MNS: Yangon Twins

Exposure: Aperture F9|Shutter Speed 30s|ISO 100

I have visited Myanmar couple of times, way before I started night photography journey. After gotten into night photography, I realize how much night needs attention than the day in order to photograph them.

In fact this should be posted first in my Myanmar Night Series(MNS) so I'm doing a flashback here.

First night discovery of Myanmar, Yangon, it was full moon night, I picked up my camera gears and took the taxi to China Town, after that walked alone without direction in mind but to discover what is around. It sounds adventurous because you don't plan it, and never know what you are going to encounter.

Everywhere is quite dark at night, because there are quite a distance between each street light or no street light at all. Walking in the dark is challenging especially in the location you are not familiar with.

Walking out of China Town into small village, where a lot of locals are living. I found that it is a gem for street photographer, really. Not only you can see but feel the living of people here.

Keep walking and suddenly, something hits me, not stick but the scene(as shown in the image above). I didn't rush into the location, just walked slowly to meet the people and asked permission to take photos. I felt grateful to get a "YES" from them(thank you Justin, one of the locals who can speak good English), but they were curious why I want to take photos at night. So the night is not alone, people who live here came out to see how I make the night photos, children were having fun by chasing each others and playing, it ended up becoming some sort of night activity for them as well. As this is the first time visit, and to respect their will since they usually sleep early, I finished my shooting at 11:15pm.

Thought process: For this image, what strikes me here are two identical trucks, and two identical houses, with the weird sky line which I have never seen before, it is so contrasty and surreal. There are two main light sources, the front street light, and full moon light, no light painting applied here, hopefully I able to capture the sense of place here. For a little bit of history, this location survives strong cyclone before, the houses around are in diagonal shape.

On the other hand, along with another 49 images, this image is selected to be showed in Night Light exhibition organized by Darkroom Gallery. I also plan to go back to the same location again, the people there become my friends now.