We had only one day in Bangkok before flying north to the Golden Triangle and then on into Laos and Burma. Our brief glimpse of Bangkok’s most famous attraction, its Grand Palace, came at night, from a moving tea barge floating up the Chao Phraya River. Because the engines of the barge created tremendous vibration, there was no way to make a sharp image of anything at night. My only alternative was to deliberately create an unsharp image to express some aspect of this glorious 200-year-old palace. Using a hand held telephoto lens at a quarter of a second from a vibrating platform guaranteed plenty of camera shake. In this image, the grand palace appears to explode skyward before our very eyes.
The camera’s movement, along with the diagonal composition, creates an energetic mood that suggests excitement and heavenly aspirations. The great spire, throbbing with energy and aimed at the corner of the frame, appears to be moving skyward; an appropriate symbol for what is essentially a vast complex of spiritually oriented structures.