Come with me on a journey – a journey of pain – a pain worse than bamboo slivers under your fingernails.

You see that picture to the left? That’s my laundry basket. I know, it’s not a fancy once – but it came with the serviced apartment I currently live in. But it’s really a mutant killer laundry basket. Really it is. I put my laundry in it… and then when I get my laundry back – anything that’s not on hangers – is folded and placed back inside the basket.

So then I have to reach inside the basket and take out folded shirts, shorts, jeans, whatever. And that’s when it happens. That’s when the  mutant killer attack laundry basket strikes! You see the next picture below?

Take a good look at the notches cut into the side of the basket – somebody's idea of an artistic motif maybe? Nope – a really insidious man-trap. I reach in to grab my laundry – my fingers travel down the inside of the basket – and then wham! – one of those little notches catches my fingernail and I’m done. A perfect fit – finger in the notch, small barb of the notch under my fingernail. It’s all over.

I figured it was about time I blogged about this book (following on from Hans Rosling’s superb TED lecture - below).

A few years ago a friend recommend a book by Erich Fromm called ‘The Heart of Man’. I had trouble finding the title at the time, however in the process discovered what I believe is considered to be one of Fromm’s most famous works - ‘The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness’ – published nine years after ‘The Heart of Man’,  and incorporating many of his earlier published ideas concerning human behaviour and culture.

The book is written in an uncomplicated, highly educational and engaging narrative that just about anyone can read. Fromm’s analysis of the instinctivism of Konrad Lorenz, to the behaviourist B.F. Skinner was eye opening. For me the most valuable lesson in the book was his description of the primary drivers in human nature; co-operation and conflict avoidance, the desire to achieve and the desire to share.

As some of the reviewers on Amazon and elsewhere have also said – this is probably the most important book I’ve ever read. Read it – and you’ll see why.

“Culture – Culture is the most important thing I would say because that is what brings joy to life. That’s the value of living…”

Hans Rosling: New insights on poverty and life around the world

The finalé is worth the price of admission alone…

Well at least I can’t be accused of lazy journalism.

I went back to Luang Prabang on the 5th of March – and took with me many of the pictures I’d taken there on my previous trip.

I was able to find most of the people in the pictures and give them prints – including the kids at the school, most of the apprentice monks and other people that I’d photographed there.

While looking for two kids I’d photographed playing on the banks of the Khan river, I met a women with her son who recognised one of the boys in the photo and offered to take me to his village. We passed a small school and entered an even smaller village – where I was handed off to another woman sitting in front of a house in the village at the top of a path that led down to the river. She explained that the boys in the photo lived nearby – but that they were ‘in the river again’. So I sat there and chatted to a few people, several of which had brought their kids to an English lesson being held privately in the house at the top of the path. While talking to a couple of other kids – I asked them if they knew anyone that sold crafts at the night market in Luang Prabang. One of the girls said that her family made silk and cotton fabric that they sold to vendors at the night market as well as to the market at Ban Pa Nom.  I asked her if I could see where they made their fabric and she said yes.

Her name was Por, and she was there with a friend - Leh. They’d brought their bicycles and decided that I would ride one of them while the two rode tandem on the other. Not wanting to miss a photo opportunity I proceeded to peddle a rather precarious one-handed route across dirt and sealed roads while taking pictures. To the right is a picture of Por (left) and Leh (right) on the way to Por’s home in Ban Pon Sa-at.

Por is the youngest in the household with three older sisters and an older brother. The two oldest sisters Pu and Nic have finished school and weave as well as help out around the home full-time. Ot, the next youngest, and Por are still in high-school. Cam-Noy, their brother, is just finishing high school and is the only one that will go on to a vocational college to study ‘phi-fa’ (electricity). 

Here’s a picture of the four girls weaving on traditional shuttle looms, Pu (left), Ot (front), Nic (furthest back – just visible) and Por (right).

The following day I was able to find a small Kodak lab in town and printed the pictures of the family at their looms and at the house. I called their mother and asked if I could come to visit again and bring them their pictures. She said yes – and while I was there I took a few more pictures and also suggested that perhaps for International Women’s Day (on Sunday the 8th of March) they’d all like to go to the famous Tat Kuang Si waterfalls – not far from Luang Prabang. Surprisingly, considering they’d known me for less than 24 hours – they thought that would be great. I organised a mini-van from the hotel and came back on Sunday to pick them up for our big trip to Tat Kuang Si.

There were twelve of us in total (I think) – all of Por’s family, plus several nephews and nieces – all piled into the van. The first thing you discover when taking kids from a relatively small village on a trip in a van along some windy roads – is that they’re not used to riding in vans on windy roads – and about 20 minutes into the trip we had what can only be described as a ‘barf-o-rama’. At one point when we’d run out of plastic bags we had to stop and take a barf break on the side of the road. Everyone was remarkably good natured about it – participants and viewers. :-).

On the way back from Tat Kuang Si – we visited Por’s grandparents at their village – set beside the Mekong river not far from Tat Kuang Si.

Por’s mother – Bang – began helping out with setting up the ‘warp’ to be used in one of several looms that were also at the grandparents’ house (the lengthwise yarn arrangement – red in this case - that is used in the shuttle loom to set the pattern threads against)

So.. in a round-about way, and while having more fun than I’ve had in ages… I discovered that the local markets, the night market in Luang Prabang, and the market at Ban Pa-Nom just outside of Luang Prabang – do in fact sell the textiles that are made in the homes of Laos villages all across the country. And that the rents paid in the markets are modest - about 8,000 Laos Kip per space per day – about 1 USD – for a space with two light bulbs, and that a fair percentage of the money we spend on crafts in these markets (at least the ones I visited) does in fact go directly to the families that make the products themselves – which is great.

The full set of pictures I took on this trip can be found here…

NOTE: The roman character transliteration of some nicknames in S.E. Asia can result in a word that would not only result this article being spam filtered – but might be less than kind to the owner of the name when read by those not familiar with the problem; and so the name of one of the girls featured in this post has been changed accordingly.

Is it just me – or is there something slightly odd about advertising export quality on a food product sold locally (like there should be any difference between domestic and export quality in the first place)?

I like these small salad packs; they come in classic, Japanese, ranch, Caesar, and a few other varieties – along with dressing and extra bits (croutons, bacon bits or poppy seeds etc.).

But the export quality label has always made me think – what exactly does this mean? Does it mean – don’t buy those contaminated domestic quality salads that the locals have to eat, when you can get the good stuff, the safer love health stuff that the rest of the world eats? Hmmm….

Have just returned from a four day visit to Luang Prabang. Four days is hardly long enough to get to know a place and the people that live there - but it was all the time I could spare on this occasion.

The trip began with an eventful arrival. I had less than the required six months left in my Canadian passport and so decided to travel on my UK passport - obtaining a tourist visa from the Laos embassy here in Bangkok. I used my Canadian passport to leave Thailand, and when I tried to enter Laos with my UK passport I was asked to 'have a seat' in a small office and wait while several officers of various rank (over a period of about an hour) came in and explained that I would have to pay a US 200 dollar fine because there was no exit visa in my UK passport to prove that I had come from Thailand. For the most part I pretended to be clueless (not that difficult for me to do), pointing to my Laos visa, and at one point feigned a decision to go back to Bangkok. Smiling a lot probably helped. In the end the fine was reduced from 200 to 100 US dollars paid in Thai Baht. I'd love to know how it was divided up amongst the 'officials' on duty that day.

The rest of the trip went well and we had fun walking around the town, markets and temples. The views across the Mekong and Khan rivers in the early evening were beautiful. Most locals reported fewer tourists than last year due to a large number of cancellations caused by the problems in Thailand - in particular the recent closure of Suwanapoom airport in Bangkok. Perhaps things were a little more relaxed than usual as a result. We made merit at dawn on Friday morning giving rice, chocolate bars and small cartons of milk to the stream of monks leaving the temples to receive alms. I went again on my own on Saturday morning and shared my mat with a Swedish and American couple. I'd read about the concerns by some that the number of photo snapping tourists (including myself) at the early morning ceremony might be changing the nature of the ceremony for the worse, but the atmosphere was relaxed and respectful. It appeared to me that the right balance had been struck between those participating and those wanting to record the event.

The highlight of the trip was when we invited ourselves to visit the central Luang Prabang school. We spoke to students and their teacher during a Saturday afternoon class. The school is a combined primary, secondary and vocational college and the students were taking a lesson in nutrition. Most students had travelled by bus from the areas around Luang Prabang to attend class that day. I gave an impromptu (and brief) lesson in Canadian geography, explaining that at the moment the weather is very cold in Canada - reaching minus twenty degrees Celsius during cold snaps, and that there is plenty of snow. I told my usual stories, including how if you breathe in through your nose very quickly, your runny nose will instantly turn to ice (with the usual gasps of surprise followed very quickly by disbelief). And my old favourite - of how during the winter, people that have to park their cars very far from where they work don't always make it to the car before freezing like a statue - and have to be carried back inside to be warmed up before trying again (more gasps and then laughter as I pretend to be frozen). We bought the class a box of cakes, swapped email addresses and said our goodbyes after having rescued them from twenty minutes of nutrition.

I suppose if I have any misgivings about the trip as a whole, it would be the questions I continually asked myself which included: why were people coming to Laos?, and who benefits? One theory at least is that tourist dollars help the local economy and that some of this money will filter down to the average Laos person. Looking at the condition and teaching materials at the local school I struggled to see any immediate evidence of this. What's more - having lived in SE Asia for nearly a decade now, I've seen families that have become rich on tourist dollars - the fortunate ones that have land, or a house in just the right location, and my impression in most cases has been that these families tend not to share their wealth with their less fortunate neighbours. And then of course there is the system of patronage and corruption common in Asia which usually means that by the time tourist dollars have trickled down to the 'average' person, a large percentage has been siphoned off at the top.

The central night market in Luang Prabang is remarkably well organised and suspiciously homogenous in the goods that are on offer. I would have liked to ask the vendors who they bought their crafts from and how much they paid to rent their spot in the market.

I guess the other reason people visit a country like Laos is to experience the culture - to see how other people live and perhaps to learn something about the hardship experienced by those living in a developing country - in particular the minority areas. The trouble I have with this explanation is that Laos is a 'developing' country for some very good reasons. I'm not an expert on the history of the region, but after just a little reading on the topic it's easy to see how the recent and tragic history of Laos (as well as Cambodia and Vietnam) explains a lot in terms of its lack of development. According to the CIA world factbook the average life expectancy in Laos is just 56 years. So does this mean that as tourists, we are benefiting from a tragic past? That we're able to travel back in time to see the 'real Laos' - people in villages living a subsistence existence because of the chess piece wars and conflict in the region that stunted the development of a country which should otherwise have prospered? I'm not sure, and that's probably a simplistic view of the complex combination of conflict, culture, religion and environment that have helped to create and shape the country as it is today.

So would I go back? Yes I would. The people are truly friendly and welcoming. I'd love to spend more time in Laos travelling and talking to people about how they live and the changes occurring in their country.

For now at least I'll have to accept that after such a short trip - I'm barely qualified to comment, and close to justifiably being accused of being a 'flash-packer' in Luang Prabang for four days :-)

The full collection of the pictures I took in Luang Prabang can be found here.

It's taken me about a month to settle on an auto focus strategy for my D700.

I skipped several generations in film and digital SLRs, so getting up-to-speed with the D700 as well as re-learning some of the basics in focus and exposure has taken me a little longer than I'd thought it would.

Thanks to a couple of good forum posts - in particular this one - D700 and autofocus at Photo.net - I now have a much better understanding of how auto focus works in the D700, and in particular the focus points and what to expect in terms of different scenes, lighting and camera orientation.

There's a consensus that the cross type focus points - 15 of them located in the centre of the 51 AF point matrix mean that you may occasionally find it hard to focus vertically (portrait) when using one of the edge focus points. In low light with little contrast and a lack of horizontal lines under the focus point this might be true - and I've been able to reproducibly see the difference in test shots against a target - but in practice - outside and focusing on people at events, or on the street, I'm finding the edge focus points are working ok.

So here's my recipe for fast(ish) focusing - in particular when photographing people at events or outdoors - in either landscape or portrait mode.

1) Remove the focus from the shutter button - (option a5:AF Activation - set to AF-ON button only). I was actually told to do this a while ago by a good friend, Patrick de Noirmont - but like most things - I have to learn them the hard way. :-) There are a couple of good reasons for this. For one, I was losing pictures when I was occasionally slipping, or releasing the focus after recomposing. The D700 is not a light camera (even without the battery pack) especially when there's a 70-200mm/2.8 lens attached to it and so it's possible to lose the 'feeling' of the half-pressed shutter button in all that weight. Moving focus off of the shutter button guarantees that you won't accidentally refocus after recomposing. What's more, you can always pull focus manually and know for sure that pressing the shutter button isn't going to change anything.

2) Leave the focus mode in continuous servo AF mode (the switch on the side). By moving the focus to AF-ON only - you effectively get both single servo and continuous servo focus. Press once for the equivalent of Single-servo mode - press and hold for continuous AF mode. Kills two birds with one stone and no need to flip the switch.

3) This one's important.. turn OFF the image review under the playback menu. Here's why. If you're shooting an active scene (again - an event or people moving around outside) then you're likely going to be moving the focus point using the multi-selector (multi-wheel), focusing, and recomposing repeatedly (especially if you're switching between horizontal and vertical composition). I want this process to be as fast and as fluid as possible. The bad news is that pressing the AF-ON button (or the AE-L/AF-L button) won't interrupt the image review like the shutter button does (turning off the monitor). If you have your eye to the view finder - having just taken a picture, and then try to move your focus point by pressing the multi-selector (before focusing again or recomposing) - you'll actually be moving through images in playback mode on the rear screen. If you don't turn off image review - then you'll have to press the shutter button first - and while that might not sound like a big deal, it's an extra button to push and when you want to move a focus point, refocus and shoot in under a second - it gets in the way.

And that's it... :-)

The results below - after a quick switch from portrait to horizontal - placing a focus point on the eyes (yes - the eyes) with no recomposing.

Device:    Nikon D700
Lens:    VR 70-200mm F/2.8G
Focal Length:    180mm
Focus Mode:    AF-C
AF-Area Mode:    Dynamic, 9 points
VR:    ON
Aperture:    F/2.8
Shutter Speed:    1/125s
Exposure Mode:    Manual
Exposure Comp.:    +0.3EV
ISO Sensitivity:    Auto (ISO 1800)

Well partly as an act of procrastination (the books and reading are piling up), and partly in recognition of the fact that the previous design sucked big time... I've redesigned the blogs and photo gallery. It took three days in total - and I think the results are ok. At least I think it sucks less than the previous design.

Thanks to firebug and a list of fairly well known IE7 issues - it went pretty well this time. No major CSS gottchas... a pretty good two column liquid layout and drop shadow as well as less cruft. I've dropped IE6 support - too much pain to go there and well.. it's my site... :-)

Not sure what came over me. It's not my birthday, and it's not Christmas. And I'm so deep into studies at the moment that I'll only be able to use it on and off over the next few months, but...

...I bought a Nikon D700 yesterday. What an amazing camera. 12.1 Mpixels, full frame (FX), 3D Color Matrix II, 5-8 fps, and unbelievably fast and sharp in low light.

I purchased the body from AV Camera, who are a very well known authorised dealer here in Bangkok.

The AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED and AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G IF-ED from Sunny Camera - MBK 3rd floor, 3c33 - also an authorised Nikon dealer.

Ken Rockwell's site was an invaluable reference when looking at options for lenses. Most people, including Ken don't rate the 24-120mm VR that is advertised in many bundled packages for the D700. The Nikon 24-85mm is very sharp - but as Ken says, you need to be aware of the barrel and pin cushion distortions at fully wide and full zoom positions.

Here's a picture I took at Victory Monument last night. The NEF RAW version is incredibly sharp and rich in detail, with almost no discernable noise (click for a larger JPEG version).

Can't wait for my next trip - probably to Luang Prabang to put the D700 to work (albeit in my amateur hands).

Hehe... couldn't resist. I've seen quite a few product names in Asia that become lost in translation, but I'm struggling a little to understand what was on the mind of the Glico product executives when they decided to launch 'Collon Biscuit Rolls'.