Facing the World: Spotting Tilakas in Bangkok

23 October 2015

Spotting Tilakas in Bangkok

Navaratri is a festival dedicated to the worship of the Hindu deity Durga. The word Navaratri means "nine nights" in Sanskrit, nava meaning nine and ratri meaning nights. During these nine nights and ten days, nine forms of Durga aka Devi aka Shakti are worshipped. Navaratri is an important major festival and is celebrated all over India, Nepal, and even Thailand. Despite the fact that many Thais are Buddhists, they combine easily the Hinduist pantheon of colourful gods with Buddha's teaching that god does not exist.

During Navaratri, many Thai beauties line up at Bangkok's Sri Mariamman Temple aka Wat Prasri Maha Umathewee in order to receive a very distinctive blessing from one of the resident Hindu priests: a red "Indian" tilaka is added to their pretty Thai faces…

The tilaka mark is made of sandalwood paste which has supposedly a cool, soothing effect and the fragrance helps to maintain a pure and clear mind. Additionally, as a "third eye", it might provide perception beyond ordinary sight; boy, oh boy...

Portrait photographs of Thai beauties with red tilaka marks in Matt Hahnewald's

Flickr Album 2015-10b Noticing Tilakas in Bangkok

Portrait photographs of Thai beauties without tilaka marks in Matt Hahnewald's

Flickr Album 2015-12b Participating in Rural Yi Peng

Flickr Album 2015-11j Watching a Lanna Street Parade

Flickr Album 2015-11i Facing Chiang Dao's Tuesday Market

Flickr Album 2015-11b Cheering Northern Thai Dancers

Flickr Album 2015-10a Plucking Bangkok's Flowers

3 comments:

Anonymous said...: Tilaka girls really knock me out
They really leave the west behind; 27 October 2015 at 23:06
Unknown said...: So many Asian girls have cosmetic surgery nowadays.; 8 November 2015 at 01:52
Anonymous said...: Nice work Matt!
And a good way to meet girls.; 2 November 2016 at 05:44

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What's a Portrait?

About Street Portraiture:

(i) The Street Photographer’s State of Mind

Get yourself into a resourceful, open-minded and relaxed state of mind, leave your hide-out and interact with the world. Use any silly hat, have a drink, or apply any of those fancy “think-positive” techniques. Your own state of mind will spread to and infect your portrait subject...

(ii) The Street Photographer’s Intention

Release the shutter with the deliberate intention of “Right now, I'm producing a distinctive portrait photograph”. Find your individual style by applying self-imposed technical constraints (e.g. of the theme, of the aspect ratio, of the techniques, of the lenses, of the composition); less is more...

(iii) The Street Photographer’s Waiver

Decide if it’s better to give it a miss instead of taking a bad photo. In the field, if there is a shred of doubt, don’t take this snap. It’s probably better to take a cerebral snapshot and to enjoy the situation. At your computer, if there is a shred of doubt, delete the image; it’s probably better to download a good image from the internet and to learn from it...

(iv) The Street Photographer’s Attitude

Trust the viewer's active mind. Your photo is just a small trigger for the bigger and better internal picture inside the viewer’s mind. Allow the viewer’s mind to create interesting internal pictures (and movies) by offering images of (a) parts and details, (b) symbols and logos, (c) contrasts and contradictions. Co-operate with the viewer’s creative mind, keep the viewer’s mind busy and seduce your viewer to complete your photo, to improve your photo, to add (her or his) sense to your photo, to fantasize about your photo, and to mentally exceed your own photo...

(v) The Street Photographer’s Tools

Remember the meaning of the word photography and master the light with your eye, with your camera and with your computer: (a) see the light, (b) harness the light and (c) bend the light. But, bear in mind, your shoes are your most important piece of equipment. Use them liberally to get closer (or further away, sometimes), to play with angles and to find your unique point of view...

About Portrait Lenses:

The first thing to consider is focal length. If you're using a camera with a (cropped) APS-C format image sensor (e.g. the Nikon D3100), a 50mm lens will give an effective focal length of around 75mm to 80mm. This is very close to the 85mm focal length for a full-frame camera (e.g. the Nikon D610) that's considered ideal for portraiture. Both enable headshots and half-length portraits to be taken from a comfortable distance of around 3 m, so you can direct your subject without crowding in and making them feel awkward.
One particular advantage of using an 85mm lens on a full-frame camera (or a 50mm lens on a cropped-sensor camera) for portraiture is that the short telephoto focal length has the effect of slightly compressing any prominent facial features (think noses and chins) for a bit of added flattery.
Generally, prime lenses offer superior image quality to zoom lenses, which makes the optics on test instantly appealing. Their killer feature, however, is a wide maximum aperture that's usually between f/1.4 and f/1.8 (e.g. the AF-S NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8G and the AF-S NIKKOR 85mm f/1.8G both from Nikon). This enables a tight depth of field, so you can blur fussy backgrounds and make the person you're shooting really stand out in an image.

Whereas most texts are Wikipedia-based, all the photographs used in this photo blog are copyrighted by © Matt Hahnewald (Facing the World) and cannot be copied, saved, re-produced, blogged, edited, cropped or printed without my written permission. Most of my portraits are available as high-res images (without any watermarks). Just ask and send an email specifying exactly your planned usage of this photo, or license/buy my photos directly from Alamy.

Thank you for respecting intellectual property.

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23 October 2015

Spotting Tilakas in Bangkok

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