Mandalay is the second largest city in Myanmar, after Yangon. The city is the economic and religious hub of upper Myanmar and is centered around the Royal Palace. Mandalay is a highly chaotic place. Thousands of motorbikes, mopeds, bicycles, and 3 wheeled trishaws freely clog up the streets moving in and out of lanes. Adding to the mayhem on the roads traffic lights in Mandalay do not always work. In addition to such a commotion in the streets, motor bikes can sometime have up to 3-4 passengers. Some passengers as young as just a few months old. Alarmingly, passengers on these bikes always seemed to look comfortable and strangely relaxed. I witnessed whole families riding on a single motorbike. Inexplicably, passengers made it look agreeable. Almost unaware of the danger they are putting themselves in. In March 2008, Mandalay had nearly 81,000 registered motor vehicles. Adding to that number are a number of unregistered vehicles roaming the streets. Mandalay really feels like an anything goes kind of city when it comes to transportation.
As a photographer, I wanted to photograph this in an interesting way. In these images I used a technique called panning. The basic idea of panning is that you pan your camera with the moving subject and end up getting a relatively sharp subject but a blurred background. This gives the shot a feeling of movement and speed. I then added a high contrast black and white finish with some grain to reflect a kind of timelessness that is Myanmar at present.
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