Now with added detail!, Part 2

I'm calling this version the "photo quality isn't great, but the story behind it is" version. :-) For part one go here.

The above shot was taken in Prague. I'd met Danilo and Elin, two really cool couchsurfers, and we were all in great moods. If I remember correctly, it was a Friday night and we were ready for a night on the town. As we walked to the meeting place for the CS party that we were going to, I stopped in the middle of the street to take this picture. The light isn't great and the shot ends up looking a little fuzzy and out of focus. I like it, though, because with all the good mood vibes in the air and the excitement of a night out with cool people, I was feeling kind of warm, fuzzy, and out of focus myself.

See those colorful, swirly blobs? Yeah, those are koi fish and in case you didn't know, they are very hard to photograph. (Well, at least they're not running away from you like sheep do, but they're fast and taking pictures through water is hard to begin with.)

I took this shot in Bangkok; it was a jam-packed day of activity and this was taken at the Jim Thompson house. I seem to remember being in a good mood on this day, too, and was so dead set on getting a picture of the koi that I literally spent 30-45 minutes taking shot after shot, going for the perfect one. I never did get it (you can see my other attempts here, here, and here), but I sure had fun trying and I had a big, goofy grin on my face the whole time.

Finally for today, we go back to Muang Ngoi in Laos. You may recall that me and Laos didn't exactly get off on the right foot and it was all downhill from there (I won't link to it because, well, the word 'explosive' should be the only reminder you need). Then I got to Muang Ngoi and all was right with the world again. People were friendly, the vibe was laid-back, and I started to feel like myself again at last.

This shot is terrible because I'm zoomed in super far which doesn't really work so well for a point and shoot camera. I was trying to get a good shot of the moon - if you squint and have a good imagination, you can kind of see it in the top of the shot, towards the left. The rest of the photo is a view of the restaurant that was directly across from my bungalow. I spent most of my afternoons and early evenings in Muang Ngoi laying in the hammock on my porch, watching the night get darker and darker, as I listened to the chatter coming from the restaurant. The peacefulness of it all makes me smile even now.

I suppose this edition of the story behind the photo should have been called the "good moods and happy times" edition. ;-)

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In case you're wondering how my friends in Christchurch fared, everyone is fine. Sean tells me that the damage was mostly not as bad as the media portrayed, and most Kiwis just looked at it as preparation for "the big one." I thought 7.2 on the Richter scale was pretty big, but I guess in the en zed it's only big if it's an 8 or higher, lol.