just got back. I sat with Blanka the other night going through her raw captures in LR resulting from her time in Africa. Some great pictures but almost overwhelming going through them and picking out favourites. And, as we all know, there is always a danger you might overlook something in the first sort. I usually try to go through them on a daily basis but she couldn't because the power supply wasn't reliable and so she had to conserve power on her laptop and batteries. How many have you whittled your selection down to so far Jim?

 

[Jim Kuo]

Thanks for asking Pete, I normally process my photos in iterations.

1. Go through quickly and pick out ones with potential, i.e. interesting subjects, and executed technically well enough, ignore the rest.
2. I usually take multiple exposures for the same or similar scenes (confidence in my skill is not quite there), so I pick out the best one or maybe two for each scene.
3. I then post process ones that I picked out in #2, if I don't get the result that I desire, I go back to #2 and pick another one.
4. I then categorised the processed ones into albums by theme, and try not to have too many in one album if I can help it.
5. Then I put my favourite ones on RPF

So for my Sydney leg of the trip, 2096 in total
243 after step 1
120 after step 2
118 after step 3

And for Bangkok, 545 in total
122 after step 1
64 after step 2
57 after step 3

The keeper rate is appalling, if I was doing this for a living, I wouldn't make a very good business. Luckily photography is only my hobby (for now).

 

[Pete Askew]

Thanks Jim. It's always interesting to hear how people approach their 'work-flow'. I do something similar, usually using LR (if in CaptureOne I go as far as the first '5's stage and then process the raw file and import into LR). I go through and give any with potential a rating of 3, but working very quickly and with an, if in doubt, keep it in approach. Then filter them. Then I go through in detail and give the ones I want to work on a 5. I then make a virtual copy (or more) and edit the image (often going into PS / Nik at some point). When I have the final edits I down-grade the unedited and intermediate edits to 4. I then organise them into collections if they were not already in a dedicated 'catalog'.