Blog - Babycakes Romero

07/02/201706/02/2017

#MYLDN (867)

Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

06/02/201706/02/2017

#MYLDN (866)

Me and my camera back in my home town, my capital city, my london

03/02/201703/02/2017

#MoTorCyCle MaDneSS (05)

Me and my camera taking pictures of truckloads of motorbikes in SE Asia

To see the full gallery MoTorCyCleMaDneSS please click here

I got slightly obsessed with the motorcycle culture in SE Asia and it really became the focal point of my photography over there…

In Bangkok, as I mentioned before, motorbikes are really the only solution to get around the diabolical traffic. The main reason it has got so bad is the population has prospered creating much more car ownership which has glutted up the roads. It might be more pleasant to drive around in air conditioned SUVS but they have almost brought the city to a standstill. Although there are still tons of motorbikes everywhere and when they all line up at the traffic lights they look like giant motorcycle gangs are going to take over the city.

In Hanoi in Vietnam, where I took a lot of the photographs in this gallery, motorbikes & scooters are still very much the dominant form of transport and every street is chockablock with them. What is mind blowing to witness is that nobody pays any attention to anything. They do not stop at red lights, they do not stop if pedestrians are walking across, they do not stick to any particular side of the road and incredibly no-one crashes into one another. There is also not a single instance of road rage. Angry London drivers please take note…

Despite the seeming carnage, everyone moves in vague unison at roughly the same speed and just weave around each other & miraculously it works. It was seriously scary crossing the road but our friend Nat who had been there before advised us that the way to do it is just to keep walking at a steady pace and not to hesitate even when motorbikes are swishing past you left, right and centre. They will work around you he said, and they did. It was crazy.

I was also drawn to photograph this 2 wheeled frenzy because it felt like some sort of impending future reality. There will come a time in the not too distant when cars just won’t be practical anymore. Gridlock is becoming a regular occurrance in most cities around the world and it feels like it we are fast approaching the end of the road (bad pun for a bad situation)

As is so often the case with the modern world, progress is not always progress and 4 wheels are now the problem and two wheels might just be the solution. Cities like Bangkok & Ho Chi Min City perfectly demonstrate the overwhelming and unsustainable increase in the populations of the major cities around the world. The problem is there are just too many of us and the slender motorbike & its ability to slip through the gaps in the gridlock shows just how we trapped we have become by relentless growth.

Add in the damaging, catastrophic impact of unrestrained use of fossil fuels and we might find the car becomes an impossible form of transport. Even if everyone went electric, over-population will eventually render cars unworkable in the mega cities of the planet. So could motorbikes and their eco friendly versions the bicycle & the electric bike be the way of the future?

To end on a slightly more frivolous,less doom & gloom end of the world we’re all going to die observation is that everyone looks cooler on motorbikes than they would on any other form of transport. Doesn’t matter if you are old, young, hip or not, you will definitely look better. In Hanoi especially, everyone was kind of dressed like 60s French Mods so they all looked super fucking cool bombing around although capturing their finesse is a little bit tricky as they are mostly in motion.

The downside, as I discovered, to taking pictures of things on the move is that most of the time they are moving faster than my camera could focus which is fine as you long as you are willing to embrace the blur. For me this is never a problem. I like fuzzy. Fuzzy seems more like reality to me than pinpoint sharp high def but that is possibly just my eternal state of mind or maybe my failing eyesight. Proabably both.

Hope you enjoyed the last few weeks chronicling of SE Asia, next week, I will be back on the streets of London..tally ho!

02/02/201730/01/2017

#MoTorCyCle MaDneSS (04)

Me and my camera taking pictures of truckloads of motorbikes in SE Asia

01/02/201701/02/2017

#MoTorCyCle MaDneSS (03)

Me and my camera taking pictures of truckloads of motorbikes in SE Asia

Everywhere you look on the streets of Vietnam and Thailand are families on motorbikes. You constantly see kids & even babies, either clinging on to the handlebars or sitting on the lap of either the driver or the passenger, restrained by no more than than a human grip. I even saw motorcyclists with one hand on one handlebar and the other clutching a toddler. It is jaw-dropping when you first see it and looks like a horrendous accident waiting to happen but everyone thinks nothing of it and acts as if its ok and so you feel like it is too.

And yet, if you saw a child in the U.K strewn on top of a speeding motorbike in such an unprotected way, they would be reported to social services and the parents prosecuted in a second. The health and safety brigade would blow a fuse if they saw what I saw but in these cultures it is not considered in anyway wrong. It is necessary so it happens. Who are we to judge?

One of the great things about travelling is that when you visit another culture that does certain things completely differently you realise your way is not necessarily the right way, its just one version of what’s possible or acceptable and alternatives to your set of norms not only exist but function equally as well in other societies.

In our society currently, we attempt to shield children from everything in an effort to protect them but there is enough research and evidence to suggest its possibly not the best solution. You can’t protect kids from life nor do you want to. Exposure and experience are their schools. That is how they learn. That is how they develop their skills. That is how they stop being afraid. The motorbiking parents of SE Asia do not care or love their kids less. They would be no less devastated if anything happened to them but what they know is that it’s essential to expose them to potential danger in order that they become used to how motorbikes move and weave around each other. They need to be on board so they can observe from a young age how everyone does it so that they will be capable and cope when they are grown up.

What would be considered insanely irresponsible in this country is in fact just a necessary method to future proof them and make these kids grow up into functional adults who aren’t scared of being on the road. Their methods might be different, but the aim of these parents is still the same as parents in Western society and indeed the same as parents of all cultures and even all species: keep your offspring alive at all costs but if it’s at the expense of learning how to survive, it could be counter-productive…

31/01/201730/01/2017

#MoTorCyCle MaDneSS (02)

Me and my camera taking pictures of truckloads of motorbikes in SE Asia

30/01/2017

#MoTorCyCle MaDneSS (01)

Me and my camera taking pictures of truckloads of motorbikes in SE Asia

27/01/201727/01/2017

#MYBKK (05)

Me and my camera in someone else’s home town, my SE Asia trip, my Bangkoknites

This was taken at Studio Lam, which is a bar/club owned & run by my friend Nat. It is a very cool place and lost many hours dancing and drinking there till the early hours. The above musicians are part of the band Paradise International Molam Band who got the joint jumping one night with their unique blend of traditional Thai sounds from the past with a more modern dance groove. Check out their albums here

To see the full gallery MYBKK please click here

I will be continuing to bring you photographs from my trip to SE Asia so stay tuned…next week – MoTorCYcle MAdneSS!!

26/01/201725/01/2017

#MYBKKnites (04)

Me and my camera in someone else’s home town, my SE Asia trip, my Bangkoknites

Soi Cowboy is a street in Bangkok dedicated to strip clubs and caters for the demands of the Falang (foreigner) sex industry which attracts every conceivable male cliche you can imagine. It is however a visually stunning street, chock full of neon. Thailand & Bangkok especially has a reputation for this kind of thing but it really represents a microscopic fraction of what this culture and city are about. The real Bangkok has a great vibe – the tourist Bangkok is somewhat of a sad depressing place.

We went through the Ko San Road one day which was made famous by the novel/film The Beach. Despite the fact that its best days are well and truly behind it (and have been for many many years) travellers still congregate there in droves. The fact that it is literally the worst street in the city doesn’t seem to deter them. You come half way across the globe to travel & experience other societies in action then you head straight for a place where there are no locals except for the ones trying to rip you off, you are surrounded by people just like you and no-one is even close to getting an authentic experience..but still they come here…makes no sense.

It actually feels like these places were created purely to lure tourists and keep them away from the rest of the city so they don’t ruin it. That at least makes sense. The fact that it actually works is somewhat baffling.

25/01/201725/01/2017

#MYBKKnites (03)

Me and my camera in someone else’s home town, my SE Asia trip, my Bangkoknites

I mentioned before that Bangkok has a chronic traffic problem & at times it is crazy inducing bad. When we first arrived we got stuck on one of the main artery roads where our air bnb was and it took us half an hour to go 1 kilometre. The only way to really get around is on motorcycle taxis which slip through the gaps and actually move in a world of vehicular stasis.

Its actually a brilliant service and there is nothing like bombing around a city as exciting as Bangkok on the back of a motorbike. The only downside is if there is two of you, you have to get separate ones and meet at the other end, which is all well and good unless one of your drivers isn’t really a licensed taxi biker and doesn’t know where he is going so follows the other one which works fine until some old guy walks out in front of you without looking and you have to screech to a halt to stop running him over which in turn causes you to lose the other motorbike with your girlfriend on board who is now missing in Bangkok somewhere and their phone is dead and you can’t get hold of them and then you find out your two drivers have only just met and they can’t get in touch with each other either and all you are now doing as you wait in hope is compose in your head your impending conversation to the mother of your girlfriend trying to explain how you kinda mislaid her daughter halfway around the world in a crazy city & you don’t know exactly where she is. Yes, that did happen. Fortunately I never had to make the call as we were eventually reunited. We chose not to adopt that approach to travelling around the city again.

24/01/201724/01/2017

#MYBKKNites (02)

Me and my camera in someone else’s home town, my SE Asia trip, my Bangkok nites.

Found a portal into another dimension down a backstreet in Bangkok which surprisingly wasn’t in any of the guides. I can’t really say too much about it or where it was as I don’t want it to be overrun with tourists.

23/01/201720/01/2017

#MYBKKnites 01

Me and my camera in someone else’s home town, my SE Asia trip, my Bangkok nites

The King of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyadej, died a few weeks before we went out there and the entire nation was still very much in mourning. He was clearly very loved and as I got to learn more about him I could really start to see why.

He was a talented composer, musician, photographer, all round renaissance guy as well being a down-to-earth man of the people whilst still managing to perfectly maintain the regality and respect that such a role required. Much has been made of the law in Thailand that makes it illegal for anyone to say anything negative or disrespectful about him but with King Bhumibol you could see that it really wasn’t too much of a problem for anyone. They loved him. A waiter at one of the places we ate at even broke down in tears as he described how grief stricken he was.

Every building had a giant effigy of him in some shape or form and his image towered over you almost wherever you were. In honour of him being a clarinet & sax jazz player/composer all malls and shops played his style of jazz music and will do so for an entire year so it was as if the entire city had its own movie soundtrack wherever you went which was strangely apt as you really feel like you are in a living inside a film in Bangkok. Its kind of Blade Runner meets Soylent Green meets Taxi Driver just without the killer androids, psycho de Niro or enforced cannibalism. So not much like them at all really…

20/01/2017

Lost in London – the ultimate movie one off.

Woody Harrelson in my home town, my capital city, my london

Last night between the hours of 2am and 3.40am Woody Harrelson pulled off a seemingly impossible feat of simultaneously shooting a feature film and beaming it live directly into cinemas as a single unbroken 100 minute take. Don’t believe it? He did it. I watched it last night and have the bags to prove it. People bang on about the elaborate single take tracking shots in films such as Goodfellahs and The Player but neither of them even hit 10 minutes in duration. This was 10 times the length, entirely shot by one camera by one cameraman and he negotiated 14 location changes, car rides, 300 odd extras and multiple interactions without fucking up once. So much could and probably should have gone wrong but it didn’t. An incredible achievement in itself by the cast and crew but what was even more of an achievement is that it was completely engaging and you managed to forget for huge chunks of it that you were actually watching something whilst it was being acted and recorded.

lost in london

I was lucky enough to have got tickets and be in the audience at the Picturehouse cinema in the West End as it was the only cinema in Britain to show it. It was also beamed to 500 cinemas in America at the slightly more sociable hour of 6pm. Even though we had to stay up all night for it, it was well worth it and knowing it was happening in the immediate vicinity of where we were sat watching it made it even more exciting. Its also very funny, especially the scenes with Owen Wilson and also tense & emotional in all the right places.

Harrelson must have been slightly nuts to have done it, and he must have balls of steel…especially as it was the first film he had ever directed. He not only got away with it, he delivered an entertaining story (based on real life events that happened to him) and wasn’t just worth seeing for its technical gimmick. The movie wasn’t perfect and you had to adjust as maybe a different viewing experience but in my mind, did a way better job than Birdman at running a plot through continuous action. And that wasn’t live either.

Although a single take single camera movie had already been done (Victoria – German film) it had not been live streamed in the process. It is essentially a new form of art fusing elements of both cinema and the theatre to create….cinetre? thenema?? (ok, we can work on the name in due course) and it will be interesting to see if creates its own genre of movie or will it just exist as this random one off? Who knows..it was just great to be a part of the ride and be present for this new cinematic experience.

Hats off to you Mr Harrelson – spectacular job.

20/01/201719/01/2017

#MYBKK 05

Me and my camera in someone else’s home town, my SE Asia trip, my Bangkok

Bangkok is kinda insane. A giant sprawling relentless metropolis chock full of buildings, people and vehicles. It reminded me more of fictitious futuristic cities like Mega City 1 where Judge Dredd lives or an Asian Gotham. It makes London seem quiet and tame by comparison which is nuts in itself. Although the population seems more concentrated than London, it feels like it runs smoother, more in unison, more like a functional ant colony. There seems to be a more collective understanding with everyone moves at same pace in steady flows rather than here where everyone marches around at their own pace, darting about, pushing people out of the way as they fight for space. For example, despite a chronic traffic problem, there is almost zero road rage.

It is very hot and very busy and I found it slightly overwhelming when I first arrived. I was actually photographically paralysed for the first few days I was there and barely took my camera out as everywhere I looked there was something that I felt I should be documenting but somehow couldn’t. There was just too much to focus on and I didn’t know where to start. So I just tried to soak it all in and get a handle on the place.

I also felt that a lot of what I wanted to capture had already been covered by other photographers who’s feed I had seen on Instagram. I follow a lot of street photographers from all over the world and felt, in some ways, I had already seen a lot of what I was looking at. So I felt I really wanted to hold back, not just to snap away at every turn but to think about this new alien culture I was in and to try and get an understanding of what I was surrounded by before attempting to document it.

What does strike you immediately is how friendly and warm and smiley the Thai people are. Mostly. Obviously. But they are genuinely fucking lovely. Here’s a question for you…if you make a negative generalisation about people it is considered racist but what if you make a positive generalisation about a country’s population? Is that ok? Is that reverse racism? Is there a word for that? Positivism? Proracist? (answers on a postcard)

e.g.: “I love the blah blah people” “Oh my god, you’re such a positivist! Its 2017, you can’t say things like that anymore. Its respectful!”

Anyway, food for thought. Actually I should mention that the food is also spectacular. Everything we ate was delicious and every dish was like a little taste sensation firework display went off in your mouth.

What also I worked out about Bangkok it that it is a city that visually comes alive at night. It is also manageably easier to get around as it is essentially too hot with too poor air quality to walk around in the daytime. This is also slightly true of the nighttime but comparatively better. Next week’s photos will cover this nocturnal side so stay tuned for MYBKKnites..coming up!