Thailand – Ayutthya Historical Park

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Wat Phra Si Sanphet.

According to Wikipedia:

The Ayutthaya Historical Park (Thai: อุทยานประวัติศาสตร์พระนครศรีอยุธยา (Pronunciation)) covers the ruins of the old city of Ayutthaya, Thailand. The city of Ayutthaya was founded by King Ramathibodi I in 1350 and was the capital of the country until its destruction by the Burmese army in 1767.

In 1969 the Fine Arts Department began with renovations of the ruins, which became more serious after it was declared a historical park in 1976. A part of the park was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1991. Thirty-five kings ruled the Ayutthaya kingdom during its existence. King Narai (1656 CE to 1688 CE) not only held court in Ayutthaya but also from his palace in the nearby city of Lopburi, from where he ruled 8–9 months in the year.

The park is about 50 miles north of Bangkok. I visited there in 1999 on a bus tour from Bangkok, which included other attractions e.g. Bang Pa In, the Floating Market etc. It was an all day trip, but there really wasn’t enough time to really take a look around. I could have spent the entire day in Ayutthya – it was so interesting.

I did get to ride on an elephant though.

Scanned from old negatives. I don’t remember which camera I was using at the time. It could have been a Canon AE-1 (most likely candidate), a Minolta Hi-Matic 7SII, or even a single use disposable camera I picked up because I neglected to bring a camera with me.

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Headless Buddha

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Temple

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Ruins of an old city

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Moss covered ruin

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Ruined temple with pillar.

Falling Water

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Water falling over the dam at Teatown Reservation. Taken with a Panasonic Lumix LX-3 in June, 2011. I’ve seen so many long exposure running water shots that I’m disinclined to follow that route. I preferred to freeze the motion of the water with a faster exposure (here 1/2000 second).

Objects in Gardens

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Hosta-like sculpture.

As I’ve mentioned before we’re members of our local garden club and every year the club has it’s garden tour. We visit a number of gardens around the lake and then end up for lunch at a fellow member’s house. I’ve posted about the 2014 garden tour before.

As usual I was less interested in the plants, shrubs, flowers etc. than I was with the various objects (sculptures, ornaments and the like).

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I knew there were such things as stone crabs, but this is ridiculous!

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Oriental Head.

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Japanese Garden Sculpture. Local legend has it that a previous occupant of the house discovered that her ashes could not be scattered on the lake and so decided to have them interred under this sculpture. I’ve have no idea if that is true.

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Flower Henge.

Neighborhood Dogs

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This dog lives about five minutes from where I do. There are actually three of them – the others can be seen in the background. He’s the brave one though. Whenever I pass with our dog, Harley they all charge down, yapping like crazy. However, they won’t go past a certain point – I assume because they have been trained using some kind of invisible fence. Lately I’ve taken to letting Harley go up their driveway to meet them. This is the only one of them willing to do so. He comes down to Harley and they wag tails and sniff at each other for a while. Then I continue with my walk leaving the other two looking disappointed. Maybe one of these days they’ll pluck up the courage to come closer too.

I’m actually quite pleased with this picture. It was a very bright day and in such conditions is almost impossible to see anything on the LED screen of the LX-3 so I was pretty much guessing as far as the composition went.

Water Droplets on a Leaf

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This was taken in June 2011 as I was walking in Teatown Reservation. It wasn’t that early, but the leaf was in a shady area and I suppose the dew had not been able to evaporate. I was really taken by the, what seemed to me, large number of of water droplets of different sizes. I particularly liked the contrast with the solitary red one – I wonder why just that one was red and none of the others.

Taken with a Panasonic Lumix LX-3. I was surprised at how blurred the background was. It’s quite hard to get such a blurred background with a small sensor camera such as the LX-3. I suppose close up and with a large aperture (here it was f2.0, as wide open as the LX-3 gets) is the only possibility.