Weird and wonderful things happen at the Phuket Vegetarian Festival as photographer Rinto Sulong discovered.
This photo was taken during the Phuket Vegetarian Festival, an annual event that’s held on the Thai island during Monsoon season. Local residents of Chinese ancestry believe those who take part will experience good luck, health and fortune. The festival is not for the squeamish as it includes extreme body piercing, bathing in boiling oil, self-inflicted laceration, climbing up bladed ladder rungs in bare feet, walking on red-hot coals and the deafening noise of thousands of firecrackers exploding all over the island.
This photograph was taken during street processions in Old Phuket Town on the second last day of the festival. It had just stopped raining and the shrine disciples, dressed in white, were carrying their idols across town. Thousands of people lined the streets, some watching the procession, others waiting to be blessed. I marched alongside this particular group of disciples, who were carrying the largest and most important idol, taking photos and watching the highly charged festival unfold. A local tradition sees people in the crowd place firecrackers onto the idols and the explosions are nearly continuous throughout the day.
I was trying to capture the explosions as I moved along but the timing was tricky. I found it helped to use a wide-angle lens to capture as much of the scene as possible and on-camera flash to fill in the shadows.
On returning home I was encouraged by my photography lecturers to enter the photo in several photo competitions. I’m glad I did as last year I won the ACMP Student Documentary Photographer of the Year and the AIPP WA Student Photographer of the Year with this photo.
Olympus E-520, 10-20mm, f4-5.6 lens @ 10mm, 1/160s @ f/5.6, ISO 100. Photo by Rinto Sulong.
