Day 6 – Dec
9 2010
Today was a
very special day of the trip. We woke up at 4.30 am to go and photograph the
White Bellied Hereon. Much rarer than the Black Necked Cranes, these birds had
a humble population of only 26 in Bhutan. According to an ecologist that we met
on the way, the construction of hydro power plants had been disrupting the
lives of these birds because they drove their predators to the small rivers
where the birds laid their eggs.
As we could
only spot one bird and I did not have a tele lens powerful enough, I decided to
wander around and looked for a story about the people living by the river. I
came across a lady who worked in the field since as early as 5.00 am till noon.
Also, I joined a group of kids for an exciting dart-throwing game. While I was
doing all these, Jason got some fantastic close-up shots of the highly
sensitive bird.
In the
afternoon, we visited the historic 17th century Fortress “Punakha
Dzong”, the biggest Dzong in Bhutan. This visit made the day really special.
Jason asked me to photograph things using his film rangefinder, mounted with a
35mm lens. Because we had been talking about old school photography, which
included topics like Magnum photographers, composition and zone design system,
he said this exercise would put me in their shoes. The experience was
unexpected. I unfamiliarly looked through the viewfinder, feeling the unknown.
Composition was tough as there was a thin small white frame within a big
picture, so many times I was unsure how much to cut out or include in the
photo. Manual focusing required fast reaction, especially with moving subjects,
objects and I sometimes forgot to look at the centre focusing rectangle in the
viewfinder. However, the biggest challenge was perhaps exposure. Shooting on
aperture priority mode, I had to carefully select the different elements of
different light intensities and choose the appropriate shutter speed. There was
no preview so every time that I snapped the button was full of uncertainty.
That was the core of the zone design system: calculating how to compensate the
exposure correctly.
At the
Dzong, we had an opportunity to go through a pictorial story about Buddha’s
life. Inside the temples were wonderful architecture and textures, made up from
all the artefacts and subtle lighting. Though we could not record and image
inside the temples, the courtyard and architecture around were very
captivating. Therefore, we all decided to skip lunch and stayed at that place
throughout the whole afternoon. I shot around 25 frames and was very excited as
well as worried about the result.
Also, while using Jason’s rangefinder, I dropped
by a local high school and met a guy called Wangdi. He was taking his
final year exam and I got a fun chat with him. We were of the same level so he
was very keen to share with me about Bhutan’s education system.
