Scroll to Content

Photographing Myanmar’s Monks

Mia and I run photo tours and arrange bespoke trips in China for photographers, and people wanting to connect to beautiful places and people. So what do we do when we take a ‘break’? Yep, you guessed it, up at 4am every day and take photos for 10 days straight, although this time we went to Myanmar (Burma). We traveled to research, absorb and search out interesting light, people, and places for future photo tours.

This is part 1 of our Myanmar collection.

To any photographers out there interested, these are taken within an hour window without flash, or any type of lighting or reflectors. Mostly are fixed lens such as the 50 1.8f Nikon, 85mm 1.8, 105 2.8f and 14-24 2.8. A couple of shots I used a tripod, about 40cm from the ground, so I could reduce the shutter speed down as low as possible. I used also used an aperture as low as possible,  typically around 2.8 to 3.5. The images are published as taken, with only very minor cropping and very slight shadow recovery. Saturation increase by just +5%.

Buddhist monk praying in light rays
A Buddhist teenage monk praying in a temple in Bagan, Mymanr (Burma)
Monks reading in the light rays of a window in Myanmar Burma
Three Myanmar monks reading in a Bermese temple window with rays of light coming in. Take in Myanmar, Burma.
Three Teenage Monks in a laughing in a temple in Myanmar
Three teenage monks inside one of the smallest temples in Myanmar, Burma. Uniquely this temple has 5 Buddha statues.
Monks reading inside a Burmese temple of Myanmar
Monks reading in the afternoon light rays inside a Burmese temple of Myanmar
Myanmar young monk portrait
A portrait of a 14-year-old Burmese monk as he lights the candles inside one of 10,000 temples of Bagan, Myanmar.
14 Year old monk in Burma waits by the wall
A 14-year-old monk waits for his younger students