I’ve recently had the urge to buy a point-and-shoot digital camera. There are times, particularly when doing food-related pics or schlepping around places doing guidebook research that I’d rather have a camera that I can carry with one hand or simply stuff in my pocket. I’ve also been influenced by this article by Peter Hessler, in which he explains how a small digital camera proved helpful in the writing his excellent new book, Country Driving. In the piece he describes how looking at digital snapshots, sometimes several years after they were taken, helped to remind him of details he’d forgotten and contributed to the quality and accuracy of his writing.

I’ve played around with using my iPhone, but its images (an example of which, taken recently in Melbourne, Australia, is shown above) just don’t cut it. Any recs? Ideally I want something with a fast lens (f/2) and at least some degree of manual control. I was initially drawn to Leica’s digital point-and-shoots, largely because I’ve long wanted to own something with the Leica logo, but they’re expensive and generally don’t get very strong reviews. The Canon PowerShot S90 seems to get high ratings and is affordable. And apparently a particular model of Ricoh has garnered substantial praise from those who do lots of food-related photography.

The tiny village of Ban Nong Ping (Leetch Lake Village) lies at the eastern edge of Laos’s Khammuan Province near the border with Vietnam. Its 200+ inhabitants are a mixture of lowland Lao and Salang who were ordered to moved here more than a decade ago, and who have yet to experience the joy of electricity (it’s meant to arrive in 2012). The village is the access point for Hin Namno NBCA and some of the more remote stretches of the former Ho Chi Minh Trail, as well as for the amazing Tham Lot Se Bang Fai, which is why we there there. After having explored the cave and stayed with the villagers, we had a bit of free time on our last day and I did some impromptu portraits. The images were taken with my D700, a 80-200mm f/2.8 VR and illuminated with two off-camera strobes, a SB-800 and an SB-900, both activated by the camera’s built-in flash. I didn’t have much time and the flashes were acting naughty, but at the least the images provide a bit of insight into the inhabitants of one of the most remote and poorest villages I’ve ever visited.

To commence a slideshow of 12 images, click on the image above and use keyboard arrows or hold your mouse above the images to navigate through them.

 
Tanks crossing the barricade into the protesters’ camp, Bangkok

As of about 8.30am this morning, and after several hours of early morning fighting, tanks have crossed the protesters’ tire and bamboo barricade near Lumphini Park to. This is significant, but it still remains to be seen what will happen, and I continue to hear gunshots and explosions as I write this.

As  mentioned previously, yesterday was generally quiet in the Silom area, at least until about 1am. Shortly after falling asleep I was awakened by the sound of several very large explosions and the pop of sniper rifle fire (as opposed the rattle of machine gun or the blasts of shotgun fire the previous nights) very close to my house. Wandering out this morning to survey the damage, it became clear exactly how close the sounds were: the Dusit Thani Hotel, which I can see clearly from my balcony, had been hit by a grenade (see pic above). Guests were apparently herded into the basement in the middle of the night, and as of today, the hotel has closed, its employees helping people evacuate from this area’s now empty streets:

The government has set a deadline of 3pm today for everybody to leave the protester’s main camp, which begins at Lumphini Park:

and stretches all the way to the shopping district at Rajprasong. It’s 2.30pm as I write this, and the recent death of influential red shirt supporter Seh Daeng, the sound of explosions, mysterious small planes passing overhead and ominously, dark clouds and thunder, contribute to a very dark, tense atmosphere.

Incidentally, if I’ve gained anything from this experience, it’s the knowledge that the seemingly useless internet application Twitter actually has a practical application. In the words of Bloomberg reporter Dan Ten Kate, ‘It’s like having sources all over town,’ and many journalists and observers use it via mobile phone to keep up to date on what’s becoming an ever-expanding conflict. I follow it compulsively from home, and if you also desire minute to minute updates on the situation here I can recommend feeds from Newley Purnell, Patrick Winn, Alastair Leithead, Andrew Marshall, bangkokpundit and Agnes Dherbys.

Damage and burning along Rama IV, Bangkok

Yesterday was relatively quiet, at least in my area, but this was the scene five minutes’ walk away, along Rama IV. The smoke is from burning tires, and was accompanied by explosions (mostly harmless but very large rockets fired by the protesters) virtually every 20 seconds. A surreal and frightening scene.