When I visited Patong Beach, Thailand, in 2009, I brought two cameras with me. One was a pocket camera, that I hoped to use to record the world around me, without anyone really caring one way or another, and the other was my Nikon D2X, which I hoped to use for any “serious” photos I wanted to capture. Because I was a foreigner (translate that to $$$) I could find ways to go just about anyplace I wanted, one of which was the extremely tall building that offered great views of the surrounding area. I took a series of photos, of which this was my favorite - has a sunset, a cruise ship, the bay with the fabulous beaches, and a view of some of the surrounding area. You can easily tell where the tourists went - that’s where the streets are brightly lit up.
It’s been too long - I used something called “tone mapped” to combine a set of images into one composite image. Had I been smarter, I’d have saved all of the individual images. Now, I can’t remember what “tone mapped” represented - maybe something from Lightroom.
Walking around Patong Beach with the pocket camera, nobody cared, I was just another tourist. With the big Nikon though, everyone seemed to react as if I was some kind of official photographer or something. Nobody else I saw had such a big, heavy, noisy, and stand-out camera as the Nikon D2X.
Anyway, it’s one of the very few photographs I got serious about capturing, thinking I’d never get a chance to do it again. I doubt I’ll ever get back there again. Patong Beach has changed from a smallish town to a major tourist resort. Just search on the internet for videos of “Bangla Road” or “Patong Beach”. It’s much bigger now, but the “charm” has been lost, at least to me.
The image looks better, the larger I make it. As a small snapshot it can’t show enough.
Titles are not the main thing that drives the content - the content comes first, and then I try to create an appropriate title.
I do accept the image you came up with, but there’s nothing there that gives it any context. Simplified, sure, but nobody is likely to recognize it as Patong Beach.
As to the standards I set, you may be right. I’ll leave that for others to decide, but I never would have posted that version. On the other hand, you may have something there, and maybe I should cut off the top of my original image, concentrating on the city, not the sky.
Mike, My reworking of your image was not a serious attempt to improve it. In fact it was a serious attempt to destroy it. I was only trying to make a point which you obviously didn’t get and which was only relevant in the original thread where I posted it.
Mark, thanks for your advice. Using what you wrote, I corrected my original image, simplifying the meaning by leaving off the top of the image. I do prefer this view, to what I posted yesterday. Patong Beach is the subject, not the sunset.
I didn’t realize that before you made it more clear to me.
