To markoci: money????

[Luko]

Hi Mark,
thanks for your comment.

Just a few things to answer :

- no money, cetainly not!!!! the people are giving small pices of sticky rice, the lacker bowls only collect food, never seen money involved as monks are not supposed to own anything.

- about the eyes cut. I thougt that eyes are not important in this scene, this is not about receiving but giving, hence the title. This is also why I tried to put the timing and strongest point on the hand on the basket. I'm usually quite metaphorical in my pics, I like to leave the reader guess rather than really point but in fact I think these faces have been troubling some readers.
I guess if I had cropped everybody at neck level ther wouldn't have been any comments about that... ;)...

- Focus, a technical shortcoming I guess. Once again the giver was more important than the receiver, I then took my focus on the old woman giving and did not realize that her hand was closer to my lens than her left shoulder. The danger of limited DoF it's always sharp a little bit behind but blurry before, thus the third monk appears sharper than the second.

Thanks again.
Luko

[markoci]

hi luko,

thanks for your reply.

i understand how delicate focusing can be at f/2.8. i guess that the focus on the second monk's basket just confused me, it never occured to me that this may not be intentional on your part (and i mean this as a compliment). if the lady in white were in focus (and perhaps a bit less obstructed by the woman in the foreground) i'd have said it was perfect (including the tight crop of the receivers)

anyways these are just remarks as seen by a pair of very inexperienced and untrained eyes.

cheers,

mark

p.s. i have no excuse for my ignorance on the nature of the donation. got to travel more :-)

[thien]

Actually, they do give money or more precisely some tourists (particularly the Thais) do give money. I was eating the monks for a few days and I have seen and picking out pieces of paper money out of the alm with a friend monk.

Not used to a long lens on your Leica, eh? ;D

On another note, I started to appreciate all the comments about being in the gutter in Luang Prabang :D. And it was cold there in this time of the year. I was freezing my a** off with all the short T-Shirts, thank god I have a single long pant that I wore to get on the plane.