It took many years, but I have now gone completely digital, I bit the bullet (made my deal with the Devil) and bought a Hasselblad H4D-60… H for Hasselblad, 4 because its the 4th generation and D because its digital… 60 because its 60 Megapixels! Expensive?… Well lets just say that the wooden leg took a bit of getting used to and I’m sure that I don’t need both kidneys! Is it worth it? That will be revealed in the coming months, but so far… Yes.
Over 10% of the population of Bhutan are Buddhist Monks, so when you are there you tend to see a lot of them about. The Dzongs, which are old feudal fortress temples dotted all across Bhutan, are now used as centres for Government offices and are also house the Monk bodies of Bhutan, quite aptly symbolising the close relationship of the counties government and its religion. In fact Bhutan is one of the only countries that has its religion (being Buddhism) written into its constitution.
Buddhism in Bhutan
The Buddhism of the majority of the population Bhutan is what they call middle path Buddhism, that is they won’t kill animals, but they occasionally will eat meat if one of their livestock dies from an accident or old age. As a tourist in Bhutan you are usually served meat or fish with most meals, as the Bhutanese assume most Westerners want to eat meat, but the great irony of this is that all the meat for tourist consumption is imported from India!
This image shot in Thimpu Dzong, with the permission of the subject, with a Canon 5D Mk II and a Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L lens
The Bhutanese love to eat chilli, they eat it with almost every meal, but more like a vegetable (actually a fruit) rather than a seasoning. The chilli is actually the main dish. To achieve this they need a lot of chillies, so almost every small farm holding throughout rural Bhutan has at least one field of chillies, some have very big fields of Chillies, and every market will have a large selection from green to red, and from fresh to dried.
click the image to see the chillies
The image on the left shows the Iron Bridge Monastery in Paro province during the chilli harvest. The field in the bottom left is al chilli bushes, and the red spreading down the hill from the monastery are the freshly harvested chillies drying in the sun. Click on the image to see a bigger version.
Not everyone has a big piece of land to dry their chillies on, so what better place to dry your chillies than on the roof of your house… or convent?
Making good use of roof space
This is one of the few Buddhist Nunneries in Bhutan (in Thimpu, the capital) and this young Buddhist Nun has been sent up to the roof to collect the chillies that are dry and ready for storage for the winter. Seems like it was a nice spot in the sun to rest and contemplate for a while… and blow bubbles.
If you would like to visit Bhutan with me next year go to my Bhutan Photo Tour page for details.
Bhutan is a great country to be an animal, stray animals are cared for and fed by just about everybody and i have never seen so many happy well fed stray dogs. The bhutanese almost never or rarely eat meat, usually only when an animal dies by accident or old age, and i’m pretty sure they never eat cat!
If you would like to meet and photograph the cats of Bhutan join me on on one of my Bhutan photo tours. 15 days of adventure through the magical Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan.
I thought it was time to put up some shots from my recent photography tour to Bhutan that were not portraits, so here we go… Bhutan is situated at the Southern base of the Himalaya range, squashed between India, Tibet and Nepal, so as you would expect most of the country is mountainous.
Traditional Bhutanese architecture
They have the knack of terracing out rice fields on the edge of mountains and these are visible all along the winding roads of rural Bhutan. The houses are all built in traditional style, which is unique and quite beautiful, really defining the countryside as different to anywhere else.
Rivers of Bhutan
Wild river in the Chumey Valley
Rivers and waterfalls are everywhere, the countryside is full of them rushing out of the mountains. Many of them are fed from glacial or snow melt and most of them run all year long. Bhutan is a very lush and fertile country indeed.
Dont forget to click on the images to get a larger view. more soon…
These are random shots from a roadside stop on the way to Trongsa Dzong in central Bhutan shot on one of my Bhutan Photo tours. This fellow and the rest of his team were in the process of putting up a viewing platform shelter on the opposite side of the valley from the Trongsa Dzong (temple fortress).
And like almost all officially placed lookout platforms, it was in the wrong place! It was situated directly opposite the Dzong and the view was very uninspired, the workers themselves were much more interesting, this fellow in particular. He has such a lovely open face, and the light was just right. I got some more interesting pictures of the Dzong later.
Trongsa Province, Central Bhutan. Shot with a Canon 5D Mk II, 24-105mm f4L lens.
If the Wrinkles on a persons face are the roadmap of their life, then this Bhutanese fellow has had a very full life indeed. For me it seems that Bhutan is a country of people photography. The countryside is spectacular, the nature is wild and the architecture beautiful, but the faces of the people were what i kept seeing and photographing first.
The people have such beautifully open and diverse faces, so i took lots and lots of portraits, some sneaky ones, like this one, but most with the consent (and a conversation, with lots of hand waving and laughing) with the person involved.
A road map to life
This image shows an old Man watching a festival in a small Monastery of Prakar Lhakhang in the Chumey Valley, Bumthang, a province of Central Bhutan. Maybe for the next Photography Tour of Bhutan I will concentrate more on landscape?
Im back from my first Bhutan photo tour. What an amazing country full of lovely people and spectacular scenery, Bhutan really is a photographers paradise. The problem is, I took 2000 photographs, well, that’s not actually the problem, the problem is choosing which image to put up first! So i’ve begun pretty randomly with the first images that caught my eye when i was editing in Lightroom this morning.
The National Happiness Index
The image above is a detail of Prayer flags on a bridge over a river, shot with a 400mm lens wide open (f5.6) to create a very shallow depth of Field. The image to the left really typifies the Bhutanese people and the National Happiness Index, which really does exist.
I’ll just keep adding images here randomly, and I’m in the process of writing a page reviewing the whole of my first photographic tour of Bhutan. If you were on the tour with me, please feel free to write feedback here on the Blog. More to come, next is the photographic tour of Cambodia in March April next year, cant wait!
I will be running another Bhutan photo tour each year, click the link to see all the details.
This is the image i referred to a few posts back of Spillway Creek of Lake Argyle in flood, there is a handy photographer in the foreground to give perspective to the image, and here is another image i posted a while back from the same area.
Champagne Springs at Dusk, El Questro Station in the East Kimberley Region
I have always looked at the sign pointing to the trail to Champagne Springs at El Questro Station, in the East Kimberley region, thought about it… But never walked it. Read the rest of this entry »
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