ROBIN WONG

The enjoyable thing about doing street photography in different locations is finding both the differences and similarities with the usual street hunting grounds. Bangkok can look so different, they have smaller network of alleyways and backstreets that are interconnected and you can basically get lost walking in it, this is something you cannot find in Kuala Lumpur. Yet the same warm smile, the typical South East Asian lighting and textured background all tell very similar heritage and stories, though we are not that far apart. I enjoy walking around and just feasting my eyes with what I can see at the streets of Bangkok, to truly experience it you have to walk the grounds. Whatever I can capture with my camera is just bonus!

I mostly explored around the Chinatown area of Bangkok, Thailand for my street photography. Most images were shot around Song Wat and Yaowarat area, alongside the Chao Praya river. I did venture into the Flower Market, which I intend to visit again more extensively in the future, this time it was mostly passing by and quick snaps while walking along the locations. I miss shooting at Hua Lamphong Bangkok Central Train station, while that place still exists, it isn't as busy as it was back in the day and has lost its charm for street photography. Nevertheless, Bangkok is such a huge place, there are opportunities everywhere, you just have to keep your eyes open! People there are also super friendly, perhaps even more approachable than Malaysians! I had so much time shooting on the streets there. 

I find it really strange every time someone asks me if I shoot in JPEG or RAW. Honestly, the correct answer is - it does not matter. Even if I did shoot in RAW, my postprocessing done was so minimal the images look like they come straight out of camera anyway. I prefer the natural, true to life look, something more realistic, rather than over-processed, or images with exaggerated color biases. I have no problem shooting JPEG too, in fact, whenever I feel lazy, when I don't want to do any editing, I just set the camera to JPEG and fired away. This latest session I did just that, and I recorded everything in video as evidence (so people cannot accuse me of lying or cheating, you can see my camera screen - it isn't set to RAW). You can check the video here (click), I also share my camera JPEG settings there. 

Of course, the one thing I must do when I was in Bangkok was to shoot on the streets. Trust me, it is street photography heaven there! I had my Panasonic GM1 with me and I used the Olympus 25mm F1.8 most of the time. It was just a casual stroll around just capturing anything that caught my attention. One of the days I was guided by the amazing Jojo (IG @jjsupasit), a prominent photographer who resides in Bangkok. Special thanks to Jojo I found some new places to shoot and I must make a point to return again one day in the future, just to shoot more on these awesome locations! 

One the final day before flying off from Bangkok, my travel partner and I decided to just chill and not wander too far away from our hotel. There was this Cafe restaurant, just outside our hotel that we have to pass by every time we walk out to the main streets. The place looks spacious and decent, and there is always a crowd too. It is called the coffee club, and we made the right call to have our final meals here before heading to the airport to catch our flight back to Kuala Lumpur! As far as the last food to eat in Bangkok goes, this is quite an amazing one! Yes we ate too much food, but can you really blame us?

I found this amazing place near the hotel that I was staying at, LonLon Local Diner, or sometimes it is called The Local Canteen depending on where you found it on the web. They serve fusion Thai and Western food, but many of their menu items are based on Thai cuisines. I went in wanting to have some typical Thai dishes, namely Tom Yum soup, fried rice and grilled pork, then maybe a Mango Sticky Rice for dessert. That place did not disappoint, they had everything I have hoped for and more, and boy oh boy, the food was amazing! Though on the spicier and definitely pricier side of things, the food was so worth it. 

The Monochrome Profile was introduced in Olympus PEN-F, and subsequently made available in the E-P7 and OM System OM-3 cameras. It allows control over various color filters options that can dramatically improve black and white images. This exact same Monochrome Profile can be applied to almost any Olympus and OM System cameras (has to be newer than the PEN-F) by shooting in RAW and applying the Monochrome Profile using OM System Workspace software. If you have not tried this, do give it a go, it is not only so powerful, but fun to play with too! I made a video to demonstrate how this works (click here), and also did some POV shooting, of course, this time all in black and white!