in 
Buddha
Buddha My most current blog entry:
A photo of a photo of a photo of a Laotian monk
Wednesday, April 17, 2013 at 12:55PM 
In April 1998 I went to Luong Prabang, Laos. It was a wonderful experience: at that time Luong Prapang was just named a UNESCO World Heritage Site and wasn't too crowded with tourists. It seemed like half the population were Buddhist monks. A serenity pervaded the small city up the Mae Kong River. Every morning hundreds and hundreds of monks take to the streets to gather alms. I visited many Buddhist temples ("Wat") and spoke to monks, many of whom spoke good English. This monk asked me if he should quit the monkhood and go to the city and learn computers. I told him he was already engaged in the most worthwhile path anyone could follow. He thanked me and I asked if I could take his photo . . . he said yes, and that is the photo the young monk is holding in his outstretched hand. Several years later a friend happened to mention he would be traveling to Luong Prabang. I asked him to bring the photo of the young monk to him, it would make a great adventure to find him and give him the photo . . . as well as take a photo of him with the photo. My friend did just that, and that photo is the one the young monk is holding on his lap. Several years later, you guessed it, another friend of mine was heading to Laos, and Luang Prabang, so I asked him if he was up to an adventure . . . he was and took this, final, photo of the now not-so-young monk with the two pevious photos. I never went back to Laos, nor have any of my freinds gone there, so I have not delivered THIS photo to the young monk . . . and taken his photo with it.
Lost Storage Media Found!
Tuesday, April 16, 2013 at 1:34PM 
While cleaning up around my office in preparation for moving to Scotland, I found an old "back-up" storage media card from my trip to Indonesia in December 2011 that I had not uploaded. There were some nice images on it. This image seems strangely appropriate to me: "Time To Go."
Yep, some pretty interesting images were to be found . . .
. . . and beautiful images not previously posted.
One day, outside of Yogjakarta, we were struck by a huge tropical thunder storm . . . these Indonesian boys were caught in the downpour.
Old weathered wall. Old lamp.
That crooked table . . .
A Night On The Town: Saxophone Pub
Saturday, April 13, 2013 at 4:57PM 
My friend John Stiles is a blues fanatic like me. He proposed we meet at the Saxophone Pub on Victory monument in Bangkok. Traffic is bad, and parking hard to find around there . . . so a taxi is a must.
The taxi was clean and well equipped with traffic safety garlands, hanging talismans, and a dashboard Buddha. I felt safe.
I rode the taxi to the nearest Sky Train station and road it to Victory Monument Station.
The area around Victory Monument Circle was bustling: it is the start of the long Songkran week-end. Many people congregate her to catch mini-vans to all parts of Thailand.
. . . and this forlorn street peddler cart operator.
A new shipment of display feet arrived just in time . . for a photo. Thai streets are covered in street vendor tables of infinite interest.
I arrived at the Saxophone Pub early. The opening act was an incredible acoustic folk singer. Forgive me for not knowing his name.
It didn't take long for the place to 'lively up' when the house band, Ped's Band, started rockin' . . .
These guys are good.
This guy is a fantastic blues guitar player . . . once he gets warmed up.
He had the whole place in a blues swoon.
Good driving bass . . .
. . . a fine drummer . . .
. . . and a not-bad-at-all rhythm/second lead guitar played some pretty powerful interpretations of SRV and Hendrix classics. Nice.
Saxophone Pub is thick with authentic atmosphere that a Hollywood set director could never duplicate.
Everybody who is anybody in the blues world of Thailand has played, or hopes to play, Saxophone.
It is nice to sit at a counter directly in front of the band. What a scene!
A second band, The Emergency Band, came on at midnight. They were very good . . . R&B . . .
. . . and rocked the place too.
My ears ringing with sweet blues and R&B, I finally gave up and left at around 1:30am and headed out into a deserted Victory Monument Circle to find a taxi home.
New Lense Field Test: Sigma 35mm f1.4 DG HSM
Saturday, April 6, 2013 at 5:22PM 
Basil and I have been having that old photographer's conversation: What lens to buy next?
I was feeling like I had the complete set of lenses I needed . . . for the kind of photographs I take and for how I display them . . . until, that is, the new Sigma 35mm f1.4 came out! I do a lot of night street shooting in Bangkok and around Southeast Asia, and my trusty Sigma 50mm f1.4 EX DG HSM had become my favorite (reviewed elsewhere on this site), but I found that, on a full frame Canon 5D mark II, it was sometimes too narrow in confined alleyways and dark night markets. So . . . . I traded in my excellent Sigma 50mm f1.4 for the just released Sigma 35mm f1.4 DG HSM lens . . . and boy, am I happy! Very nice.
There was nothing wrong with the 50mm Sigma . . . . it almost never left my 5D . . . it is a fantastic lens . . . but I already like the 35mm better for this kind of street shooting. It's Bangkok, so there is ALWAYS something to shoot, like this egg truck.
Very sharp indeed. A 35mm is about as wide as you can have on your camera without distortions appearing.
Detail in dark/shaded areas is amazing.
I like walls. Walls show their histories on their faces. A 35mm lens in an alley is perfect for capturing this kind of thing without the barrel distortion of something wider.
Wall history.
A Bangkok alley in great detail and clarity.
A Bangkok alley straight from the camera (RAW), converted to a JPEG, reduced in size and posted without any PhotoShop inputs.
The Sigma 35mm f1.4 is not a macro lens, but you can close focus with good results.
Orchids are always candidates for close shooting.
White lobby orchids, Shangri-La Hotel Bangkok.
A wonderful, large, old, carved, lacquered elephant greets you at the Shangri-La Hotel.
The red Shangri-La elephant served as a good object to experiment on for depth of field studies.
Very nice low light performance. I couldn't be happier.
This is why you have an f1.4 lens: hand held shooting in a dark parking lot. The detail in this photo at full resolution is incredible.
We All Had A Favorite Car . . .
Sunday, March 24, 2013 at 11:12AM 
I've had a lot of vehicles in my life, but this one stands out as a definite favorite: a 1959 Napco 4X4 Chevrolet short wheelbase Suburban.
This photo was taken in Monmouth, Oregon in April 1976, a year before I sold it and moved to Kinshasa, Congo.
Yep, I sure loved that old Suburban.
Monouth, Oregon, April 1976. I painted the "crummy" (def. "A truck used to haul loggers to the forest and back.") a nice fire engine red not long after this photo was taken. It had a 302 Chevy small block, 4bbl, headers . . . . and those wonderful 9.00.16 military tires. Too Cool. I miss this car very much.
This is the only image I have of my old '59 crummie the way it looked when I sold it. It was a real show-stopper in its red paint and straight body. Nice.
In 1985-86 I was a crew member on the IMSA World Sports Car team of Paegasus Racing, owned by Oliver Kuttner. He had somehow acquired these unfinished "bodies in white" 1975 Iso Rivolta Lele that were left on the bankrupted Iso Rivolta Lele assembly line. Technically there is no such thing as a 1975 model . . . except these! He gave me one. I had dreams of making one into an NHRA Super Gas class race car . . . . but, alas, I stayed in Bangkok for 17 years and never even started on it. Oh . . . what might have been!
Update on Friday, April 12, 2013 at 9:12AM by
Dr. Jeff Harper
Dr. Jeff Harper
MY PERSONAL AUTOMOTIVE HISTORY:
My first car . . . technically. My grandfather, Claude Good, sold this (an identical one) to me for $50.oo as it had a connecting rod knocking. I took it into my high school auto shop to repair it. My shop teacher said I couldn't really just repair one rod that was knocking and that I would need to rebild the whole engine. Short on funds, and not fond of this year chevy . . .the '55, '56, and '57 Chevys were cool at the time, I sold it for $75.oo. I regret it to this day. It was in otherwise perfect condition: my grandfather owned a Chevron station and was a master mechanic. Dumb kid that I was . . .
My first car was a 1957 Chevrolet 4-door wagon . . . not exactly like this one (mine was white, but I can't find a photo on-line of a white one). I bought it at night not long after my 16th birthday with money burning a hole in my pocket. I soon regretted it: the 283 and auto trans were junk and the body was bad . . . but it had mag wheels . . . . what a fool I was. Bought in Calimesa, CA, 1966.
My second car was a 1964 VW Beetle, like this one, I bought from my brother Allen when he went off to the Viet Nam war. I put in nice speakers and a 4-track tape player (!!) and had many wonderful life experiences in it. I rolled it in Santa Cruz, California one morning then drove it back to L.A. with no brakes . . . and got it fixed in my driveway by itinerate, door-to-door Mexican body and fender men. Bought in Calimesa, CA, in 1967.
My next car was a 1967 Ford Mustang just like this one. Mine was a real bad boy street racer: 390 FE big block, Hooker headers, high rise manifold, Isky cam, Schaefer clutch, and "cheater slicks" on back. It was a 3-speed and 4:11 gears, which was its secret weapon: It tended to not spin the tires so much on the street as the the 4-speed cars, and the gear drop from 1st to 2nd also did not spin the tires much either . . . with all it's torque, it was a very fast car and often beat much more powerful cars on the street. I loved that car! I ran out of money and traded down (plus cash) for my next car . . . Bought in Redlands, CA, 1969.
I had a 67 Econoline panel van next . . . . with a Kon-Tiki interior of made of bamboo. It was a horrible car, completely unreliable. It caught on fire once at the drive-though window of a Der Weinerschnitzel in San Bernardino . . . but it still ran. I was once mistakenly pulled over by the CHP as a murder suspect in this van . . . very upsetting experience.
. . . another VW Beetle, this time a 1967 model, the last of the good ones! Mine was just like this, only it was perfect inside and out, and I kept it that way too. Hardly a week would go by that I didn't have somebody ask me if I would sell it. Bought in San Bernardino, CA, 1971.
My good buddy and car guy, Charlie, found a '61 Chevy bubbletop Impala (not this one, but exactly like it) for me for US$500.oo and I couldn't pass it up. I sold the VW for a profit. The 283 V8 smoked and ran on seven cylinders and the auto trans slipped and overheated, but it was a cool car. I had it only a few months before I bought a Ford pick-up and moved to Oregon. I got US$800.oo for it. I wish I had this car today!
I bought a 1964 Ford long wheel base narrow bed pick-up with a quilted aluminum camper shell for my move to Oregon in 1973. It had the 272 V-8 and 3-on-the-tree transmission with overdrive . . . and was a very pale pastel green with "Turner's Carpets, Yucaipa, CA" still on the door. I loved that truck too . . . and made a tidy profit when I sold it for university tuition a few years later. It was perfect inside and out. Bought in Yucaipa, CA, 1972. I sold the '64 Ford when a freind of mine told me about the 1959 Chevy Suburban 4X4, detailed above.
Then I had the aforementioned 1959 Chevrolet Napco 4X4 Suburban.
Technically not my car . . . but it belonged to my ex-wife, and I did drive it about as much as she did.
Even though I loved the '59 Suburban, I had left university and had a REAL PROFESSIONAL JOB in Salem, Oregon, a 20 mile on-way commute. The Suburban's gas mileage was killing me . . . . so on impulse on the way home from work one rainy Oregon day, I pulled into a Chevy dealer and bought a 1976 Chevy Monza 2+2, V-8 (4.3L - 262ci), 4-speed with only 5000 miles on the odometer. I liked that car very much . . . it had racing wheels (not those pictured above) and grippy tires. Lots of fun . . . and pretty fast. Bought in Salem, Oregon, 1975.
That Real Professional Job was filling up my bank account pretty fast . . . . and being a big NHRA Drag Racing fan . . . as well as being haunted by memories of fast cars past (the '67 big block Mustang) . . . I sold the '76 Monza and bought this perfect 1964 Plymouth Valiant from a Plymouth dealer mechanic (Really!). It had 45,000 miles on it and looked as new as the day it rolled off the assembly line. It had the slant-6 engine with a push-button automatic transmission. Perfect road trip car! Bought in Salem, Oregon in 1976. This change of car freed up even more money to be able to . . .
I actually found a photograph of my old 1949 British Ford Anglia. I bought it to . . . build my dream drag race car: a Super Gas drag race car. I found this like new '49 Anglia in the want ads, bought it and took it to Herold Ketch in Portland, Oregon to have a tube frame fabricated that would meet the tech for the just created NHRA 9.90 Super Gas class. Bought in Portland, Oregon in 1976. I had a small block and racing powerglide in it . . . . and it had lots of fiberglass body parts . . . and it was coming together as a first class, and hopefully competitive, drag race car . . . . until . . . . I had an opportunity to take a job in Africa! Kinshasa, Zaire (now called the Democratic Republic of Congo) . . . so I sold the 85% completed Anglia to Herold Ketch . . . and boarded a plane for The Congo . . . .
In The Congo 1977, my employer supplied me with a made-in-Brazil 1976 VW Beetle . . . with a dual carb 1600 engine. It was a great car for the bad Kinshasa streets and the even worse country roads. I drove everywhere in that Brazillian Beetle. My third Beetle.
In 1980 my employer in Kinshasa supplied me with a 1980 Toyota Corolla (just like this one), my first NEW car. I drove this car across most of The Congo on the worst, and most dangerous, roads in the world: it never missed a beat! A great car!
I was given the use of another new Toyota Corolla in 1994, this time a white wagon . . . another durable car I drove all over The Congo . . . until I departed for London, England in 1996.
I did not need to own a car in London as the public transport was so good. For the first time since I was 16 years old in 1966, I didn't have my own car! But I moved to Singapore after two years . . . This gold 1980 Ford Cortina was the car I had for the one year I lived in Singapore (1988-1989). Amazingly I actually found a photo of this fine car. Because of the convoluted tax laws on car ownership in Singapore, I actually made a very good profit on the sale of this car . . . I traded it for Asian rattan furniture to be shipped to The States. I drove this car from Singapore to Thailand along the west coast of Malaysia: 500 miles of tropical beach and palm trees without seeing a single person! Wow! After Singapore I spent time living in Chiang Mai, Thailand being "movie star" (I had a five-week bit part in the horrible "Air America" movie while it was being filmed there).
In January 1990 I moved to Charlottesville, Virginia and bought a nice black 1980 Chevrolet Malibu 2-door with a hood bubble. My Malibu had big tires in the back and Keystone Klassic wheels. It was a junky car with a weak V-6 an lousy interior. My old "race car addiction" reared it's head again. I never did much with this car . . . too busy getting my Ph.D. at the University of Virginia to do much else. I drove it a couple of years.
In 1994, in a huge rain storm, I traded in my lousy Malibu to an unsuspecting used car dealer in Richmond, Virginia for a 1986 VW Jetta Turbo Diesel like this with 70,000 mies on it. It was nearly perfect, but nobody wanted a diesel at that time in America. The Jetta regularly got over 50 mpg on the highway and purred like a kitten. Great car. I loved that car. I eventually gave it to my daughter when I moved to Bangkok, Thailand in 1996.
O.K., this wasn't MY car, but I was a team member on the Oliver Kuttner-owned World Sportscar class racer at the Rolex Datona 24-hour race in February 1996. I assembled this very BMW V-12 powered race car.
I actually had this 1990 Suzuki Caribbean before I arrived in Bangkok in July 1996. My old friend from Kinshasa, Duane Vogt, was living in Bangkok and knew a guy who had a "car you will want" with low miles, so I bought it sight unseen. It was perfect . . . only 15,000 miles on it. I drove all over Thailand, north and south, in this car without ever having any problems. However, I did have a very high-dollar car stereo system stolen out of it at a shopping mall in Bangkok when I parked next to the police sub-station . . . hhmmmmmm.
I bought this 2000 made-in-Thailand Ford Ranger when I stared to build may Harper Racing Drag Familia. This photo was taken in front of my trackside garage and office at the fabulous Bangkok Drag Avenue . . . sight of many wonderful evenings spent racing and hanging out with my racing buddies.
I finally got around to building and racing a "super class" e.t. bracket drag racing vehicle in 2004: the famous Harper Racing Drag Familia. It is a 1980 Mazda Familia mini-pick-up that was powered by a series of different Toyota engines over the eight years I owned and raced it: 1JZ and 1.5JZ turbo straight sixes, and a supercharged 1UZ V-8. It ran a best of 10.56 e.t. at 146mph. Yes, I loved this car. A full feature of my former race car can be found on this site at this link: My Former Race Car
I was part owner of this 1980 Maverick drag race car project. This would have been the nicest drag car in Thailand . . . built to pass an NHRA tech inspection for safety as an example for Thai racers . . . and, perhaps, the quickest "street" car in the country. Sadly, it was never completed.
My second brand new Ford Ranger, a 2007 double cab, towing the famous Harper Racing Drag Familia. The made-in-Thailand Ford Ranger is a great vehicle . . . over 30mpg on the highway while towing a race car. Am selling it before I move to Aberdeen, Scotland in July 2013 . . .
My 21st car: a 2014 Nissan AWD Juke NISMO. A totally awesome car for the cold, wet, narrow streets and roads of northeastern Scotland. I sold this wonderful machine and moved back to Thailand.
I'm back in Thailand again and bought this 'project' car: a 2002 Toyota Hilux Tiger pick-up. I have big plans to make this a cool daily driver. I have done extensive modifications on this car . . . chassis and engine - a V8!
The engine in my Toyota Tiger project is a Lexus 4.3L V8. It made 311hp on the dyno. I am very happy with the work done by the Mactec shop.
Although not really my car (it belongs to my brother), I brought it back to life and bought a Craigslist camper for $500.oo and lived in it on a 12 month road trip around the USA. A Great year! A 1994 Chevy 4X4.
After four years in Scotland we moved back to our home in Bangkok, Thailand. Soon after we bought this Ford Everest. It is a fantastic SUV. Diesel, auto . . . gets 40mpg on the highway. Rides and drives like a dream.
Completed now . . . runs great (and fast), looks fantastic. Adding a Whipple supercharger to the Lexus 4.3L V8 next . . . watch this space!
2019 Suzuki Swift . . . our new "city car" . . . excellent fuel economy, super low emission, quiet, comfortable, handles great, reasonable price. We love it.