P#42: The Prayer Beads of a Myanmar Monk

Those Rare Grab Shots

David Tejada: I do get to travel quite a bit. When I travel internationally, I contact as many people as I can figure out who have international business in the locations that I'm going to because I like to scoop up as much extra work as possible of course.

Word got out through whatever means it was. Maybe it was a phone call of mine or somebody else had mentioned it that I was headed down towards Indonesia for a mining company.

I had this client say, "You know, we have some business down in Myanmar and Burma. We would love to have you go down there and spend about three or four days. We really only need one image and the rest of the time we'd like to have you just photograph anything you want that depicts the country we're doing business in." Dream assignment!

Audri Lanford: Wow.

David Tejada: So I went to Myanmar and had to have quite a bit of clearance to get in there. The list of requirements and visas and the equipment I was bringing in all had to be listed. They pulled me out of a line when I arrived. They knew I was coming, they knew what flight. They went through my stuff pretty tightly. (click the image for a larger version)

I was given an interpreter and I had one shot to do and that was just two geologists on the side of a hill overlooking this specific valley. Once I accomplished that, I just spent the next three days shooting whatever I wanted. This was a monk that was standing outside of the temple. I saw his hands running over the beads and I thought, "I need to grab that." That was one of those grab shots, those rare grab shots.

To Conclude

No one knows the importance of carefully staging a shot as well as David Tejada. What makes him such a great photographer, though, is his willingness to capture the moment when it presents itself -- as in this picture of a Myanmar monk.