Recently, I watched a video saying that selling prints is a good way to raise money from photography. But to sell well, you need to build up a separate thematic project. Let's say, instead of promoting an Instagram of your name, you should establish and promote a thematic Instagram - retro cars or images of some certain city to grow subscribers and sell prints... And I thought that street cats could be one of the choices of mine. With that idea in mind, I set out for another walk in old Bangkok with the focus of felines. On March 7, 2024.
The first cat I met during the walk
Finding cats in Bangkok is not difficult, they are everywhere. But finding something epic is a matter of luck, of course. And that day Lady Luck smiled on me, I believe. Judge yourself if it was so.
In one of the alleys I chose for catsploring I found this scene:
An inquisitive orange youngster reclining on the roof looked promising but I was distracted by a shout from another cat who spotted me:
Probably, that cat person heard or saw I had thrown cat food kibbles (I always have some in my backpack) and decided to involve.
That clearly was an attempt at seduction 😁
And that attempt was successful 😻 I started throwing kibbles up onto the shed where the cat was present and then noticed a local person. The man said in English: "please, no". I said sorry and left that alley. Alas.
It could be they have a problem with rats or mice who would feast on the kibbles the cat wouldn't find... Or the cat was on the diet... Who knows.
Happily, I still had an orange cat waiting for me on the first roof, only ten meters away. I headed to the first roof and noticed that someone else got interested in me:
They were watching me! 😄
When I was back to the first roof, I found not one youngster but a gang of them:
What was especially lovely was that the cats were rather curious about me than wanted to gobble on cat food. They were staring at me and none of them climbed down to get closer to me.
But I fed them anyway by throwing cat food onto the roof.
These scenes of walking on wires and even dosing on them are treasure if I start selling prints - I must come back there to take more images.
That's a crop above (unlike all previous photos), just half of the original image. Want to come back with a telephoto lens to try it at this location... Let's hope the cats will be there when I am back.
A word about the light... The feature of tropical cities is that cats usually don't appear in the sun preferring cooling down in the shade. It's almost always too hot for them so combining a cat and direct sunlight isn't that easy, alas, unlike cold countries where cats love basking especially in spring and autumn. Of course, that's a disadvantage of Bangkok from the point of street cat photography.
But I am glad that these images and the location generally have some sunlight in the background, which makes images better.
Would be smart to visit the place early in the morning to see how the things are when the light has a different direction...
I left the cats when I felt the whole situation lost its shine and started turning into a long-drawn photo session.
That was the golden hour, all street details looked amazing. Soon, I came to Yaowarat Road, my night street photography Mecca:
But that's another story for another post.
Hope you liked my cats! 😎
More images and stories from Southeast Asia are ahead! Check out the previous ones on my personal Pinmapple map.
I took these images with a Nikkor 50mm on a full-frame DSLR Nikon D750 on March 7, 2024, in Bangkok, Thailand.