Adam Monk Photo Tours

During many of the festivals in Bhutan (a country with lots of festivals), they act out their traditional stories in dance.  Most of the stories are quite incomprehensible to the uninitiated without a guide explaining them, but they are fantastic to watch and exciting to be a part of the enthusiastic crowd as the dancers whirl around the coutyard with their costumes flaring out in bright vibrant colours and patterns.

Monasteries, Dzongs and Festivals

For many of the festivals, especially those in the Monasteries and Dzongs (temple fortress), the dancers are often the local Monks.  During my recent photographic tour of Bhutan we all saw many temples and Dzongs, but generally photography is forbidden within the inner sanctums of the temples themselves (fair enough i reckon, got to have some privacy).  Well imagine our surprise when we were standing (quiet and respectful) outside the temple door of the Trongsa Province Dzong watching while the Monks rehearsed their dances, when one of the senior Monks invited us in to take photos!

The light was streaming through the ancient windows behind the Monks and falling onto the old planked hardwood flooring creating a stunning backdrop to set off the deep red and saffron robes of the whirling Monks.  It was a magical experience, and was very hard to leave.

Bhutan Photo Tour 2013 dates released

The itinerary and the dates for the Bhutan Photography tour for 2013 have been finalised and booked.  I have reworked the whole itinerary and reduced the numbers of this photographic tour down to a maximum of 10 people to ensure a better and more rewarding experience for all.  You can read about this exciting new photo tour to Bhutan right here.

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.

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?

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.

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

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…

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.

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 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.

Sorry folks, I’ve been off the air for ages, i’ve been doing a major renovation on my house and it seems I’ve barely had time to check my emails let alone make blog entries!  I could do a series of posts on why you should never renovate your house, but that would be a little off topic, lets just say it was a huge learning experience.  The biggest thing I learnt was never to do it again.  I hope somebody will remind me of that next time i decide to renovate…

Back on topic… My Photo tour of Bhutan for 2012 has fully booked!.

Bhutan Photo Tour – 2013

The good news is if you really wanted to go to Bhutan but couldn’t make it, or just missed out due to this years tour filling up, I will be running this tour again in 2013 October 12 to 26th October.  You can read the full Bhutan photo tour Itinerary and information right here.  

If you would like some more information, or simply to book for my Bhutan photography tour call me on (+61) 415 854 179 or you can email me at am@adammonk.com or you can keep an eye on this site. Since now i’m not a full time builder, i will be posting more.  In fact, i am about to put up a whole new home page for the workshops and tours that will make finding the latest information really easy, you can find that page here>

My photography tour of Bhutan departing Perth 24th of October this year has almost sold out already.  We only have a total of 20 places, and 16 of those are already booked and paid for.  

We are going to have another information night on Tuesday March 27th at the same place in Leederville to fill those final places, so if you were thinking about going on this tour give me a call 0415 854 179 or email tours@adammonk.com to book your place on the information night.  

It’s a free evening where you get to see some great photography and hear some very interesting stuff about Bhutan, all over a glass of wine.  Very civilised.

Don’t forget, the information night for this years Bhutan Photo Tour is on this Thursday evening (23rd February 2012) in Leederville.  We still have a few spaces available, so if you would like to come please give me a call on 0415 854 179 or you can email tours@adammonk.com

This is shaping up to be an awesome tour of 13 nights/14 days departing Perth 24th October 2012. With full photography tuition on everything from how to get the best use out of your camera, framing great shots and post processing those files so your images really sing!

To read a bit more about it check out the previous blog entry here.