I wrote before about slating in the field and in the studio. Sometimes doing such things is a little harder than it appears, especially if you arrive somewhere and know you will never be able to quickly write down the name in a notepad for future reference. Let’s face it – some of these foreign names are difficult to remember to spell, even when sounded out phonetically.
Who would have guessed there were two N’s in this name? I had gone there to visit a friend who told me he was staying at what sounded like “Wat Yanalangsee” but I was able to decipher this well enough to locate the temple. You get used to certain accents when you immerse yourself in them, I suppose.
This linguistic challenge, coupled with the crowd of monks greeting me, made it necessary to quickly snap this slate image instead of triple-checking the spelling in my slate notebook. After that, I could focus on getting the shots I wanted, knowing that I could later reference the photo for any information I needed.