Photographers love to travel. I love it because it keeps me fresh and energised. Been a professional architectural and portrait photographer in Sydney can get pretty busy and it's great to photograph new projects without the normal constraints of my everyday photography commissions. I enjoy our regular corporate photography and shooting for our architect practices in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne too of course. People and Buildings is what I capture well. However it's interesting even when travelling with my camera in foreign countries, the experience I've gain over the years shooting the studios everyday assignments can still be applied to my personal photography.
In February this year we went to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and Siem Reap in Cambodia. In fact, it was so good I wanted to go back again. So I did in September and it was well worth it.
Kuala Lumpur is a developing city with a great mix of traditional buildings, super skyscrapers and giant luxurious shopping centres. I've been there a number of times before and I'm always looking to discover something new or go back to a previous location and see how I can photograph it differently, which is a fun photography challenge. This time especially wanted to go to the tradition village of Kampung Baru. It's a Malay enclave in central Kuala Lumpur. One of the most valuable tracts of land in the capital, it has been estimated to be worth up to US$1.4 billion. Kampung Baru's elders have turned developers away, saying they want to preserve their ethnic Malay lifestyle. Hopefully my photographs have captured the spirit and culture of the local village. You must go there for wonderful traditional Malay food and to meet the wonderful friendly locals. It would be great shame to see this been wiped out by greedy developers.
After Kuala Lumpur we went to Siem Reap in Cambodia, it was the wet season so it was very green and with a fewer people around too. The complete opposite from our previous trip in February which was the dry season and masses of tourists. It was great to be able to concentrate more on photographing the stunning architecture of the Khmer temples built in the 12th century. The energetic town of Siem Reap is the gateway to the many Khmer temples in the region. Including Angkor Wat, which is the largest religious monument in the world, with the site measuring 162.6 hectares. Siem Reap is a vibrant busy town. They even have a street called Pub Street, naturally it's full of tourists all hours of the day and night. Almost anything is for sale here. I especially enjoyed the local markets, a photographers dream to shoot.