Highlights of Myanmar (Burma)

Dec 27

I've just returned from a 12 day trip to Myanmar (Burma), it was truly a great experience and I came back with a lot to share. The trip was organized by Within the Frame, and I really want to thank our amazing guide, Nay Win Oo (Shine) for his dedication to the group and for sharing his passion and love for the country with us. Shine exceeded my expectations and I am pretty sure that without him the group wouldn’t have been able to get so many wonderful locations and opportunities for photos.

During the trip I visited Yangon, the biggest city of the country and former capital, Bagan, an ancient city with over 2,000 temples and pagodas, Mandalay, the second largest city, and Inle Lake, a freshwater lake surrounded by small villages along the lake’s shore and within the lake itself.

Myanmar is going through a wake of political and economic reforms, and many places were off limits or totally banned for foreigners to visit just a couple of years back. Even today there are some places out of reach, but all that is rapidly changing. One of the most fascinating aspects of visiting is that in a lot of ways you feel like the clock has turned back. In Burma there are no such thing as chain stores, ATMs or mobile phones (mine didn’t even work there!) and internet is scarce and very slow, especially when you go out to the countryside, where people still use horse cart to get around, buffalo’s are used to plow the fields, and despite some kids trying to sell you all kind of crafts and souvenirs every visited place feels authentic, even the most “touristy” ones.

Photographically speaking my goal was not only to capture the places and landscape but primarily the people, the culture, a subject always difficult for me, specially when approaching people, but I couldn’t have chosen a better destination. The people of Burma love to be photographed, just a simple smile and the word “Mingalaba” (a form of greeting and good blessing at the same time) is all you need.

I would honestly highly recommend traveling to this place. Anyone interested in getting to know and experience South-Eastern Asia's people and culture should. To a street, documentary, or landscape photographer Burma is heaven. From the street markets in the bustling Yangon, ancient temples in the plains of Bagan, and captivating villages around Inle Lake...nothing can compare. Most importantly its amazing people and communities that are always ready to smile back.

For this trip I took my Nikon D4 with the 28-300 and 14-24, and the Fuji X-E2 with the kit lens 18-55 and some primes, I ended up using both cameras fairly evenly but I am really loving the Fuji for traveling, I just need to be more used to the EVF, but I am really thinking of adding a long lens and second body and just travel with the Fuji moving forward, the quality of the images is superb, and you can´t beat the compact system.

The photos on this post are some of my favorites from around the country, but I’ll keep posting as I manage to edit other ones from more specific locations and places in future posts.