Bangkok has a lot to offer for the enthusiastic photographers. It doesn’t matter if you come to Bangkok to enjoy your hobby, or if you are a professional photographer and shoot for your stock-photo portfolio or an agency. Bangkok has a lot to offer for the keen photographic eye.
To start with, the whole Royal Palace area will provide you a large variety of old, Thai buildings and Temples where you can find ample motives for your stock. Your local guide will of course know the best places and angles from where to shoot. From there, he or she will probably take you to the mighty Chao Phraya River that flows through the center of Bangkok and provides unlimited motives for your camera. Your local guide can arrange a long-tail boat and take you on a river cruise, venturing into Klongs (Canals) which will give you the opportunity to capture both, the daily life of Thais as well as beautiful, old and heavily ornamented classic Thai Teak wood buildings. Your local guide can take you on an expedition of Bangkok’s harbor, “Klong Toe” with ample food for your lens and into one of Bangkok’s largest slums, where you can shoot real life frames of Thai people. This would not be advisable without your local guide who obviously speaks the language and can make arrangements.
The same accounts for nightlife photography which has its own rules and only your local guide can make some arrangements for you to take shots in for example Pat Pong.
Having someone along who speaks the language and knows the culture will make the next and probably most exciting photographic mission relatively easy and protect you from unnecessary issues. We are of course talking about “people photography”.
Bangkok will give you a canvass for some of the most unique faces, from young and very pretty to very old and wrinkly, characters from Thai, Thai Chinese and 100% Chinese as well as Indian origin. People going about their daily chores, people eating, drinking, unusual traffic policemen to Chinese traders and people pulling rickshaws at the market. Your local guide will talk to them and ease the way for you to get some great shots.
You can spend a whole day for example in one of Bangkok’s largest food markets, photographing people working or spend a day photographing very old Chinese building in Chinatown. There you will even find some ancient Portuguese architecture from long bygone eras.
Other photographic hot-spots can be found at the “Victory Monument” and the nearby government area with impressive architecture or in Bangkok’s parks.
Bangkok offers the avid photographer a very wide palate of subjects to train his or her lens on, day and night, and your personal guide will be your assistant in locating them and avoiding any problems.
If you are looking for modern architecture, Bangkok of course has a lot of high-rise buildings, some in rather unusual shapes or with unique decorations. An early evening at one of Bangkok’s rooftop bars will provide you with your platform for stunning views of Bangkok’s skyline for lots of photographic material.
Hire a local guide and fill your portfolio with the best shots possible or create a photographic history of a day in Bangkok.
