archive for May, 2008
Sok dii
I am really happy. First of all because of the fact, that I accept myself more and more and so do I accept more and more of my surrounding people. As the bible says already: Love the people as you love yourself. And its so true. Thanks Jesus or whoever said this once. I meet more and more people telling me that I spread out happiness and joy and affect other people. And its true. The more I love my world, the more my world loves me. And its not that I am running through the streets making efforts to get people to laugh. I am just me and it seems to be that people can see this. Not everybody but some. They get a smile on their face. Foreigners or locals. So I am sure that my private entries about finding my soul have the right thought. Finding my soul to see other peoples souls.
On top of that I have to say its affecting also the kind of people I meet. I meet people, have a great talk about any topics and it doesn’t matter where we come from, where we traveled, what we doing in real life. We don’t exchange emails in the end and don’t try to keep in touch for the rest of our lifes. We both accept the fact of have the luck to meet each other and accept in the same way that we will be apart from each other again. Its totally naturally and they is no doubt on both sides. Being open and free minded.
The more I come closer to myself the more it doesn’t matter where I am. I am reaching slowly but for sure the stage of being intensely happy.
no headline
Lao is a good country. I am starting to upload some pictures again on my flickr account. Feel free to comment those and leave some comments on my blog as well. I didn’t think that much the last days. I realxed in the South of Lao in Don Det and really enjoed the peace of natuer down there. Right now I am in Vientiane, the Capital of Lao. That’s it . hahaha
beauty
As I went to Cambodia the last 8 days I had a really good feeling with the people. Very friendly and warm hearted. I still can’t find the words for I what I saw in people. I know I enjoyed my stay there.
I am still in photography of course, but now I am more thinking about the way and truth of photography instead of taking pictures. I still do my pictures of course, but not in the way I think it has to be. To give you a short summary:
Photojournalism is mostly about taking pictures about what is happening. But in order to be a part of the situation and get the truth of the situation it seems to be the way that the photographer is invisible in these moments. Not there. He is the observer without being a part of it. The faces you see in the pictures are not noticing any camera, anything which could take a copy of their souls and face expressions. You see the beauty of truth.
In order to a good report in the medium of photography, you need to stay quite a long time with the people, do know more and more about their way of living. They come closer to you and trust you more if you respect them and their place to live. But as soon as you take out the camera people’s faces are changing. They see them self from the outside, from the perspective of your camera. They try to influence the emotional content of your pictures. Its not a bad thing at all. You just don’t get in the picture what you see with your own eyes. Of course people are getting used to your camera if you bring it with you all the time, but there is still the magic point of facing a lense and peoples faces are changing. I know I gonna sort it out. Find a way.
So the challenge seems to be connecting photojournalism in terms of showing the truth of the soul and photo reports in terms of staying with the people long time and find out what their soul is all about.
I just see photography as a medium. A medium to express what I see in and feel about people. And to show what I see is taking time. And I have it. Great live. I enjoyed it a lot.
I am in Laos now by the way. Si Phan Don in the south of Laos.
pink snow
hello people. I thought about visiting yen-linh 5 days in Saigon in the end of traveling through Vietnam. This happend about 3 month ago and now I worked here, made friends, tried so many different dishes, came closer to the culture and know exactly 6 sentences and the numbers from 0 to 10 in Vietnamese. I am amazed. I am happy to made the experience to stay longer in one country. It shows you much more than rushing through. Thats why my new way of traveling is also affecting my future traveling which starts tomorrow. I will leave to Cambodia and Laos, maybe Thailand, heading to china to cross it from the west (Yunnan province) to the east (close to shanghai). Find work there and learn about the culture again. Cambodia, Laos and Thailand just gonna be impressions how it could be, but not expecting to know the countries well. The language skills will be challenged much more in case of China. Learning Chinese and see how it goes. Actually I wanted to write a lot about Vietnam and my experiences in this entry. But its hard to summarize a feeling and so many experiences in a couple of sentences.
Thanks to flower guy, yen-linh, thi, abbie, hoa, duy, minh, quyen, tina, jakob, thai, martin, chris, vy, tex and all the people I forgot to name here who support me and gave me strength, fun, advices and what ever what was important to me in those 3 month.
Relating to the question from a lot of guys when I return to Germany: I don’t know. I really don’t know. I know that I miss speaking my language and know which way of talking works and what doesn’t work. The more you are away from home, the more you realize your culture background. And I can tell you for sure that I couldn’t say before I left Germany what Germans are all about. So, I am also getting closer to my country, myself and the world. Makes me feel connected to something, which is nice. But on the other side there is so much more to see. haha.
so, good bye and see you again. where ever, when ever.
florian