Photo Tours and workshops with Australian Photographer Adam Monk

The Hasselblad H4D-60 is not really a travel camera… it being huge, heavy and not very subtle.  But It’s such a lovely camera to use, and the results are nothing short of spectacular, which makes it all worth it.  Its a hard camera to use quietly, as the shutter makes an almighty “thunk” which tends to echo around the space in places like Dzongs (Temple fortress of Feudal Bhutan) and temples.

This Image shot in the Thimpu Dzong on my last photo tour of Bhutan in the angled light of late afternoon as a group of Monks crossed the courtyard.  Shot on the Hasselblad H4D-60 with the Hasselblad 100mm f2.2.

Thimpu is the capital of Bhutan, though to call it a city is stretch.  Up to a few years ago Thimpu was just a small town in the Thimpu valley, now it is the biggest “city” in Bhutan and the capital with a population of just over 80,000 people.  To me it’s still a beautiful relaxed town where the locals are always ready with a smile and directions for a lost traveller, or even a lost photography tour group.

Despite its title as Capital City, Thimpu still has no traffic lights, and when the city council tried to instal some there was such a local outcry they were removed again shortly afterwards.

This trip to Bhutan we were blessed with some beautiful skies and some magic sunsets.  This is the Thimpu valley at twilight with the Thimpu Dzong on the right hand side behind the rice fields.  Below is the same location shortly afterwards with the lights of the Dzong lit up.

Both Images were shot with the Hasselblad H4D-60 camera and the Hasselblad 50mm f3.5 or the 100mm f2.2.

I have just returned from my latest Bhutan Photo tour where I spent 15 days photographing, teaching and learning.  The great thing about running photography tours is that I learn as much from the participants as they learn from me, not just about photography, but about people skills, diplomacy, about myself and how I react to certain situations.  It really is an illuminating experience that I hope makes each tour better and better.

Ideal Light for Landscapes

Bhutan is always a magical place and this year was not disappointing, the weather last year was all blue skies and sunshine, which is very nice, but this year turned on some magic moody skies and some great overcast days with some lovely soft light for more landscapes, and photographing Bhutan’s wild rivers like the images to the left and below.

The rivers in Bhutan all run straight out of the mountains, usually from snow melt, so they are all rapids and waterfalls, blue and very cold!  The coloured Prayer Flags add a lovely cultural dimension and really place the image firmly in the Buddhist Himalayas.  The Bhutanese, who are almost exclusively Buddhist (Buddhism is part of their constitution) place the prayer flags in many natural beauty spots, particularly high passes and across river valleys.

They are really a great form of labour saving device,  the prayers are written on the flags, which are made in such a way that they unravel in the wind, releasing the prayers as they disintegrate.

I took the Hasselblad H4D-60 along on this latest photo tour (as I did for my tour of Vietnam and Cambodia earlier this year), its not really an ideal travel camera, being rather heavy…  But its such a pleasure to use, and the images are so sharp and clear that I cant say I regretted it for a minute… Except when I had to carry it up the mountain!

Images shot on the Hasselblad H4D-60 and Hasselblad 50mm f3.5 lens.

Bhutan Photo tour for 2014

Next years Bhutan photo tour leaves in march for the spring festivals in Punakha Dzong, wild flowers and battle re-enactments, it will be awesome!

I have finalised all the details for my photography tour of Bhutan for next year and the web page has been fully updated.  Next years tour differs from this years tour, which is leaving next month (october 12th), in that next year we are going in March, which is Spring in Bhutan.  This means all the wildflowers will be out, it also means the festival around which I base the dates for the Bhutan Photo tour will be different.

Bumthang Festivals for the Photo tour of 2013

Both this year and last year the tour dates revolved around two fantastic festivals in the Bumthang region of Bhutan, The Jambay Lhakhang tshechu (religious festival) in Jakar and the Prakar Lhakhang tshechu (religious festival) in the Chumey valley.  Both of these festivals are as authentic as it gets and worth the travelling into the scenic mountainous region of Bhutan, not that you need any further reasons, the scenery in central Bhutan is spectacular even on a bad day!

Punakha Festival  for the Photo tour of 2014

For 2014 by arriving in spring it opens up the possibilities for seeing other festivals.  For next years tour I have set the dates to coincide with the Punakha Dromchen tshechu, which takes place in and around the stunningly beautiful Punakha Dzong (temple fortress).

This festival commemorates a pivotal victory of the Bhutanese over the Tibetan army in the 17th century that took place in the location where the Dzong now stands.  The Punakha Dzong was built to ensure the Tibetans would never be able to sneak up the Punakha valley again, and the festival that happens in spring each year has a dramatic re-enactment of this battle as the main event.  We will be there to photograph it.

If you would like to join me at the Punakha Dzong (which is pictured above) for this unique festival go to the Bhutan Photo Tour webpage to read all the details and reserve your place.

Another image from my favourite temple in the Angkor complex…  Angkor is often misnamed Angkor Wat, when in fact Angkor Wat refers to the largest single temple within the Angkor temple complex (Wat means temple in Khmer).  As impressive as Angkor Wat is, due to sheer size and grandeur, it’s often hard to appreciate it due to the vast number of tourists pouring through it, often it feels more like Disney Land, with screaming and yelling and total chaos.

Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm

When I go to places like Angkor, I like to wander quietly through the incredible ruins and wonder at the long dead builders of such a vast and elaborate work of art, and the culture that created it.  The temples of Angkor really are beyond compare, certainly to anything I have ever seen.  Every square centimetre is covered with detailed and intricate carvings, it’s almost impossible to comprehend the size and complexity of it all.

So the last thing I want is to be there with a bunch of screaming disrespectful idiots, that really breaks the spell and makes me want to leave.  Fortunately most of those idiots are on large organised tours that all follow the same itinerary, and they all arrive around the same time…  9.30 in the morning when it’s stinking hot and so humid you almost need to be a fish to breath!  Since I have been at the temples since 5am, thats a perfect time for me to head back to the air conditioned comfort of my hotel room in Siem Reap to download images and have a sleep until about 3pm  Then I head back to the temples just as those same dehydrated and exhausted tour groups are leaving… strangely quiet now.

The Temple of Ta Prohm doesn’t get anywhere near the numbers of Angkor Wat, but it is still a popular spot for the Disneyland tour groups, so you do have to get there early or late.  Fortunately that’s the best time to be there in every sense, light, temperature, humidity and quiet!  This image was shot early in the morning on my last Photographic tour to Cambodia and Vietnam on the Hasselblad H4D-60 with a 28mm f4 lens.

Cambodia Photo Workshop

I’ve been planning a photographic Workshop in Cambodia since returning in 2013, those plans have come to fruition and the page is up, you can view all the details here>>

Of all the ruins in the amazing Angkor complex, the ancient monastery of Ta Prohm would have to be my favourite.  Ta Prohm has been left in a semi ruined state with giant fig trees growing out of temples and huge roots clambering over roof tops and slowly pulling the buildings apart.  It is the most atmospheric of all the temples in the main Angkor complex of Cambodia, and I would guess thats why it featured so heavily in the film Tomb Raider…

Photographic Tour Dates for 2014

I took this image on my last photographic tour to Cambodia and Vietnam in May this year, but I’ve only now got around to playing with it a bit.  We only spent 3 days in Cambodia on the last tour, something I regretted at the time and something I will be correcting on the Cambodia Photo workshop for 2015.  Then we will be spending more than a week in Cambodia, with a lot of it around the unique temple ruins of Angkor and beyond, including a couple of early mornings at Ta Prohm!  Details will be going up shortly for the 2014 dates for this tour, and also my 2014 Photography tour to Bhutan.

Image was shot on the Hasselblad H4D-60 with a 28mm f4 lens.

This is the third revisit from the images of the fisherman images from Hoi An Vietnam taken on my Photographic tour of Vietnam and Cambodia earlier this year.  I posted this image in a previous post with about 4 minutes work done in Lightroom, and looking back at it now it looks pretty ordinary.  with just a few more minutes work in Lightroom the image improves dramatically.  I have posted the before image here again so its easy to compare the difference, and it really is only a few minutes work in Lightroom to go from before to after, imagine what you could do actually exporting it to Photoshop and really working it up!

Cambodia & Vietnam Tour 2014

I am in the process of preparing the tour itinerary for Cambodia and Vietnam  for 2014 right now.  The tour will be in July 2014, and quite different to this last tour the same region.  We will spending much more time in Cambodia this trip, with more focus on the out of the way non-touristy locations, including more of the far flung ruined temples outside the Angkor temple complex.  You can read about the last tour here, and this same page will be updated with final dates and itineraries for the 2014 tour soon… Saty Tuned!

Image was shot on the Hasselblad H4D-60 with a 100 mm f2.2 lens.

The second instalment of me reworking already posted images, this one from the same day as the previous post.  Once again this was posted with about 5 minutes work in Lightroom on the laptop (not the best way to do images), and I have since worked it up on the Mac Pro with a bigger calibrated screen, still only in Lightroom though, there may be some more post processing in Photoshop .

Normally for an image like this to print it, I would get to a certain point in Lightroom (when everything starts to slow down), then export the image out as a High Res Tiff or psd (or a smart object) and work on it further in Photoshop before printing.  Well, this image is at the stage of slowing down and not much more is possible in Lightroom (unless you like looking at the spinning beach ball), so the next step would be Export, maybe I’ll show it again later, post Photoshop.

Speaking of printing, I am about to run a photographic printing workshop in August this year, so if you have always wanted to get that desktop photographic printer behaving like the salesman told you it would, come along, you can read more details about that here.

Just like the image from the last post, I shot this from a boat in the Hoi An River on the Hasselblad H4D-60 handheld (at 6am in the morning) while on my last Photographic Tour of Vietnam and Cambodia back in May of this year.  The image on the left above has had about 1 hour in Lightroom, while the image on the right is the original I posted some time back, with about 5 minutes of Lightroom work.  Don’t forget to click the images to get a bigger version.

I’m currently working out a totally new itinerary for next years Vietnam and Cambodia photographic Tour, with a lot more focus on Cambodia and some more remote and Beautiful regions of Vietnam. Stay tuned to this blog for all the updates and book mark this page for all the information about this Photo Tour for 2014.

I posted some shots for the fisherman of Hoi An some time back (I’m not very regular with my posts) that I shot on the last Vietnam and Cambodia photographic tour.  The images were posted not long after I shot them and with only a 5 minute basic workup in Lightroom.  Usually that’s what I post here on the blog, 5 minute workups… I thought it might be nice to show what a little image work can do for a photograph, sort of a before and after, in this case just in Lightroom.

This photograph was shot on the Hasselblad H4D-60 with the Hasselblad 100mm f2.2 lens handheld, and what you see is basically full frame (besides a little horizon straighten… I was on a boat after all), the file is rather huge and there are 12 stops of latitude for editing, so almost anything is possible.

Directly above is the Lightroom worked up version of the previously posted image.  It’s had about 1 hour of processing, mostly just balancing shadow and light, putting the emphasis where it belongs and removing the ugly tower in the background…

The original as previously posted image is repeated below… Don’t forget to click on each image to get a larger view.

Ten keen photographers I wanted and ten keen photographers I have for the 2013 Photographic Tour to bhutan.

Photography Tour to Bhutan 2014 Dates up soon

I will be running the tour to Bhutan again next year and I’ll have the Itinerary and dates up soon, so you can keep an eye on the Tours and workshops page or you can email me am@adammonk.com to register your interest.  Like this year, the tour for 2014 will be for 10 people only and it will sell out fast.