more photos lagi - the king's joint

These shots are from the Summer Palace of King Rama IV at the Phra Nakhon Khini National Park. Built in 1860, it was named Phra Nakhon Khiri Palace. It consist of roayl halls, temples and othe buildings, constructed in mostly of harmoniously Thai, Weatern Neoclassical and Chinese architectural styles.

This is a shot of a portion of the roof on one of a temple. The challenge of this shot is that the temple area consist of a few structure tightly packed together in a small compound. Therefore getting a clean (no cluttered background) of the temple will be near impossible. Most importantly, the idea here is to capture the intricate details of the design instead of mashing everythin into one shot. So i selectively picked a a corner of the roof and placed that against the sky. The ironic thing is that the spot where i took this shot is actually the same level of this roof. (the structures were so packed that i was at an adjacent building when i took this shot). But i still bent down to shoot at an angle up. Why? Well, the points of the roofs in the Thai architecture seems to be pointing heavenwards (up) and i wanna project the impression through this shot. I also limited the amount of the roof captured, instead, placed a lot of sky for 2 main reasons: 1. This will keep the shot clean. Sometimes too much details will make the shot too busy and make the viewer lose his/her attention. 2. also, by putting more sky, it accentuated the point i am making about the tips of the roof pointing heavenwards. I like this shot for it's balance of simplicity and amount of details shown. Probably going to be my money shot.

This is another shot of the same temple (another portion of the roof). As you can see, i have included more details and less sky in this shot. In this shot, Obviously i try to capture the details of the roof. Unlike shot 1, the angle is parallel to the roof and i use the 45mm (planar) lens to keep the perspective correct. I like this shot for the symetrical angles the roof is lined up. This works well with the contrast created by the intricate detailed patterns on the ridges. (I think by now one would have guess that i am big on contrasts!). I also loved the fact that the details in the shadow area are captured in detail (much thanks to zeiss). But if i can be truly frank with myself, i think this is just a so so shot. The main reason being is that other than capturing the roof details, there is nothing much else. As compared to shot 1 it does not tells the story that i want to project well. The roof details portion is begining to overwhelm the shot and there is nothing much in the sky to warrant the space spent. Besides, there is a small dark spot on the bottom left of the shot that although does not spoils the shot much, does not really contribute to the shot. Good shot but did not do much in telling story.

This is a simple shot of the Stupa at the same compound. I won't make excuses but the color from the scan did not do justice to the shot. I loved this shot for the fact that the red tones really contrast well against the sky. Another fact is that i liked the texture of the surface of the stupa. The roughness really contrasted well against the creamy blue sky. OK, but not going to be my money shot.



I like this shot because of the way the light reflected against the surface of the arches. It just oozes out details but on the other hand is clean and simple. How can that be? Detail and yet simple? Well, the shot in itself is simple and clean, but the details of the arch surface is captured well. (again thanks to Zeiss) I like arches because they represent strength, but on the other hand are curvy, which provide the nice contrast. I shot this from a low angle with a wide lens (28 biogon). I like this lens as the level of it's distortion is really beautiful and its front to back sharpness among other things. But, other than the fact that this is a nice shot of an arch, there is not much that it does to document Thai architecture. Money shot?... Maybe, but in terms of telling a story, probably not...