My favourite shots of 2017
January 12, 2018Although I haven’t had a heap of time to review my images, there’s been a few shots from last year that really stick out in my memory. Below is a couple of these shots. In total I took over 30,000 images in 2017 so there are definitely some I am yet to look at. Enjoy.
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Marie in Kandy
This one is special for me as it was my around my second or third day of solo travel way back in February, and I still wasn’t sure if I was going to enjoy myself.
Thankfully I tagged along with a German/Ghanan guy called Pete on my first day in Colombo and ended up with him and a few others at the Kandy Botanical gardens.
The whole day was spent walking around talking, we had a picnic on the grass and ended with a makeshift photoshoot in the bamboo forest.
One of many days in Sri Lanka that made me want to take on the challenge of solo travel.
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Old Thai dude
I was on a quest in far north Thailand to try and get to the border with Myanmar, which I succeeded in doing. a few hundred metres before I got there though I found this old dude collecting wood from nearby fields and making some sort of smoke signal. We couldn’t speak a lick of the same language to each other so I couldn’t ask him what it was for. As I tried to help him bring a log back to his pile he started laughing at my attempt and motioned me to stop.
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Father and Sunset
Taken on the Malaysian island of Penang, these two were half bathing and half swimming right as the water turned an spectacular golden pink colour.
I really like this image, but it mainly makes the cut because I think the title is rly clever.
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Boy blowing bubbles
As we were waiting for a train in Anhuradapura to head north to Jaffna, a train on the opposite platform was stopped to refuel. I walked the length of the train countless times trying to get some portraits of the passengers
but nearly all of them would wave and smile as soon as they saw me and my camera (a little annoyance of Sri Lankans being so friendly).
There were however two boys blowing bubbles out the train window that did not notice me at all, I managed to get this at the perfect moment as the midday sun came out and left a shadow below.
Right after my cover was blown as the mum pointed me out and the kids shyed away from the camera.
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Ha Long Bay
I really just wanted to see how high I could take the drone for this shot, which turned out to be the maximum of 500m. I was shit scared of the thing falling out of the sky or one of the famous eagles trying to swoop it.
Thankfully none of that happened and I was able to get one of the more unique shots of ha long bay I’ve ever seen. Do not recommend trying to land on a moving boat though.
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Sapa rice fields
This shot still amazes me every time I see it. It’s incredible to me that a terrain that varies in height by around 40m (complete guess but sounds about right) can look so flat and so unnatural. it really does remind me of an aboriginal painting.
For a sense of scale, myself and my family are roughly centre of the shot.
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Sunset beach cricket
This one pretty much sums up my first trip to Sri Lanka. After around two hours of playing cricket on the beach, which involved teaching an Italian how to play (or maybe he was Dutch, or a Spaniard, it’s been a while) the sky turned
a marvelous mixture of oranges, reds and blues. the light here was so bad that the ball could hardly be seen but as true Sri Lankan kids they played until all the light was drained from the sky.
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Hai Van Pass
Still stands up as one of the best days of the trip, and even though I didn’t take this myself it’s still one of my favourites as a reminder of a perfect day with a perfect clan.
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Cambodian Kids
These portraits are up there with my favourite shots ever taken. The natural light was incredible, the background perfectly blank but best of all was the kids completely ignored me.
I tried a few times to get them to look in other directions or face the light but they didn’t want to play. I had to get my friends to distract them with a rock that looks like a potato (cheap plug @travellingpotatorock on insta) just so they would face the light.
I would seriously struggle to get lighting this good in a studio so to get it on an overcast Cambodian afternoon really pleases me.
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Mekong Riverview wins
More of a reminder of working at a hotel that treats their staff so well and creates a family, this shot was taken in one of the finals of the highly coveted Luang Prabang Hotels Football Cup right after our team scored a penalty to essentially win the game.
I love the pure joy on their faces the when it goes in, and I’ll never forget the roar such a small group gave and the lap of honour from the scorer.
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Chiang Mai Lanterns
One of my favourite images from an absolutely magical couple of days in Chiang Mai for the lantern festival. The immense spectacle included the release of thousands of lanterns, and just as many tourists, into the wild.
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School kids in tea fields
This was one of those shots I had envisioned for a while, but it took a few hours of waiting, drinking tea and avoiding rain showers before a group large enough ventured into the depths of the tea fields in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia.
I’m glad I waited though, as it’s pretty close to my favourite photo of the year and my current phone background.
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Hong Kong Housing
I would have taken thousands of images of the buildings in Hong Kong but the pastel colours and pure density of this shot really stands out for me. I really need to create a few separate blogs for Hongkers, but my 2017 Lightroom Catalog corrupted so for the moment this will have to do.
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If any of these images speak to you, and you’d like to purchase a print then shoot me an email.
Already looking forward to my favourites of 2018