Elephant Festival Photography Trip

The library took five photographers on a field trip to the Elephant Festival in Paklay for an intense photography workshop. We worked on the relationship of aperture and depth of field, blurring the background to focus attention on the subject, high shutter speeds to capture motion... We got up early to photograph the elephants bathing. We played with night shots and macro photography.

Some photos of mahout and their elephants.

The library is run by The Language Project and has a gallery in the main library where students showcase their best works. Tourists can purchase prints for $25 which is shared equally between the library and photographer. To put this in perspective, to earn $12 on the sale of a print is a big deal for a student earning $30 a month...

An online gallery of photography contest the library held last year entitled Laos Through Our Own Eyes.

We played elephant trivia at every meal. Here's your chance. Laos is known as the Land of a Million Elephants, how many elephants remain in Laos today?