Bhutan: Tamshing & Thangbi Mani festivals

Here's a gallery of my photographs titled Tsechus of Tamshing & Thangbi Mani which features the dancing monks are they prepare and perform at these two provincial festivals (or tsechus) in Bhutan's heartland of Bumthang, and from which I just returned from.

The enjoyable, but time-consuming, task of evaluating and processing all of the images brought back from my 2008 Bhutan photo-expedition has started in earnest mid-last week and is now an ongoing exercise. I just bought a OWC 500gb external hard drive specifically to host these images, and it'll supplement my existing setup of Lacie drives as well.

My Show Off: Lakhang Butter Lamps

Photograph © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
Here's an image made while I was entering the Wangdichoeling Lakhang in Jakar to photograph a prayer ceremony. I was hurriedly climbing a very steep set of wobbly wooden stairs to get to the lakhang's prayer room in time for the ceremony, and this scene of a woman lighting butter lamps unfolded in front of me.

In my view, little can surpass the pleasure of capturing a serendipitous scene such as this one, where all the elements fall into place for just a moment...a moment I happen to be right there, albeit somewhat out of breath.

For the techies: f2.8, 40mm, 1/30th, 100 iso (click for a larger view)