We took a trip to Chiang Mai in Thailand right before the Chinese New Year. On the second day of the trip, I woke up and decided I wanted to take portraits of Monks at a Buddhist temple/monastery about 3 blocks from the hotel. All of these images were shot using a Mamiya 6 medium format camera and Portra 160 film.

At first, I found myself chasing the monks around the complex and the lighting or background ended up being wrong. Eventually, I figured out there was a school for the young monks and I positioned myself on a small alley where they were walking to get to the school. As they walked by I would ask if I could take their portrait. I had about a 75% success rate and got some well-lit shots with a neutral background. I printed the first collection of nine images below for my living room and call it “21 monks”.