Finally,  the final blog entry focused on the S.E. Asia trip from the trip in November, 2011! These are the last of the photos taken at the little "country" market we visited in the Siem Reap area.

Notice the long-sleeved top this woman is wearing ... they take their winter seriously while we were dying of the heat and humidity!

This lady wearing a string of pearls.  I don't remember seeing anyone else with this and thought it was unusual.  I don't remember how I got this shot looking down on her.  FWIW, it usually is not very flattering to shoot woman from below  It is far better to shoot like this looking down on the jaw line.

Remember this lady when you get to the last image of the blog.  She looks like a twin with that lady  ... though this woman's smile is  a little "quieter".

One of the market vendors, I think she was selling food:

Of all the woman in the market that day, this person seemed the most fashionable (but then I'm no authority on that subject)  with her hat, matching lip stick color, earrings, and attitude.

 For many photographers, including me, standing eye to eye with a stranger and taking a revealing shot is challenging. More often than not, the subject emotionally pulls away leaving a flat unsuccessful portrait.  If that doesn't happen, I sometimes find myself "backing up" a bit and getting the same flat results. This is why I've often shied away from taking people pictures.  In the image shown below that didn't happen.  I manged to capture an image that looks true to me; one that I find hard to look at without smiling!  My goal is to evoke emotion of some sort from the viewer of an image, and I can best acieve that if the images first moves me!  I achieved that last part with this image.  For those very personal reasons, it is one of my favorite shots from Cambodia:

This was my first trip to S.E. Asia.  It was an amazing experience... particularly from a visual perspective. I had high expectations about that, but what I didn't expect, and what blew me a way were the people. This aspect of the trip exceeded all expectations, and is the reason I would like to return.  I can see why many have fallen in love with this part of the World. 

I would be remiss if I didn't tip my hat is to our trip leader, Dave Cardinal.  It is hard work planning for this kind of trip and even harder work executing on the plan.  For example: I counted eight flights (not including my direct flights in/out of Bankok) and  amazingly. each came off without a hitch!  .  Dave dealt with all the complexities of litteraly and figuratively navigating through a "third" world environment along with dealing diplomatically with eight photographers; each with different needs.  That's hard work!

My thanks to all of you who have followed this saga and who have stayed interested.  I'll now turn the attention of the blog to some smaller, more manageable, views.

Thanks again,

Adam

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