Day 198 - The Day After the News in Bangkok

After arriving with the train at 6 in the morning, I walked to my hotel and chilled for a few hours. Once I was out on the street looking for a place to get breakfast, I got to see what happens the day after the news and the aftermath of what I saw on TV before leaving Pakse.

There were overturned cars, people were painting in the national colours, leaving notes on them and some just posing in front of them for photos.

It was all quite interesting and I kept taking photos while completely forgetting to go and get breakfast. But this is the kind of thing I like photographing, something you can't find in a guide book and something current.

After a while people started blowing their whistles and rushing to a side street so I headed there, too. It turns out the forensics police team and news teams arrived in front of one of the barricades.

They came to investigate the shootings and killings that took place and gather evidence, the protesters were showing them around and allowed them to go where they needed to do their work.

I kept taking photos and at some pint I guess  even made it on TV when everyone with the camera teams were walking past and around me to go to another one of the crime scenes.

This was one of the most productive days in terms of photography and I not only filled up my SD card but also had to go back to the hotel and charge my camera in between.
For me it was a very interesting day as I also got to chat with some of the people around, although briefly as their English was not always perfect but they were all nice.

I walked through some other areas in Bangkok where they have the demonstrations but for the post, I decided to keep it all from one place.

Getting sidetracked with the protest photos meant that I did not make it to the Myanmar embassy to gt m visa so will have to stay another day in Bangkok but this is not such a bad thing.

Cut Protest

When I decided to go into town it was with the intention to have a coffee and work on my GXR A12 28mm review. It was not to take pictures of a protest or I would not have carried my notebook around and would have planned the day different. Overall I did not spend too mcuh time taking pictures and it was more while coming across it on my way to get coffee, the restaurant and then finally on my way back to the train.

The protest started in the usual calm way with people marching and waving their banners. This is till the usual yobs and troublemakers came and started smashing windows in and setting fires to bins. I would say if the police would arrest everyone from the start who wears a hoodie and covers their mouth there would be no trouble. There should be no need for anyone to cover their face in public and if someone does they should be arrested because they have something to hide.

I decided to post yet another series, this time a slightly bigger one to show the day and night cycles of the protest as I have seen it.

Mayday Protesters

Yesterday, I got my new Olympus 14-42mm m4/3 lens. While it's pretty plasticky and a very slow kit lens with f3.5-f5.6 it is small enough when collapsed and good as an all-rounder lens for holidays, it was also cheap enough. Still, I hope either Olympus or Panasonic will release a decent zoom lens for m4/3 like the one on the LC1 and not more of these useless slow kit lenses.
Today, I got the chance to try out the lens and take some pictures of the May Day protests. It performed very well although the zoom was counter intuitive for me since it's the 'wrong way round' compared to the LC1. It would have also been nicer if it would ocus faster or at least not be so slow when zoomed in.
Still, I really like it and would recommend it over the Panasonic kit lens because of the size and cheaper price. Sure, the Panasonic is optically better and has IS but neither are good or fast enough so I rather take the smaller and lighter lens.

Don't ask me how but all pictures I selected for this series ended up being taken at 84mm, will post more at different focal lengths in the next days.

Always a Frown

GF1, f4, 1/2500, ISO 800, JPG, 40mm

The Big Nothing

Today was a strange day, after the big protest yesterday everyone expected even bigger protests for today. But it turned out that there were only a handful protesters, twice as many photographers and around four times the police at Bank and at the ExCel Centre.
A lot of people expected disruptions and violence but no one showed up. Over half of the protesters at the ExCel Centre were good spirited Ethiopians. It was strange and a bit disappointing indeed that not much happened. Reminded me of a slogan I read: "What if they gave a war and no one came?"


After my criticism of the police yesterday, I have to say that they were great at the ExCel Centre today, they allowed people to demonstrate and did not bully them around. The police near Bank however was a bit rude in the way they dealt with people, still it was overall not quite the same as yesterday.

"I am a Photographer...NOT a Terrorist"

I took my lunch break early today, to be able to attend and document a protest by british photographers. The protest was called up by the National Union of Journalists and the British Journal of Photography.


It was a protest against a new law coming into force today, it is Section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act. Under this new law anyone "eliciting, publishing or communicating information" about members of the armed forces, intelligence services or police officers, which is "likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism", can be arrested and imprissoned. This has caused controversy, especially with press photographers, since there have been numerous run-ins between the ploice and photographers in the past.
I know this since I also had a few run-ins with them but it was mostly with ill informed Police Community Support Officers and only once with the police for taking pictures of the Greenwich Power Station.


The protest saw around 400 people gather in front of New Scotland Yard taking pictures of the building, the ploce and each other. It was a nice protest and everyone was in good spirits, the ploice was nice and even had chats with the protesters.


You can read more about this here, here and here.


Although I decided to publish only one picture a day this year and the rest on Dropbox, I think it makes sense to make an exception for series or articles that benefit from more pictures. This is why I have uploaded 5 pictures for today. You can find more pictures here.

Gaza Demonstration

LC1, f6, 1/250, ISO 200, JPG, 75mm

At freezing temperatures I've set myself an objective for the day. It was to go out and cover the demonstration against Israel and the war in Gaza. The turn-out was impressive despite the low temperatures. It was very interesting and I got some great pictures out of it. I have been using the LC1 mostly and the GRD I only for quick snapshots when the slow AF of the LC1 was too much to handle or when the light levels dropped and ISO 400 was just not enough. The LC1 is agreat camera for such occasions since it looks more professional than all the beginner dSLRs and gives one more credibility. One other thing is that no matter how much fun I make about the plastic soap box cameras, in freezing cold you don't want to handle a camera made out of metal without gloves on ;).

Although I had a whole series, one of the changes for the year is to only post one picture per day. I chose this pictures since I find it best summarizes the protest for me.
I went as an neutral observer there and to document the protest. This is why I will not write anything about the actual protest and think the pictures speak for themselves so check out the gallery here.

Between Good and Evil?

GX200, f4.1, 1/200, ISO 64, RAW, 24mm

Took this picture of the protest while walking in the City today. I was not the only one to take pictures of this though, quite a few people took pictures but mainly with their mobile phones. The good thing about the City is that there s always something happening so I like working here for that reason. It is also very interesting if you're interested in architecture photography with a lot of very interesting old and new buildings.
The GX200 is very good for this and has a great resolution but not enough contrast and the dynamic range is too low, this was always a problem with the GX series. The resolution is there and you get a lot of details with little noise at base ISO, especially when using RAW.