Post-processing images from a trip is like replaying the experience in slow motion. A heavy day’s worth of images can easily take more time to process than to shoot. I don’t tend to review my shots on the road that much. I’ll chimp a bit to make sure everything is working properly but I’m a bit of a battery miser and — given the pace that I’m often traveling — just don’t have the time to review thoroughly on the road. That said, I always have a reasonable idea of what’s on the hard drives at the end of the day and I wonder how I ever managed, back in the days of film, to travel for weeks and not have any idea of what my take looked like until slides arrived back from the lab. Digital — how’d I ever live without you?

So this post is the first of several that I’ll write as I relive my recent trip to Thailand. Day one has now been processed and it began with a trip to Bo Sang, otherwise known as “umbrella village”, near Chiang Mai. Everywhere you turn in this town, there are umbrellas. They are not just sold here, but manufactured here. From raw materials to brightly decorated umbrellas and fans, you can observe the entire process. And it’s humbling to watch. This is not a high-tech factory situation but many skilled workers turning bamboo, wood and paper into functional objects, mostly with the simplest of hand tools. And they work incredibly fast with the assuredness that comes with years of experience.

Much of the manufacturing happens in small, open-air spaces behind homes around the village but the decoration and painting can be seen taking place near the town gate, behind a shop that sells — you guessed it — umbrellas. Freshly papered umbrellas dry on the grass in a central courtyard while painters work in the shade of the surrounding awning. As I photographed these people working, some would offer to paint dragons on my camera bag in just 10 minutes (an offer I now regret not taking them up on). In fact, they’ll paint just about anything for you and I witnessed many people getting their shirts painted right on their backs.

Each January, Bo Sang holds an umbrella festival complete with parades and beauty contests. That, I can imagine, would be a true photo opportunity.

A note on the warmth of these shots: I tend to shoot with my white balance set to “cloudy” to add a little extra warmth much as one would do by adding a warming filter when shooting with film. The warmth in these images is largely natural, however, due to the air quality. Controlled burning of agricultural fields in the area was creating a fair amount of smoke and haze, not unlike what I often experience back home in the Great Plains of the U.S. in the spring. While it doesn’t do much for landscape photography where you want good visibility and blue skies, it does extend those golden hours as the sun filters through the smoke. As with many situations in photography, you can view it as a problem or an opportunity. Here, I think it worked in my favor and has added a cohesive tone element to everything I shot that morning.