Amphawa Night Market Pictures: Longer Exposures

The view from a footbridge over the canal, showing shops, boats and evening visitors to the market.

Ever since I first started taking pictures I've been interested in images that are out of the ordinary.  My first camera was my mother's boxy, simple mechanical-shutter Kodak Brownie camera that you loaded with spools of 620 film (when you could afford it - and the subsequent processing and printing fees). To a child it seemed to be half the size of a loaf of bread; too big for small hands, and you looked down onto a postage-stamp-sized "viewfinder" to compose your picture, leading many people to often take snapshots that featured very small people nearly lost in an extensive background, at an angle 30-degree off level.

As a rare treat while on a family vacation I was allowed to try that camera for the first time at around age 10. I took three or four pictures at my Grandmother's house and then pestered my folks mercilessly until they'd finished the roll and sent it in to be processed and printed when we returned home.  The day it came back I was most interested in one particular picture where I'd opened the shutter twice - and there were two somewhat blurry images of my cousin, Steve.

The relatively still water of the canal around 21:00

If you did a fast-forward another 10 years or so you'd find me experimenting with my father's 35mm Nikon, the first "real" camera I'd ever had a chance to play with, other than 126 and 110 Instamatics.  Black and white, color, Kodachrome, Ektachrome, ultra violet - I gave them all a workout. Since then I've continued to feel more of an affection for the unusual image, although I don't usually post many of them here.  The last four or five Thailand trips have found me feeding my current passion for longer exposures using available light, and that's what you're seeing here today.

One of the small hives of activity that grew at the bottom of each set of canal-side stairs

What I enjoy most about them is the way they usually include movement and still elements at the same time, and the colors are often not what they'd be during the light of day. I understand they're not everyone's cup of tea so they're not a regular part of the blog, but I'm usually pleasantly surprised to see the results and share them, so I hope you'll enjoy them, too.

After the shops have closed it gets very quiet along the canal

These longer-exposure images were taken at the Amphawa Evening Floating Market; most were later in the evening when things had gotten quieter. If all goes well I'll post others soon from other spots in Amphawa that are away from the market itself.

Longtail boats on the market canal, lit by the shops that line the waterway