Kiteboarding in Bonaire – Kitesurfing with the professionals on Atlantis Beach!

August 13, 2012 by Chris Ridley

I could have photographed these kiteboarders all day long, they were incredible to watch, especially when they were pulling super high jumps with ridiculous ease! I took the plunge the next day and booked a few lessons – I must say it’s probably one of the best things I’ve ever done, I totally recommend it if you ever get the chance. Kiteboarding Bonaire was a totally professional and laid back kiteboarding school run by Roan Jaspars from a converted bus on the beach. Perfect. Thanks go out to my ever patient and encouraging instructor Thomas!

Massive, massive airs. Mental.

KIteboarding / Kitesurfing in Bonaire

If you’d like to see a few more then have a look here at more kitesurfing photos. Thanks

The Incredible Salt Pans in Bonaire, Dutch Antilles – Caribbean

August 11, 2012 by Chris Ridley

Over the next few blog posts I’ll be showing you some of my favourite photographs from around the small but interesting island of Bonaire, The Dutch Antilles in the southern Caribbean – not far from the coast of Venezuela in South America. These massive salt pans are an incredible pink colour due to the high concentration of Halophilic bacteria that thrive in super salty conditions.

Salt Pans in Bonaire, Dutch Antilles - Caribbean

A number of African slaves, together with Indians & convicts harvested solar salt around Bonaire for the Dutch West India Company from 1636- these images show the incredibly grim slave living quarters, the tiny huts too short to even stand up in. The bright orange obelisk, one of many, was used to guide the trading ships towards the land to pick up the salt. From 1997, Cargill Salt is now one of the biggest industrial salt producers in the world, with most of the salt ending up in water softeners. [More info]

Salt Pans in Bonaire, Dutch Antilles - Caribbean

Middle East dreams, imperfection & emotion – a trip back in time.

June 8, 2012 by Chris Ridley

The topic of today’s post by Chase Jarvis – ‘The Un-Moment: Why Gritty Beats Glossy & the Deceit of Perfection‘ – Pretty thought provoking, and certainly got me thinking. It’s easy to fall into the realm of over glossing and focusing on the super sharp, or even being scared of actually showing the photographs that mean something. So here we are, a set of photographs dragged up from the archives from many years ago, whilst travelling through Qatar in the Middle East. An incredible country and I hope to go back one day. I can still smell the fragrant spices of the souk, the feel of the fabrics and the blistering heat of the desert sands. It’s so long ago it feels like a dream. I love these photos.

Hand Hennaring – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

April 17, 2012 by Chris Ridley

Hennaring, sounds like some kind of fish I know – but alas not. Not sure of the correct spelling of ‘To colour hands with henna’ so this will have to do. These photographs were taken in the vibrant Indian district of Kuala Lumpur, well worth a walk around if you get the opportunity to visit Malayasia. The speed at which the lady applied the henna was amazing, very interesting to watch!

Hand Hennaring - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The Perhentian Islands – Malaysia

April 16, 2012 by Chris Ridley

Towards the last stages of our world ‘tour’, we ended up in the Perhentian islands which are located off the East coast of Malaysia. We had planned to stay just a week but ended up staying almost a month… clean, cheap and friendly accommodation twinned with a cafe on the beach with WiFi meant I could catch up with some work in total comfort. It was almost non stop beautiful weather here for the first 2 weeks, but then a large storm hit, devastating the beach and sweeping pretty much half of it away… which was kind of exciting / scary as we were only sleeping a few metres away from the beach edge…

Perhentian Islands Malaysia

Through the caves and out into the amazing light…

April 15, 2012 by Chris Ridley

An amazing day exploring the caves and the coastline by canoe around the island of Koh Yao Noi island (Thailand). The only way into this secluded bay was by taking advantage of the low tide, allowing us to slip through a low cave whilst lying back in the canoe. Out of the darkness came this incredible little hidden lake (well, maybe lake is a little excessive, bigger than a pond but smaller than a lake..!), you can see the tide marks around the edge. The light was amazing, and the high sided limestone cliffs around us echoed out incredible noises from the birds and monkeys – it was like something out of a film.

Exploring the caves in Thailand
Photo taken on the Lumix LX5 – I didn’t have a waterproof case for the 5Dk2 at the time…!

Amazing clouds in Thailand – Koh Yao Noi island

April 14, 2012 by Chris Ridley

Looking back of some of my photographs from Thailand these two stand out purely on the cloud formations. There was a bit of a rainstorm later on in the day but nothing as big as the clouds would have liked you to believe. A beautiful view to wake up to everyday, not bad at all. I wish we we back there now!
Thailand Clouds

Thailand Clouds

A Mysterious rainbow haze on the horizon & a storm brewing… Thailand

November 30, 2011 by Chris Ridley

I totally forgot about these photographs until I stumbled across them today and remembered I never did work out quite what was causing the rainbow like haze in the distance. It’s not camera related as I could see it with the naked eye, does anyone know what could be causing it? I’m guessing it’s just the approaching rain & storm clouds causing a low rainbow effect, but I never seen it quite like this before. You can see in the next photo along that the rain clouds were very close, within about 30mins. Pretty cool though! Location is Koh Yao Noi, Thailand.

Rainbow Haze

Storms Looming

The last few sunny days in the Angkor Complex, Siem Reap, Cambodia

November 29, 2011 by Chris Ridley

Time to get back with some of the travel photography I am well behind on, I’ve not posted many images since the last travel photography blog post, which was in the Angkor Complex in Cambodia. Just to finish up that series, I found a few more images that I love. This first photograph was taken of a resident nun at the Pre Reap Temple, handing us incense sticks as we entered.
Orphanage in Cambodia Pre Reap Temple – Click here to view this photo larger

These friendly kids were photographed at the Little Angels Orphanage Shadow Puppet School within the Angkor Complex, they currently live here creating hand cut, punched and shaped leather puppets.
Orphanage in Cambodia Little Angels Orphanage Shadow Puppet School – Click here to view this photo larger

Orphanage in Cambodia

Photographs taken with my Canon 5Dmk2, I think here I used my Canon 16-35mm 2.8L lens for all of the photos. If you would like to see more photographs from this worldwide trip, please have a look here: Full Travel Photography Archive.

Portraits: Looking out over the beautiful Indian Ocean.

October 10, 2011 by Chris Ridley

I’ve been spending quite a while over last week trawling through my photographs, especially some of which I had almost forgotten about. These two very similar images I took in the Seychelles a couple of years ago, and love them very much, the colours, the movement in the dress from the warm Indian Ocean winds. I would love to go back there again, I miss it terribly!

Portrait Photography Norfolk

The Smoking Monk – at the Bayon Temple in Cambodia

October 6, 2011 by Chris Ridley

Time for some more travel photography I’ve been meaning to post here for a while. This photograph was taken at the beautiful Bayon Temple in the Angkor Complex, Cambodia. A wonderfully magical place, I hope to go back there again someday. To view this image larger please click here: Monks at Bayon Temple – Cambodia

Incredibly beautiful Cambodian temples wrapped in Banyan roots : Angkor, Cambodia

September 21, 2011 by Chris Ridley

I can’t really describe the beauty of seeing the root systems and vines wrapping around the ancient temples at the Angkor Complex in Cambodia, I hope you can see from the photographs how incredible it was to be there, I wish I could be back there today, a magical place. Please click on the photographs to view larger, and to see the full album please click here
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View more: Cambodia Photography Gallery

Photographs of the Killing fields & Choeung Ek – Unbelievable mass graves

July 18, 2011 by Chris Ridley

It’s hard to put into words trying to explain that background to the unbelievable and tragic murder of over a quarter of all Cambodians between 1975 and 1979 under Khmer Rouge regime.
“Estimates of the total number of deaths resulting from Khmer Rouge policies, including disease and starvation, range from 1.7 to 2.5 million out of a population of around 8 million.”
We visited Choeung Ek, one of the mass and open graves where over 17,000 innocent people were brutally tortured and killed, with many of the these people coming from Tuol Sleng, a school taken over and used as a torture prison. In these photographs you can see the tower of over 5000 human skulls in the commemorative stupa, as well as bones, teeth and clothing still littering the ground. Everywhere you walked there were bones sticking up through the soil and around your feet. I have also added photographs of the S-21 torture prison (now cleaned up and opened for tourism), as well as for me the most chilling photographs of them all, portraits of the victims. The Khmer Rouge kept data and photographs of everybody they murdered and a large number of those photographs are now on display in Tuol Sleng, Cambodia.

Skulls at Choeung Ek – View Larger

Some of the torture rooms of S-21. View Larger

Bones and clothes at the surface around our feet. View Larger

Teeth scattered on the ground. View Larger

The Stupa of 5000 skulls. View Larger

Photographs of the murdered Cambodian people. View Larger

If you would like to view these images much larger, or download any of these images – please head over to my Travel photography of Cambodia online store.

Photos: The beautiful golden light in Cambodia – A magical start to our temple hunting

July 15, 2011 by Chris Ridley

On arrival to our B&B in Siem Reap we were told that every guest is welcome to a free massage…. I’m not the biggest lover of massages but decided I should probably oblige. The massage consisted entirely of a mildly rotund Cambodian lady jumping on my back and digging her heels in for a full 15 minutes, supposedly the ‘pain’ is good for you. Hmmnn. Anyway, the next morning we visited the glistening Angkor National Museum to help get me up to speed with the history. It was an excellent museum, much better than expected and it got us even more excited about exploring the temples the next day. We were not disappointed, after a 20 minute bone shaking Tuk Tuk ride down a number of dusty tracks we finally got to the first temple, which was totally deserted and bathed in dusty golden sunlight with only the sounds of little kids running around. Magical.

Bakong Temple – Angkor Archaeological Park, Cambodia Click here to view this photo larger

Bakong Temple, Angkor, Cambodia Click here to view this photo larger

Rolous Group, Angkor, Cambodia Click here to view this photo larger

Lolei Temple – Angkor Complex, Cambodia Click here to view this photo larger

If you would like to view these images much larger, or if you would be interested in buying a print, or downloading any of these images – please head over to my Travel photography of Cambodia online store. Thank you.

Photos: First days, our journey into Cambodia. Beautiful. Awesome. Amazing.

July 14, 2011 by Chris Ridley

Can you tell how excited I am to be finally writing about our journey into Cambodia? My wife (it still feels weird saying that – we got married in Sept ’10!) travelled to Cambodia a few years ago and she has been obsessed with the country every since. We had it in the back of our minds that we wanted to try and find a few weeks to travel through Cambodia at some point on our round the world adventure, but we had no firm plans to until we got to this side of Asia – how could we resist. It had a lot to live up to as we had been to so many amazing places so far and twinned with Siobhán’s excitement up to this point I was pretty intrigued. We took an overland bus from Ho Chi Min city in Vietnam over the border straight to Phnom Pehn, passing through the customs & border control was pretty easy with just a couple of short queues, a couple of stamps, a quick bite to eat and we were on our way. I think it took around 8 hours or so on the usual pot holed, take your life into your own hands, scary roads.

We found a place to stay pretty easily and opting for a place with good reviews, the only downside was the remaining rooms left came without windows. Still, the service was great, the people were very friendly and we were located on the doorstep of some excellent restaurants. On waking the next morning we a heard lot of commotion in the street below as further up the road there was a rather large building on fire, causing the whole world to come out and watch as the fire engines arrived. Still, concerned as they all were, everybody was still smiling. Cambodians seem to just love smiling, I loved it already. The next morning we arranged our bus to Siem Reap, which was a 5hr 315km journey North, heading anti-clockwise around the massive Tonle Sap lake. Temples here we come!

Street scene in Phnom Penh, Cambodia – View Larger

Dusty tracks the other side of Siem Reap.