Day 2 – Dec
5 2010
7.00 am – I
didn’t sleep much, thanks to the dogs barking all night outside the hotel. It’s
quite strange that you can see dogs almost everywhere around here. Anyway, a walk
around the hotel shows me an interesting fact about the traffic in Thimphu: All
streets are one-way, except for the main street that runs through the capital.
After a
filling breakfast, we dropped by at the Memorial Stupa for the 3rd
King. I observed some interesting cultural aspects of the people here.
There was a room with perhaps more than a hundred of prayer candles being lit. It was definitely the best place to warm you up from the cold morning. There was another room with
lots of prayer wheels being constantly spun by the people who were sitting nearby or by those who were walking by. It was dark inside, but luckily I found one corner with some
sunlight shining through, creating a fantastic ambient source on a lady’s face.
Then we
headed towards the animal conservation area and observed the Takin, Bhutan’s
national animal, and goats ... Since there were fences in the way and I did not have a proper lens to photograph the animals, I decided to
visit a Bhutanese household nearby. It was fun as I
climbed onto the rooftop and had a chat with this 9-year-old girl called Xing (that was how she pronounced it). Her English was really good and she was very friendly. We talked about school, family and our hometown and I got some background story
about her as well as the students' life there. It was during their winter holiday and school only resumed in Spring.
The next
location was Pangrizampa Astrology School. Right at this place I and Jason had
a long talk about exposure. Most importantly, he introduced to me the concept
of zone design system which connects the photo’s composition and the exposure
in it. It was new and complex to me but basically, zone designs requires you to
compose your photo so that there are certain zones of different light intensities,
then you have to calculate the proper exposure to fit the photo, as well as
your intention. Before, I often used exposure lock to get the lighting that I
wanted, but this concept seemed much more flexible.
Also at that
place, I climbed onto the top of one of the buildings and staged a photo of a
monk reading a book by the window. I must say that it was a really great photo
that I constructed, but I did not find much satisfaction in it because it might
not be true. I was supposed to document factual stories, not to fabricate any. After all, the fact, not just the reality, is what makes photo-document and photojournalism powerful.
The final destination of the day was Cherry
Monastery, which was 20 km upper Thimphu. It was a long trekking up the
mountain slope in the cold air of the late afternoon. The sunlight shot through
the dense forest, creating intricate textures of the trees’ shadow on the
ground. Eventually we reached the top of the mountain where the Monastery was
situated. The quietness cloaked the monastery. Unknowingly, I climbed higher
into the restricted area, overlooking a broad view of the entire valley. The
late afternoon sunlight disappearing over the mountains made the scenery much
more simply yet beautifully lit.
