The Shaft of Light

The Shaft of Light

The day began with a determination of getting to the right spot at the right time with a brief break in the typhoon hammering the Asain coastline. I had hopped off my tuk tuk. I began to rush to the Prasat Bayon temple. At the top , in one of the cone like temples it catches the sun light, on this day.It is not an easy hike up steep stairs with not much surface area for a big shoe.

I was set, no one was there but a Cambodian Temple guard, a new feature from my last visit four years ago, spied from out of what she thought was my camera frame.

As the sun moved into position two very loud Chinese tourist types with a camera that had no clue saw the shaft of light land and instead of photographing the shrine as I, they stuck their hand in the shaft of light and photographed their hand. I was amazed by the pure unawareness of the two photographing just their hand which felt like hours. At a polite point I spoke up and disrupted their oblivious state of mind. They understood my frustration, and moved aside. I shot in time for a few frames.

During my post, I felt that the story was not so much the shrine with the shaft of light, but rather the mental aptitude of how oblivious photographs on a sacred ruin with no clue can be while standing next to something so beautiful and still not place the camera to their eye to photograph.

Well let me just add. Just maybe photographing your hand in a shaft of light with a camera is more interesting than seeing the true essence and share in a vision one had in the fourteenth century within the Bayon temple, a place not everyone goes to as opposed to Disney World.

I have to thank them wherever they may be for standing there, and for sharing how the level of awareness they possesses exposes photographers that never went to school to understand what makes this dying art form so special.
Truthfully a selfie of themselves would have been more meaningful for their friends on the Chinese Facebook.

Last I ask why do we shoot. For me it is to see and reveal the human element at any given place or time. So for what it is work. These two people are god sen which gives a level of meaning in our contemporary times in the twenty first century.