One Mans Interest

Traffic in Phuket Prior to the Procession

I have been amazed today at the reaction spectrum to the photos I pasted on my Flickr site and another site where I post my photos dedicated to Art. On Facebook most replies have been disgust at the photos and on my email, people are stunned and repulsed, yet oddly enthralled. Sort of like a train wreck, where you know it will look bad, but you just HAVE to see it. On the art site, I am attracting much positive attention and feedback, with people wanting me to post more!


At the event today, my partner came along, as repulsed as he is by people bleeding, but to his credit he wanted to help me, so along he came. I was busy seeing most of the activity through the camera lens, he seeing the whole scene unfold before his eyes, but not seeing the level of detail the lenses allows me to see. After a while, as is usual here, the traffic began to flow on the street, 6 abreast, so we assumed the procession was over. Clive was grateful as he said that he had had enough and I felt that I had accomplished my objective which was to check out the scene so i did some scouting for the event tomorrow, now more aware of the activities and route. As we decided to leave, and get back across the roadway full of motorbikes, bicycles, pedestrians, trucks and cars, we saw an even larger group of processional members, complete with firecrackers and bowls of smoking scented wood coming up the street.  I hope to capture that on my camera tomorrow. We realized two things;One, as usual any parade gets lags and participants move faster and slower according to a number of factors from posing for the photographer, to taking offerings from the devoted followers. The second realization was that being Phuket, the gap in the procession meant that the traffic backing up on the side streets could surge through and relieve the backlog, until the rest of the procession got to the intersection and they would be forced to wait for another opening.