Evidently, to earn merit, Thai Buddhists will drape string around the neighborhood. I asked about it a few days ago when I first noticed, but by now, it is broken, hanging limp, tangled, and soiled. So,this past Saturday, out on my Saturday morning walk with my son, I inwardly thought it would be funny to “follow the thread of the story”.
I never intended to actually use the photos. More than likely, I thought I would browse them, glean a few storying pointers, and file them away. And that is what I did.
To further develop the story, I would want people. I was able to follow the string into gutters and wrapped around spirit houses, mixed among the already busy power lines and webbed in trees, but to really make the story interesting, I want to know who put them there, why they put them there, how much time and money it cost, and maybe how many people were involved…because this stuff was everywhere I went in an hour long walk!
Honestly, knowing I was not going to process the photos any more than browsing through them freed me to shoot and experiment. I do not want to waste time on the photos, because it was not the photos which were important, but the opportunity to follow a story. I learned some technical pointers (maybe for another blog post) and, as I have already said, what ingredients I would need to tell this story more fully.
It was a fun, learning project.
