# Photography in Phuket



## Uktomtom

hello to all expats ^.^ I'l start with a bit of brief and basic background information about myself. I am 21 and am moving to Thailand mid march with a friend. I have enough money to last at least half a year in moderate accommodation in Puket with an 'O' non-immigrant visa. I realise that you cannot work with this visa, merely search for work. I also realise how little jobs are open to foreigners within Thailand and most expats end up teaching English there.

Basically, I don't really feel that I am adapted to teach, even with a TEFL. I guess that just some people do not like public speaking and having the responsibility for handling students. So, I have looked at other possible options for a job. I considered what skills and passions I have and came up with a few possibilities. I would like to ask in this forum for any advise on the job selections I have made, if they are even possible and how I would go about doing it. 

I am have a passion for photography and along side a diploma in graphic design, I have one in photography. Would it be possible to work as a photographer, either working for a business, or merely taking my own photos and selling them in whatever way?

I also like to write a lot of poetry and have currently been putting together a book. As I have some experience with design software, I have also designed the book aesthetically. Would I be able to publish it or make some money from it some how?

I have also considered working as a graphic designer, but have been advised that it would not really be realistic as it would be hard to be employed being a foreigner. 

Any advise would be gladly accepted thanks for your time, tom


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## gino

I seem to be suffering from MPD today.

The tortured artist/poet in me congratulates you on having the courage to pursue your dreams. 

The cynic wonders if you’ve noticed a whole lot of job listings for photographers and/or poets in the classified ads in Bristol. 

The dreamer thinks this is an exciting time to embark on publishing and media ventures, as publishing is turning to electronic media. Those expensive coffee-table books can now be distributed to Kindles and iPads at a cost comparable to pulp fiction detective stories. The barriers to entry have never been lower. It’s a tumultuous time. Many publications are folding or consolidating and a lot of staff photographers and graphic artists are scrambling for other work. But the survivors are more image-intensive. The demo of Sports Illustrated on the iPad has many more photos than the print version, plus video clips. 

The skeptic wonders how you can have the courage to bare your soul through poetry and photography if you are uncomfortable explaining the future pluperfect conditional imperative verb tense to a dozen rug rats. 

The frustrated comic imagines photography could be a highly lucrative career in Phuket. Simply find a well-dressed tourist with a bar girl on his right arm and a wedding band on his left hand and take his picture. 

The pragmatist advises that if you want to pursue a career in photography, you should take all the gear you’re likely to need when you go. Phuket has a small Apple store and there were a couple of camera shops in the Patong Beach area when I was there, but they don’t cater to professional photographers. Don’t expect to find any medium or large format gear or studio lighting equipment. You can find current models of consumer gear, but the prices aren’t aggressively discounted. Having photo gear shipped in is horrendously expensive and the duties are fairly high. So take at least two of everything in case something breaks. 

จีโน่


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## Uktomtom

your reply is gratified  as long as capitalism exists, graphic design will be the coal supplying the fire! But yes, times are changing as they always do. Everything is transient is it not. I was curious to know exactly how I would go about publishing say a poetry book in thailand or selling my photos from a legal point of view. You have suggested that I could simple walk Phuket town and take fotos of people and sell them, but by law how would this work out? I realise with a nono-immigrant O visa I cannot legally work. 

I am stuck between trying to publish my book and capturing the beauty of thailand with my camera. I am aware however that both of these options are not so secure and could be far less fruitful than I imagine.


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## gino

Forgive me. I find I am rarely half as funny I think I am. My tongue-in-cheek suggestion was to use photography as the basis for a blackmail enterprise. 

I think you need to clarify your business plan. Do you want to publish a book in Thailand, or do you want to create the content in Thailand and publish it elsewhere? Do you actually want to publish something on paper? Electronic self-publication may be a more attractive alternative. It may not be the most profitable, particularly if a publisher wants your work, but may be the only option available. And new types of content may emerge to take advantage of new media. You might be able to sell an iPhone/iPad/Android app that gives customers a fresh screensaver every day that combines a picture of paradise with a short verse. 

Whenever you’re a guest in a foreign country, you want to avoid breaking or flaunting the laws. But successful entrepreneurs don’t sit around waiting for permission. You don’t want to give a crooked cop an excuse to confiscate your equipment or threaten to do so if you don’t pay a “fine,” but sometimes the best course of action is to simply do what you need to do until somebody notices and tells you that you need to pay a tax or get a permit. I doubt the authorities will try to deport you for writing poetry or taking pictures of landscapes without a work permit. But if you set up a wedding photography studio and start taking business from a Thai photographer down the street, he’s likely to lodge a complaint. 

But legal requirements may also depend on what you want to photograph. A publisher may require model releases or you may need permission to take pictures at certain dramatic performances or within certain buildings. But if you’re shooting exotic butterflies, you probably won’t need a lot of paperwork. 

It will also depend on what format you shoot. Nobody will take much notice if you shoot with a pocket digital camera. But if you try to set up a tripod and a view camera in the middle of a busy street and spend fifteen minutes adjusting the rise, tilt and swing, you’ll get a lot of attention from curious onlookers and the police. 

When I studied commercial photography, we broke the rules all the time. We weren’t supposed to shoot in Century City, except once a year when they hosted an annual contest, but we did. We were always shooting guerrilla style and often told to pack up and leave. You have to. To get a film permit in Los Angeles, you need commercial policies on all vehicles and workers comp insurance on everybody, in addition to paying a fee that would feed a dozen starving film students for a month. 

จีโน่


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## Uktomtom

lol, i got your humor, although chose to simply ignore it  and about the rugrats, i am just not cut out for teaching simply. I wouldn't feel comfortable teaching, creating lesson plans every night and so forth. It would drive me insane most likely. 

As you were mentioning, with the recent advances of technology publishing a book may be more beneficial on an electronic level. I would prefer to publish it in the UK of course, as I think it would sell better there. I think I have found a little niche in the market. The book I intend to publish is titled, 'the darker side to poetry'. The content is quite twisted and sinister, with the illustrations and graphic content following suit. 

From reading posts on various sites, I get the feeling that there are many rules and regulations as every country has, but in Thailand they are not so strictly followed.. I could be wrong however. But you are right, I should just get out there and do it. 

The camera I have is an nikon SLR, no tripod though  The thing is, I have enough money to last me a certain amount of time which I consider to be 6-8 months, in that time I need to try and find a way to make money which doesn't involve forking out £500 for a TEFL course and shackling myself to a job I would be unhappy in.


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## gino

*It never hurts to have a plan B*

You seem to be a man of contradictions. Why on earth would you travel to the Land of Smiles to shoot dark, moody, sinister pictures? 

I understand it is fairly easy to find employment as an English teacher; however, it is not a slam dunk. Finding employment at THB 30,000/month is not nearly as challenging as making ends meet at that wage. Many report one can live quite comfortably at THB 50,000/month, but that usually entails working a full-time job plus taking on private lessons. And you can’t expect to step immediately into a top-paying job at one of the better schools. One may need to work extra hard for lower wages the first couple of years. 

I completed a TESOL certificate course in November and it was fairly brutal. The work isn’t difficult, but there’s a lot of it. And I had an hour’s commute each way plus lesson plans and other homework to complete in the evening. I was shaking in my boots the first time I had to teach a class of students, but they ease you into it. 

But why pursue a career you’re not going to enjoy that doesn’t pay particularly well? On the other hand, I lived in Malibu for many years and saw a constant influx of young people coming to Hollywood with unrealistic dreams. Many of them wind up working menial jobs and spending all their money on acting classes before returning home. It would be prudent to have a realistic plan to sustain yourself indefinitely. 

Thailand seems to have a much more relaxed attitude in many regards, but much more strict attitudes in others. The lèse-majesté laws are taken quite seriously. And many laws that provide a comfort level for Westerners are less rigorous, such as building and fire codes. And there is more open corruption among minor officials, such as customs officers. I once had to pay a THB 4,000 bribe to keep them from confiscating my photo gear. But the bribes are negotiable. 

I can’t believe you’re still shooting with an SLR. Surely you mean a DSLR? I recently upgraded to a full-frame Canon. I sold my old DSLR body, two Nikon SLR bodies and half a dozen Nikon lenses to get an 85mm f/1.2 lens which I’m eager to try out on my next trip. I’m a little nervous about bringing some of my nicer gear into the country. My first day in Bangkok, I was walking down Sukhumvit with a girl I’d met in Phuket on my left arm and my camera slung over my right shoulder. Suddenly the sidewalk became more crowded and an elderly gentleman fell to his knees in my path and grabbed my legs, possibly for support. But I’m cynical and suspicious by nature and my first thought was that he was trying to pick my pocket or distract me so somebody could grab my camera. So I grabbed my camera, sidestepped and kind of pushed him aside, slapping my pockets to check for my wallet and other belongings, while looking for his accomplice. I’ll never know if I avoided a robbery or pushed some old guy to the sidewalk. It was weird.


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## Uktomtom

Well the poetry book I have been working on is dark and sinister, but my photography is varied. These are 2 separate projects that can be intertwined. My photography contrasts from scenic beach scenes to dark, urban alley scenarios. The poetry book has this theme because when I read back all of my poems I had constructed over the years, I realised the majority of them were of this nature.

Yes, I meant DSLR lol. I don't have my own dark room or anything  Being involved with graphic design I would not mess around with film cameras too much. Saying that, I have a friend who is obsessed with old technology and he has quite an interesting contraption. It's an old photobox type thing lol. I only got to see it once. 

Congrats on your TESOL course completion. Do you yourself teach English in Thailand then? I am under no delusion that it is a walk in the park so to speak, but it is probably the most realistic option to the English speaking expats. I consider happiness to be a whole lot more profound than money or material things, working in a job where I would be unhappy is not really an option. 

Your short story did induce a chuckle from me I must say, I would probably guess that you were going to be a victim of the common pick-pocket. Maybe this time your cynical side was just


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## gino

Is it a camera obscura? 

I plan to travel to Asia in a month or so and to teach to cover living expenses, do a little photography and write. I haven’t settled on a destination yet. My preference is Bangkok, although I would also like to work in Tokyo and Hong Kong. But I just got a letter from a school in China indicating they couldn’t consider me due to visa restrictions. I’m assuming Beijing has limited opportunities due to displeasure with our recent arms deal with Taipei. But perhaps the arms deal was a result of Washington’s displeasure with Beijing limiting venues for Avatar. A vicious cycle of petulance. 

There is Yin and Yang in all things. I’m sure one can find rewards in any endeavor. Happiness is also more profound than poverty and deprivation.

We tend to see what expect. I’m concerned, particularly in unfamiliar surroundings, that somebody will try to steal my camera. So I try to be vigilant. I may be rationalizing my obsessive concern and suspicion. But it was weird. The old guy didn’t just grab my leg, it was like he was patting me down.


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## Uktomtom

I knew you would make a remark referring to happiness and poverty, but it is a valid and correct remark to say the least. I find it a great shame that money makes the world go around, but that is just the way it is I guess. I have dabbled in the ways of the dharma for a year or so now, finding it hard to follow here in the UK for a number of reasons. But I do have strong opinions about material things, about money and acts of selfishness. I wish to gain a more profound following of this religion on moving to Thailand, and if things really turn sour for me, I could always take refuge as a monk 

I think my friends contraption is a camera obscurer, that name does rings a few bells. It was quite an interesting object I might add. My friend has a fetish for all things old and dated though. I am sure he would be quite content living in the nineteen hundreds lol. I am thinking of just buying a fairly decent printer and designing a simplistic business card and leaflet which would contain information about image sizes and prices. Then I would immerse myself in the vibrancy that is the Phuket nightlife and take photos of couples, groups of friends and people that are just generally drunk. Maybe even a mobile number would be more appropriate, but they would need some sort of information given to them anyway. Then I could come back, whack the images into photoshop, play around with them and print them off when required. What do you think about this shoddy business plan ginocox lol  

Best of luck with your plans though, it seems we are heading east with similar intentions. Apart from the small matter of me not wanting to teach of course. I was going to ask what opinion you hold about USA?? You are moving away from there, so you must have certain aspects in which you dislike of your country...


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## gino

*Toulouse-Lautrec?*

So, you envision yourself as a saffron-robed limey Toulouse-Lautrec for the digital age? I’m astonished nobody has considered this possibility before. 

I first traveled to Thailand for three weeks with two simple, specific objectives. The first was to forget a cute American-Thai girl who had left me อกหัก. The second was to fall madly, passionately in love twenty-one times. I failed rather miserably in both regards. My first night in Phuket, I spent hours looking for the prettiest girl I could find and I never found another girl to compare with her. I took a lot of pictures during my trip and I have hundreds of pictures of her, but the only decent pictures I have of us together are some underwater shots from a diving trip. Ask some stranger in a dark bar to take your picture and you’re lucky if you get your camera back. But I’ve learned my lesson. If I want pictures, I carry a pocket digital camera and enlist one of the bar girls as official photographer. But that’s only because I’ve never seen a saffron-robed limey monk with a DSLR. 

What is your unique selling proposition? These days, among any group of friends out for an evening of partying, odds are one or more has a pocket digital camera and several have cameras in their cell phones. But the odds are that none of them can shoot a decent picture under adverse lighting conditions, particularly including themselves as subjects. So you approach with your portfolio of dark and sinister images on your iPad and they decide they want some sinister images of their night of Bacchanal excess. Then they fork over their money to a stranger they’ve never seen? Or do they leave you to spend hours whacking the images in Photoshop and then hunt them down and hope they still want the pictures while they’re sober? Or perhaps you carry your laptop with you and do the whacking there at the nightclub, while they buy your drinks and hot wings. 

Do you actually need to print the images? Why not do your manipulations and e-mail the pictures to them? You could tether your cell phone to your laptop and e-mail the images on the spot. 

I think you may need a substantial nest egg to immerse yourself in the vibrancy of Phuket for six or eight months. 

พูดภาษาไทยได้ไหมครับ


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## Uktomtom

Unlucky on the thai girl front. I assume you have yet to fully move on then.. I have total empathy with you though, I have recently ended a 3 year relationship with a girl from Italia. She moved back there and we tried to maintain a relationship of some sort, but I could not live with the many miles between us. My feelings are still raw and I have been through many notions of depression, but hey, life goes on does it not. 

I had already considered what my USP would be, I also was aware that the majority of people or groups of people have a digital camera at the ready. I was thinking of constructing a portfolio, but in a leaflet form as it would be a lot easier and they could actually take it with them. 

lol yea, not many buddhist monks will be seen capturing a shot of their buddhist monk pals crowded, around an elephant smiling. But if i run out of money or something horrible happens, I an take refuge in the 3 jewels of buddhism ^.^ .... maybe lol. 

I would say I will have a little over £2,000, I have researched accommodation and the general cost of living. It won't be easy but me and my friend have always been able to live on little money. I have been a student all of my life lol. I have had several jobs, but I focused mainly on my studies.


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## gino

I consider myself quite fortunate to have experienced and to have enjoyed all of the relationships I have had. I’m only misfortunate when I’m not in love. 

What are you, some Luddite, stuck in eternal adoration of Guttenberg’s wonderful creation? Get a smart phone. You can show the pictures on the screen. If they want a copy, e-mail it to them. Then you have their e-mail addresses and can follow-up, even if they lose or discard your promo piece. Your laptop would show a more detailed image and could present them as a PowerPoint slideshow. 

A buddy of mine retired to the Philippines on partial disability. I tried to help him put a business plan together. He wanted to spend a lot of his available funds to print a glossy four-color brochure, but his ideas were all over the place. He’s like one of these stoners who’s constantly enthralled with his own creativity, but unable to understand why others can’t find any coherence in his ideas. 

I tried to get him to start out more modestly by printing up mock-ups which he would present in person, so he could get feedback from his prospects and modify the brochure based their suggestions, objections and areas of confusion, meanwhile generating some revenue to offset his printing costs. But he wanted to sit on his butt and let his fancy brochures do all the work. Often stoners don’t make the best businessmen.

I think you’re better off maintaining the greatest flexibility possible until you get a feel for what sells and what doesn’t and what your pricing should be. 

I’m often slightly amused when I attend some event at a Thai temple and see a monk photographing the activities with a DLSR. It seems a bit incongruous, but today’s monks are technologically savvy. 

As you ignored my question, I take it you don’t read Thai. Do you speak the language at all? 

I trust the £2,000 is after the cost of airfare. 

I’m curious as to what you shoot. Is your Nikon APS or full-frame? When I switched to digital, I switched from Nikon to Canon and also from prime lenses to zoom, as the loss of resolution on a 6 megapixel image seemed to negate any advantage to prime lenses. Now that I’ve graduated to a full-frame model, I’m also switching back to prime lenses.


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## Uktomtom

Everyone relationship that has come to pass is a learning curve, like most things in this life I guess. I am still hung up though even 6 months down the line. It is in fact quite pathetic, but I cannot ignore it lol. Being buddhist, I would see this as an unhealthy attachment, but acknowledging it is a lot easier than rectifying it.

Would you have any vague idea to how much mobile phones and contracts are in Thailand gino? It would make sense to use electronic technology as apposed to printing off mass amounts of leaflets. I have little common sense in certain areas, not due to being a stonner as your buddy though lol. I thing I also lack is age and experience, I am after all quite young to be venturing into such unknown waters. What was the destiny of your friends business plan by the way? Did your contribution provide a new lease of life to his shady plans?

I don't speak a word of Thai. I would assume at a first glance it may be one of the hardest languages to learn. Especially as it becomes increasingly more difficult to learn a foreign language as you get older. All of the eastern languages to a westerner are a million miles away from anything they know. At least with say for example Italian, you use the same lettering and phonetic sounds. But hey, I am ignorant to thai and any eastern language if I am honest, so what do i now . I would like to be able to speak another language, but here in the Uk we are hardly encouraged at a young age. mainly because English is spoken across the world to different extents. 

that £2,000 is on top of my flight and visa. I have taken that into account separately. I can obviously see that one of the main hurdles to throw myself over will be money, but there many many ways to get yourself over it.

Referring to your comments about the buddhist monks, I have spoken to a few monks who have computers and laptops lol. But this was on a buddhist forum, so they were in fact using this technology to help others across the world with buddhist related queries. It was quite a contrast to see a picture of a buddhist monk in his bright orange robe sat at a computer desk inside the humble setting of a hut. As long as no unhealthy attachment breeds from having the computer, I guess it is not a problem. The dalai lama recently asked for buddhist children to take classes in science and math. As I follow the dharma, I know that the teachings suggest science cannot be of help to reach enlightenment, you merely observe and measure a perception of reality. It shows how after thousands of years things are actually starting to change within this religion.


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## Uktomtom

oops. i forgot to comment of my camera. My camera is quite simple and isn't the pinnacle of photography I must say, but I can capture images that are decent enough I guess. I have a nikon D60, and yea it is APS.


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## gino

*iPhones in Thailand*

I have some experience with cell phones in Thailand, although not nearly as much as with phones in the Philippines. The phone situation is similar, but the people who use them may be different. In the Philippines, I communicated regularly with dozens of people. In Thailand, most of my exchanges were with only one. So I will comment instead primarily on phones in the Philippines and say that I believe the situation is quite similar in Thailand.

Phones are not locked to a carrier, as they are in the United States. One can find a wide variety of models and some of the models are more sophisticated than are usually found here. For instance, I understand tethering phones to laptops is common in other countries, but not in the States. I purchased an inexpensive cell phone for about $30, but it doesn’t have very many capabilities. There’s no camera and sending texts is a cumbersome task requiring multiple taps on the keyboard for each letter, although there is logic to auto-complete words that helps some. But much of the communication is by text messages. There are monthly subscription plans in Thailand, but at least in the Philippines, most people get prepaid cards, which are available in different denominations, with more favorable rates on the larger cards. In the Philippines a PHP 300 card (roughly £4) would last me about four days. Probably half the expense was from girls borrowing it to call or text one another, often on my behalf. I hardly used my phone in Thailand. I think a similar card sufficed for my entire trip.

Text messages are quite inexpensive, particularly compared to voice messages, and most communications is by text. The prepaid “load” is almost like a currency and girls are constantly asking for you to either buy them load or to transfer load from your phone to theirs. Lack of load is often cited as an excuse for not answering or returning calls. 

As texting on the cheap phone was a nuisance, I had my Blackberry unlocked, which can be done for a small fee. I also had a Motorola Razr unlocked, but was never able to send pictures between the Razr and other phones, even though several techies got in on the effort. 

For my next trip, I picked up a Chinese model factory unlocked iPhone, which is not to be confused with the Chinese knock-off of the iPhone. Unlocked iPhones can be found in Thailand for about $865. They are a bit more expensive here in the States, but I like to have my ducks in a row in advance. I wanted an unlocked phone instead of a less-expensive jailbroken model because I was afraid somebody might update the operating system, rendering the phone useless. The new iPhones switch quite easily between Thai and English keyboards, which was one of the reasons I wanted one. I use T-Mobile and don’t have a data plan, so can’t comment on apps except to say most of the reviews of Thai language phrasebook apps are guarded at best. I plan to use my Garmin for navigation and found a discontinued map card for Thailand on E-Bay. I understand data services are expensive, so don’t want to rely on the phone’s navigation capabilities. 

Privacy has a different meaning, particularly among the bar girls, who are highly competitive. They think nothing of reading your text messages and reviewing your call logs. They also like to reprogram your phone to put their own picture as your screen image, much like a dog marking its territory. I find it a bit annoying. 

My first DSLR was an APS-C model, the Canon 10D. Having shot 35mm for years, I found the APS format somewhat misleading. You think you’re getting a “free” telephoto effect, as the lenses have a perceived 1.6x focal length multiplier. But what is actually happening is that the full-frame lens is projecting a full image into the camera, but the sensor is smaller than the image area, so the camera crops it down. To fill the frame, you wind up standing further from the subject than you would with a full-frame model, so you have more depth of field and background images are more distracting. I was amazed when I switched to a full-frame model at how much better control I had over depth of field. Using the APS model had made me lazy. The new lens, which I bought some months later, really gives me much more control. 

As I’ve said before, possibly on this board, the Thai language is much like Thai women: beautiful, but overly complicated, a bit tradition-bound and often too polite to say what needs to be said. There are half a dozen schemes for transliteration into Roman characters, but none is particularly satisfactory as tone is such an important part of the language. There are forty-four consonants and over thirty vowels, plus four diacritical accents. Most consonants have different sounds at the beginning of a syllable than at the end. There is no space between words in a sentence, except in elementary texts and not much punctuation. Thai handwriting is very difficult to read and many printed books are a challenge. The most popular Thai language text is printed very cheaply and uses a small font which makes it very difficult to distinguish between small characters. 

I find Thai more difficult than Italian or spoken Japanese, but it’s much easier than Mandarin.


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## Uktomtom

Wow, i never knew how complex the Thai language was. At a half assed observation, it seems like a continuous noise that fluctuates. I was astonished to read they have 74 letters over all, that must take a while to get use to from a westerners point of view. I would however love to be able to speak the language some day.

The image you depicted in my mind of the bar girls made me chuckle. Are they seriously that intent on trying to leave their trace on your fone? If that is the case, I don't have a fone according them ... lol. You stated that fones in the states are not as advanced, that they cannot connect to a computer wirelessly. I am some what surprised to hear this as we have been able to do such a thing for over a year now in the UK. Maybe in the states they have prevented this for some reason, maybe a matter of security? Whenever I make an attempt to connect to my macbook via my fone, I have to enter a code on the fone that is shown on the computers screen, so it is pretty safe. 

Now you mention the matter of the image being cropped with the APS lens, I have noticed that I am standing slightly further away to get the subject matter within the shot, obviously depending on the type of shot I am conducting. I didn't chose my camera though, it was a present for a birthday when I was on my photography course at college. I still regard it as a sacred item of mine however, even though I am buddhist!!! lol. A photograph captures a moment that remains forever in the past, a tense we should not attach oneself to  

are yo a religious man gino, or have you ever been a religious man? I was a firm atheist up until just over a year ago now. I was not christened at birth like most babies here in the UK. My parents instead left it for me to decide when I was old enough, which I thank them for in a huge way. However, I am still very intrigued with modern science and how it is advancing. the physics known as quantum interests me vastly. Science is this field is starting to lean towards consciousness being the fabric of reality, of the universe. I consider it to be an interesting time indeed.


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## gino

*It's worse, much worse than that*

You can’t add the consonants and vowels to get a letter count, as many of the vowels are formed with combinations of characters, some of which are consonants if they stand alone and some are common to multiple vowels. On the other hand, there are four diacritical accents, and half a dozen special characters. Two characters are obsolete and six or eight others are rarely used. There are three classes of consonants, so there are often three (or more) letters that sound alike, but have different tone rules. And there are long and short vowels, most of which are paired with the short version including an extra character. But yes, the language can be very confusing, much like Thai women. 

If you’re interested to learn the language, you might begin with the Pimsleur series. There are sixteen half-hour lessons which will give you a vocabulary of possibly two-hundred words. It’s all audio, so it’s great for playing in the car during a commute. I’ve transferred the CDs to my iPhone and study Japanese while I work out. The downside is that there is no written component, so it’s sometimes difficult to get the pronunciation exactly right. I’ve found transcriptions of the Japanese series online, but not the Thai.

When I was in Thailand, I met a truly amazing girl and spent my entire visit with her. But in the Philippines, I did the Yul Brynner thing: 
A girl must be like a blossom 
With honey for just one man. 
A man must be like honey bee 
And gather all he can. 
I recently watched clips from that movie on YouTube. It’s really rather dreadful. I’m not surprised it’s banned in Thailand. 

My observations are based on experiences in the Philippines. But it seems if you play the butterfly and flitter from girl to girl, provided you treat them all nicely, they will vie for your attention. But as soon as you spend more than one day with a girl, she becomes territorial. Girls have refused to go out with me because they were afraid of conflict with a girl I had dated earlier. But I’m after the girlfriend experience. I don’t like it when a girl wants to go home at two in the morning. I want to have breakfast together, go swimming, meet friends for dinner, go scuba diving, visit temples, whatever. 

I shot tens of thousands of pictures with my APS-C Canon 10D. After years of shooting slides at about 30¢ a frame for film and processing, it was tremendously liberating to shoot digital and not worry about the cost of clicking the shutter. Instead of trying to make every frame count, I would shoot ten frames, confident that one of them would be a good image. One component of quality is to simply shoot a lot of pictures. A chimpanzee with a DSLR will eventually click off an award-winning picture. But it also makes you lazy. 

But the technology has advanced dramatically since the early models. Sensor designs have been improved. Improved microlenses focus more light on the photosensitive portions of the sensors. Full-frame sensors provide a much larger image area and better utilization of 35mm optics. Standing further back not only increases your depth of field, but also magnifies camera vibration, reducing sharpness and color saturation. 

If you want to pursue photography professionally with an APS camera, you’re going to be competing with photographers whose equipment offers higher resolution, better control over depth of field, sharper focus and better color saturation. 

I avoid discussions of religion and politics.


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## mikecwm

*Self publishing*

_
"As you were mentioning, with the recent advances of technology publishing a book may be more beneficial on an electronic level. I would prefer to publish it in the UK of course, as I think it would sell better there. I think I have found a little niche in the market. The book I intend to publish is titled, 'the darker side to poetry'. The content is quite twisted and sinister, with the illustrations and graphic content following suit. "_

While I admire your ability to dream, I do know of at least 4 people who have 'self published' their own books, which include two books on their world travels and a history of the West coast of Vancouver Island.

My observation is that self publishing is an excellent way to reduce a large sum of money to an exceedingly small one, with the added advantage of many cardboard boxes in storage, full of their dreams.

I would be interested in hearing any details from members who have made money from publishing online. One opening there seems to be in the 'Teeth Whitening' field. Perhaps you can come up with a new line in using water to fuel cars or a new diet pill. 
I truly wish you luck in your endeavors. 
Now in my 60's and a lifetime of varied careers on 4 continents, from selling insurance to working on offshore oil rigs, I know that dreams are important.
Mostly I know that good planning and work skills that are in short supply are amongst the best bets for finding work.


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## gino

*Dtp*

I agree that traditional self-publishing is expensive and risky, particularly as in many cases experienced publishers have already rejected the material as unlikely to be profitable. However, one can electronically self-publish through Amazon.com with no up-front investment for publication costs. See: http://dtp.Amazon.com for more information. Authors can publish either electronically for download to Kindle readers or through CreateSpace, which allows customers to print out individual copies of the book at certain retailers. However, Kindle is monochrome and not well suited to images for a book on photography, while the iPad offers the promise of delivering full-color, richly-illustrated materials in a larger format. 

Of course, the appeal of self-publishing electronically for free depends to a large extent on whether you pay yourself a salary and capitalize the cost of obtaining content. If you travel to Thailand and spend six months immersing yourself in the nightlife you may not only be sacrificing $20,000 or more in income you might earn at more conventional employment, but paying out $10,000 or more in living expenses, not to mention other costs that would not otherwise occur, such as depreciation on equipment and software, the cost of any gear that is lost, broken or stolen, modelling fees, payments for releases, the cost of travel to Thailand and local transport necessary to gather material. 

For an unproven author, it makes much more sense as a labor of love pursued during off hours than as full-time employment.


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## Uktomtom

Thanks for your input guys, its been of great help  I would be inclined to lean more towards publishing my poetry book as all I need to create that is photoshop, illustrator and in design, which I already have on my mac book. The book is I would say nearly have way to be completed. As I have previously mentioned, I have a broad knowledge of graphic design so actually creating the book from a visual perspective is no problem, it's more of a joy to me as apposed to a task in hand. Together with the style and feel of the content, I consider to have found a niche within the market. Although I am very inexperienced with publishing and the formalities involved. Thanks for that link to amazon ginO, I will give it a detailed look soon. Would it be legal however to live in Thailand and publish a book over seas and collect any amount of money for doing so? When considering getting it published, I feel like a naive toddler carelessly tumbling into the deep end of a swimming pool. 

I have certain morals when it comes to women, I find a relationship vastly more profound and pleasurable as apposed to sleeping around or casual sex. As you mentioned gino, actually doing doing things together the morning and day after the night before lol. But right in this moment, I am done with any sort of relationships as I've said before. Life appears to be a whole lot more simple and easy sailing  

You are correct mike, you have to have dreams in life. So what if they do not materialize in the way in which you expect, or even materialize at all. At least you can say you tried  As much as I think it is always a good idea to listen to your elders, I am going to continue with my plans. Despite whatever may have transpired with any of the people you know. I will probably end up regretting it entirely, but I will cross that bridge if or when I come to it ^.^


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## gino

A publisher can do a lot of things to improve the impact and marketability of a manuscript. They can assign an editor who will help you make your images and layouts as strong as possible and will help to trim the fat and keep the book focused. They may also be able to work with you on your poetry and help you refine your verse. In your case, I think this could be a very valuable effort. Judging only from your posts here, you’re not always careful about some of the basics, like spelling, capitalization and punctuation,

But will they want to? Just getting them to look at the manuscript will be a hurdle. 

You might do some research. I found an article at Self Publishing v. Royalty Income that suggests the author’s royalty on a $15 title is 90¢. I also found an interesting article at Leisure & Arts - WSJ.com that relates the story of a successful venture in self-publishing. One observation by the author is that it takes two years to get a book published by a publishing house. 

My suspicion is that a dark, moody compilation by an unproven poet/photographer may be a tough sell. I suspect publishers prefer titles with broad, mass appeal. But if you can make a name for yourself by submitting images to various photography contests, possibly becoming a regular contributor to some photography magazine, you will find many more doors open. 

But everybody wants to start at the top. Why be content with a full-page image buried inside the pages of Digital Photographer when one can dream of having a glossy hard-bound book on the coffee tables of the glitterati? Anybody can tilt with windmills. Let’s find some real giants to battle. 

Remember Danny DeVito and Billy Crystal in “Throw Momma from the Train”? I wonder what the iPad could do for pop-up children’s books. Those must be dreadfully expensive to produce. They must be assembled by hand and always seem to run fewer than twenty pages. But imagine an iPad edition. Instead of pulling a tab at the edge, the little ******** can simply press a jelly-stained finger to the edge of the screen to activate some animation. The story could take different turns, depending on which choices the little monsters make. They lose the kinesthetic thrill of pulling the little tabs, but they can’t tear the pages. Of course, they can stick the iPad in the microwave or bathtub. 

Now imagine an iPad version of a coffee-table book. No gutter. Readers can zoom into areas of the picture. After reading the verse, they can hide it and concentrate on the picture. It’s not limited to still images. Slide shows and film clips can be combined with still images and verse. The verse doesn’t need to be silent. Press an area of the screen and some actor impersonating Orson Wells will read the verse aloud. The type font can be scaled for readers with poor vision or translated into a dozen different languages – probably less of an advantage with poetry. You can connect your iPad to your Microvision Show WX or Aaxa P2 pico projector and throw the book onto a wall for everybody to see. 

You are a Luddite of the first water, shackled by your own prejudices to the millstones of antiquity.

Zoetrope.com, Francis Ford Coppola’s website, is largely devoted to helping fresh talent develop their skills by publishing works in process for peer critique. There are sections for screenplays, poetry, short stories, photography, costume design and other creative endeavors. You might try posting some of your images with the accompanying poems and see what sort of reaction you get. 

You’ve mentioned niche twice. I think photography books are already a niche. Do you see any coffee-table books on display next to the paperback romances and thrillers at the chemist’s or green grocer’s or wherever they sell books in Bristol? I think you’re talking about a niche within a niche and electronic publishing is the most practical and practicable approach. And I suspect it’s the best way to attract the attention of a publisher. Would you rather try to sell them on an idea or sell them on an idea that has already sold five-hundred electronic copies over Amazon? And it offers a couple of inherent plan Bs. If the response is weak, you can quickly change the promotional blurb, the jacket design and the cover art. If any errors escape the editing process but are later found, they can easily be corrected in future copies. 

If you’re half way to completion, why do you need to go to Phuket? Why would you want to go to Phuket at all? 

I don’t understand your question about legality. If you’re asking about visa restrictions, I think the Thai government is more concerned with visitors taking jobs away from their native citizens. Living in Thailand and getting a job flipping burgers at the local McDonalds for THB 100/hour deprives a citizen of the opportunity to flip burgers. But writing an international best-seller and making THB 100,000,000 in royalties does not. You may have tax consequences as both the Crown and the King may want a taste. I don’t know anything about taxation in Thailand, but I suspect you’ll want any revenues paid into a British account to avoid dual taxation. But quite honestly, I don’t think managing revenues is your greatest challenge. 

I just got my copy of Ong Bak 2 and am trying to make sense of the original Ong Bak. My Thai isn’t good enough to follow the dialogue and the subtitles on my copy are as difficult to comprehend as the Thai:
*Old Lady*: Ba Duanzhen is abominable exceedingly. My god oh in case the image of Buddha finds not returning, our village will be faced with imminent disaster.
*Monk*: All calm a bit. At any rate at least now all realizess [sic] the image of Buddha is being stealled [sic] away by whom. 
*Male Villager*: Buddhist abbot image of Buddha is certainly adjusting not noting tolerate the sacred matter of loss
*Tony Jaa*: I surely be able to be the image of Buddha finds to bring returning. 
*Male Villager*: We must lose no time in doing it. Not the case Ba Duan will glide incomparably.

I think I’m better off turning off the subtitles and trying to follow the Thai. But it does seem these Buddhists are quite attached to this old statue.


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